Disdain for democracy

As we sit in our dorm rooms, apartments or greek houses hoping for another day of cancelled classes, halfway around the planet, thousands of students our age march on the streets, demanding freedom and democracy.  

Since America is the so-called beacon of democracy for the rest of the world, you would think these huge protests and largely nonviolent acts of civil disobedience would garner a great deal of support among our politicians, television pundits and newspaper  intellectuals.

After all, a successful revolution in Egypt could mean one more country added to the list of democratic states. A new group of people may be able to loosen the chains of suppression that hold them.

However, the Egyptian protestors have not received that warm a welcome from institutions in the United States.

Instead, once again, fear has been employed to mislead the U.S. population and suggest that the entities behind these protests are not looking for peace and democracy but instead are radical Islamic organizations whose first mission would be to attack and subsequently invade our number-one ally in the region, Israel.

So much talk has been tossed around about the Muslim Brotherhood and the apocalyptic scenarios that might play out if they won a general election (Glenn Beck went as far as to imply that the Egyptian protests could lead to World War III) that one might easily and accidently overlook an easy question lurking in the background of all the political jargon.

What right do we have to decide whom other countries elect?

Sure, we can have an interest in the outcome, but supporting democracy only when it appears to fit U.S. economic and security interests does not appear genuine.

That kind of support of democracy says, “You are free to hold elections so long as you elect who we want in power, and you can have freedom of choice as long as you do what we want you to,” and it is beyond irrational and totalitarian.

It is dehumanizing and immoral.

The U.S. presence in the Middle East has always been justified as necessary in order to defend justice and democracy versus some greater evil. However, people in the region have seen the tens of thousands murdered in Iraq, Afghanistan and now in Pakistan.  They have experienced dictators we have supported and armed with our own tax money in the form of credits to buy weapons from American corporations so they are better able to suppress their citizens.

We do not just owe the Egyptian people support in their fight for democracy and justice. We owe them an extraordinarily sincere apology.


E-mail: mardunba@indiana.edu