Friday, November 30, 2012

This Has Been My Theory...

UPDATED AND BUMPED:

===========ORIGINAL STARTS HERE=========== ...too! I saw this happening during the Iraq war. There is a three way struggle between Arab Nationalism (which has more or less lost, except in Syria where the last of the Arab Nationalists clings to power, but there it's only a matter of time), the old guard Islamists, and the newer, modern people, mostly among the young, who want to adopt Western values, enlightenment thinking and everything that has grown out of that in the west.

That's why I'm hopeful about the Arab Spring. The young folks who assembled en masse in Tahrir Square two years ago were naive and did not plan for what would happen the day after they succeeded in overthrowing the old Arab Nationalist Mubarak regime. So in came the only organization that was well organized - the Muslim Brotherhood. And it looks like they are screwing up badly. I don't expect they will last too long.

Remember the Arab Spring was so named because of the Prague Spring, the 43rd anniversary of which is just around the corner. The Prague Spring was a liberalization of state control in communist Czechoslovakia, which was quickly quashed. It was another 20 years or so before communism in Eastern Europe fell.

Revolutions don't happen overnight, but the young people that came out en masse in Tahrir Square will someday be the leading class in Egypt. The real Arab Spring will begin to flower there. The more general Muslim Spring may happen sooner, though, in Tehran.

I wish I was younger (who doesn't), but I'd love to live to see the day. I was born during the dying days of the British Empire, when Arab Nationalism was on the rise in the Middle East and when so-called "liberation" movements, orchestrating coups and counter-coups and coups to counter the counter-coups sprang up all over the so-called Third World. This was the decolonization era. The goons who came to power at the barrel of a gun (read: tank), could not deliver. Their only ideological currency was anti-colonialism. Moammar Ghadafi was the last of them, except for Bashir Assad, who is currently hanging on by a thread. They could not build functioning, thriving economies. Instead, they played the Soviets off against the Americans, extorting each in turn.

They themselves, in turn, were eventually replaced, for the most part with Western leaning governments, anxious to adopt Western ways of doing things. It was obvious the Soviet system had not delivered. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the violent struggles in the Third World (coups and counter coups) more or less disappeared. Now the struggle is one of citizens against their own governments. In the Arab and Muslim world, Egypt and Tehran are leading the way. Islamofascism will not last long. Good ideas produce well functioning societies, as well as creative and powerful technologies and these spread. Not so good ideas, like communism and Islamism, whither and eventually die. In the meantime, I hope Western Civilization doesn't commit suicide. We need to get over our self-loathing and recognize the world is looking to us as an example to emulate. They've adopted Western technologies (through which Western ideas have been spread) and they are asking why it is they can't produce the same.

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1 Comments:

Blogger SnoopyTheGoon said...

"I don't expect they will last too long."

Amen to that, but I, a natural born skeptic, am not too excited by the prospect of quick delivery.

November 30, 2012 5:27 am  

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