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It's about assisting dissidents like Egypt's April 6 movement
The demotion of democratization as a foreign policy priority left the Obama administration “intellectually unprepared” for the “strategically complicated” predicament it faces in the Middle East, writes Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic.
“Realism does not equip one for an adequate appreciation of the historical force of the democratic longing,” he writes.
Conflating democratization with military invasion and implying that democracy assistance is an imposition generates a mindset that gives engagement and dialog undue priority over commitment and siding with a just cause:
The promotion of democracy is a policy of support for indigenous Egyptian, or Arab, or Muslim democrats who are just as authentic as Egyptian, or Arab, or Muslim autocrats and theocrats,…. It is a policy …..of taking sides—specifically, of taking sides with peoples against regimes. It does not create dissidents,…. it finds them, and then it assists them, because they are in need of assistance, and because assisting them expresses our values and our interests.
This article has 3 responses
for promoting democracy one must be sure that protesters want it too.Iranian opposition have the leaders with democratic programs,but Obama did not react.In the case of Moslim Brothers in Egypt,there are the strong doubts about their democratic goals.Let`s Egyptians wwwwork out the desision