Gary Younge writes:
The events of the last month in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere have challenged the way the west thinks of the Arab world (and how the Arab world thinks of itself). What remains to be seen is the extent to which these ongoing events confront the way in which western powers view themselves and their relationship to the Middle East.
Over the last decade in particular, the Arab world has increasingly been depicted in the west as a region in desperate need of being tamed so that it can be civilised. It has been portrayed as an area rooted in religious fervour, where freedom was a foreign concept and democracy a hostile imposition. Violence and terrorism was what they celebrated, and all they would ever understand. Liberty, our leaders insisted, would have to be forced on them through the barrel of a gun for they were not like us. The effect was to infantilise the Arab world in order to justify our active, or at least complicit, role in its brutalisation.
While this view has been intensified by the 9/11 terror attacks, the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq, it was not created by them. “There are westerners and there are Orientals,” explained the late Edward Said, as he laid out the western establishment’s prevailing attitude to the region at the turn of the last century, in his landmark work . “The former dominate, the latter must be dominated, which usually means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one or another western power.”
So the sight of peaceful, pluralist, secular Arabs mobilising for freedom and democracy in ever greater numbers against a western-backed dictator forces a reckoning with the “clash of civilisations” narrative that has sought to overwhelm the past decade. It turns out there is a means of supporting democracy in this part of the world that does not involve invading, occupying, bombing, torturing and humiliating. Who knew?
West/Eropean/NorthAmerican are civilized only in their own self dellusion.
There was nothing ‘civilized’ by the illegal invasion of Iraq, by the military coup in Honduras or in Chile…
…nothing ‘civilized’ by the spanish conquistadores in South America…
…nothing ‘civilized’ by the British emprire…
…Nothing…
A bunch of thieves dressed with “moral” discourse to kill and steal other Civilization’s wealth.
How “civilized” is a CIA plane living Colombia filled with cocaine?
How “civilized” are the ObaOba drone attacks in Pakistan and in Afegahnistan? How civilized is Guantanamo Bay? Or the Embargo in Cuba?
I don’t find John Negroponte dealings in Nicaragua during the 80’s “civilized”.
I don’t find the War Criminal Condolezza Rice “civiized”.
How “civilized” is Bagram prison?
How “civilized” is the terrorist state of israel?
9/11 was a “Civilized” false flag operation. I dare the pentagon to show the footage of an alledged 757 hiting that building. I dare them!
Yes well it is clear that the paradim that Edward Said spoke of “The former dominate, the latter must be dominated, which usually means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one or another western power.” Is coming to an end.
The Western world, namely the US, is already in decline. Economically stagnating, losing wars and diplomatic battles, its institutions becoming increasingly corrupted and decayed.
You can mainly see this take place by looking at the Middle East since that is the main geo-political battlefied. Everywhere you look Western interests are on the defensive (friendly dictators falling, Iraq drifting towards Iran, Israel massively isolated and suffering mistake after mistake).
If the Middle East is made up of two factions like many experts say “The Western Axis” and “The Resistance Axis” it is clear which side has been making huge gains. Meanwhile the US is looking at China rising globally as the next superpower and is powerless to do much about it. Russia after been destroyed economically for the last 30 years has also finally begun to start rising back up to its height (on the backs of Oil/Gas profits to Europe).
And then to have the cheek to require the victims of “civilised” terrorists , to have greater morality than the aggressors, in effect, to not fight back in ways that result in the deaths of innocents is not just hypocrisy. That’s something that deserves a new word. How’s about, “Bushist” ?
But then mega false flag 9/11 ism may have a greater claim.
The headline is utter nonsense. The West has never been an onest broker for peace.