Got Democracy?

Now that Egypt is in revolution hangover mode, we should take stalk of the disconnect between forcing democracy on one country, Iraq, and tolerating autocratic dictators like Mubarak.

The disconnect is obvious, government foreign policy and mass media tend to focus on what they deem to be important. So while the general public in the West might be praising the people's uprising in Egypt, did Western governments try to push democratic reforms in Egypt, or the media focus on stories about Mubarak's 31 year stranglehold on government before protests broke out?

Mubarak didn't use chemical weapons against his own people like Saddam Hussein did, which made Hussein an easy target after 9/11 (Got WMD's?), but Mubarak's tyranny was more subtle in having monopolies and corruption in the roost he occupied. Hussein became such an easy scapegoat for forcing democracy on Iraq, even though there was not an Iraqi involved in the 9/11 attacks. In fact, invading Saudi Arabia would have made more sense based on the countries of birth of those directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.

I digress though, my point is that we should be fed up with what governments and mainstream media want to show us about the Middle East as we don't often get the real or full story about what is happening behind the scenes is these 'quiet' dictatorships that are tolerated by Western powers that be.

I have an acquaintance who lived in Libya for a time and he remarked that Gadhafi is good to his people. Well, apparently not good enough when you consider that inflation of food prices in many Middle Eastern countries, is more then double of what it is in North America. Corruption and nepotism seem to be key bones of contention when it comes to the protests on going in the Middle East, but inflation was and is the silent revolutionary trigger that can set off a powder keg. China, you better watch out!

It will be interesting to see what will emerge out of the ashes of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, though it will be years before any significant changes come about. Meanwhile, Western governments who often rely on 'quiet' dictatorships because they have something of value economically that we want, or don't overtly threaten us, or are propagandized as a threat to us, are scrambling to rewrite foreign policy as we speak.

And Glenn Beck, protests a communist plot in Egypt? Seriously, Mubarak was a communist by virtue of the fact that he held power for so many decades. Perhaps we should let Mubarak rule the US for 31 years and see what happens.