I have some good friends who are Turks, and they are quite invested in this uprising. The hope is not necessarily to bring down the government, but to bring to justice some of the worst criminals -- including, of course, the highest officials such as the Prime Minister.
I'd like to ask you to pay attention to it, and if you know people who follow such things, get them interested in it too. The whole area -- from Turkey to Syria to Egypt, from Syria to Iraq to Iran -- is a highly unstable powderkeg at this point. In a way that's what we wanted, and indeed just what we expected, when we overthrew Saddam. There are democratic revolutions in every country in the region.
Too bad we have no leadership with the vision to, well, lead. We could really use it just now.
Obama will cash it out, and the rest will get nothing as a result.
ReplyDeleteWell even if Obama doesn't cash it out to pay for stingers given for free to Islamic JIhad, at least somebody in the Left will cash it out. Maybe some NGOs.
It's as if 10,000 heroes of the Republic completed a suicide, forlorn, mission against all odds. Then the guys in the back that were partying and keeping themselves alive, suddenly decided it wasn't worth the cost, and surrendered.
That's human theater for us. I wonder what the price of admission at the exits will be.
Democratic revolutions? From what I'm seeing, they're revolutions to turn over the government from a dictator to an oligarchy/theocracy.
ReplyDeleteNobody said democracies were inevitably wise. Nevertheless, there is popular support for the move -- greater and more intense popular support than for other systems.
ReplyDeleteAnd one can see why, really. The secular regimes in the region have inevitably proven to be intensely corrupt. It's not surprising that they have come to believe that men of God might do better. There's no guarantee that they will, of course, because they are still men.