It is important that the people of Bahrain and the Arab Spring know that there are many truly democratic people on their side across the world. Yet, the democracy protesters have been met with a split personality American foreign policy that is both supportive of the rights of the Arab people to govern themselves and at the same time attempting to continue the military and economic ties with the remaining dictatorships across the Arab World. Nowhere is the conflict between our existing alliances with dictatorships and our democratic ideals more apparent than in Bahrain. In reality, the tiny desert island of Bahrain is the ideal place to make clear to the Arab world and beyond where the US government stands on the rights of democratic people. American policy in Bahrain today remains a confused mess and must be changed immediately into outright and immediate support for a democratic government.
The Obama Administration along with the both political parties has been collectively ignoring the protest movement that has taken Bahrain’s dictatorship by storm and for reasons that are less than heroic. It is said to be the concern for US decision makers that the Shiite population of the country run by a Sunni dictatorship will fall into Iran’s orbit and be less supportive of the US and our regional ally Saudi Arabia, the regional Sunni heavyweight. Yet, decision makers are wrong if they think that support for a dictatorship over the people of Bahrain will bring rewards.
Any such policy immediately begins to stink of an anti-Shiite prejudice in American policy, something that is counterproductive and dangerous. The majority of the people in Bahrain and Iran and Iraq are Shiite and there is no valid long-term US interest in supporting a people’s repression for the sake of military alliances with their Sunni rulers. On top of this, the need for the tiny dictatorship of Bahrain’s help in blunting Iranian power is limited to the American military base on the island and the need to please Saudi Arabia.
The other reason for the unsavory American response is the influence of oil on its policy but in Bahrain this does not have to be a deciding factor. In Saudi Arabia, also an enemy of Iran, there is the real manifestation of the unfortunate handicap on American foreign policy that takes place because the world’s need for oil. Saudi Arabia is a vitally important oil supplier to the world market and a serious disruption of the Saudi oil supply would be a disaster for the world economy.
The dire state of the situation where the democratic world’s oil and gas supply is continually threatened makes it possible for justification of a reliance on Saudi oil and therefore for continuing US reliance upon the Saudi dictatorship. Yet, while these concerns of oil supply are vital today and possibly unchangeable in the near term, there must be clarity across the Arab world about the US long term interest for democracy.
We must remember that it is no coincidence that Osama bin Laden was the heir to well connected Saudi Arabian oil billionaires and inspired by the Saudi dictatorship’s own brand of radical and violent religious dogma. In order to not repeat the mistakes of our past, policy makers must realize that support for democracy in the region is the most vital long term investment toward reducing and eliminating violent extremism.
Seeking the Invisible People of Bahrain Again
The oil chokehold that Saudi Arabia has on its side need not dictate our policy in Bahrain and the rest of the Arab world. Bahrain is the better target than Saudi Arabia for every other country in the region where our democratic interests simply override the concerns of oil supply even in the near term. The oil supply of Bahrain is simply not as vital as Saudi Arabia. Therefore if the result is a more democratic Bahrain, the world can afford a short term supply disruption in process of establishing elections.
There is no reason to be unclear about US interests in the Arab world any longer. There was a time when a policy of democracy advocacy in the Arab world met with the reality of dozens of dictatorships seemingly impervious to outside influence due to a divided and supposedly undemocratic Arab street. The Arab Spring’s most important effect has been to break this collective mental barrier forever.
Today there exists, perhaps for the first time, a truly spontaneous and resilient democratic movement across the Arab world. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen have seen dictatorships collapse into history. There is not a single country in the Arab world where the democratic movement has not been increasing in strength. Going forward globalization, technology and the irrepressible human spirit will continue to draw the region towards democracy. Bahrain should not be a place where the democratic world fails to take notice. Bahrain will have democracy too, Insha’Allah.
zoe roman norman sydney christian z says
A Perfect Marriage of Freedom & Justice, Woman & Man, Tradition & Modernity, Black & White, Palestinian & Jew: a HOW-TO
Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL, & put an end to all war forever. Because it gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combinations of programs, “RB” is the only thing that’s truly both most Just & most Free. Because of the appeal of this great equality to the poor of the world, & because it always elects the candidate most exactly in the middle of all voting, RB is top-dead-center counter extremist, & thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments combined, & will even disallow the tendency of (effectively two-party) parliamentary systems to give the win to the biggest gang on the block, sometimes with violently extremist results.
RB is the sole unchangeable plank & bylaw of a Ranked Ballot Party, the only practicable third party. We imagine running on the single issue of RB, promising a citizens’ advisory board based on Organized Communications, “OC”, small randomly assigned discussion groups electing reps to higher & higher randomly assigned levels, by means of RB, ‘til one small group, most exactly in the middle of all voting remains, to guide us in the rest, which by its merest invitation to speak will inevitably name the next winner. That’s the instant part. You do the same, from the most local on up. By the power of its example alone, RB will give us instant worldwide TRUE democracy. Virtually no democracy has ever been attacked by another. In a world of only democracies, there would no longer be need of the counter-productive wastefulness of armies, war or the preparation for war. RB will bring us that & all else: a real solution to terror, a perfect marriage of Freedom & Justice, Tradition & Modernity, Palestinian & Jew, Free Market & Community, all the fairness, payback & make-up one could wish for, clean back to the Cro-Magnons, ecologically sustainable politics, what’s best for all workers, instant global women’s liberation, world-wide luxury, a rationalization of the drug war, human unity, the Freedom of Justice & the Justice of Freedom, perhaps the only possible solution to the world’s only real problem, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (once they both are made to have to adopt RB), even integrity. RB is to the horse & buggy two-party system as shopping in the Mall of America is to shopping in Soviet Russia. The majority of the problems we face are due to the heavy-footedness of the two-party system. RB lessens the power of the extremes, whether authoritarian, economic or sectarian, except through what they can gain by persuasion, which is only what’s just. While it would be equally useful for all else, RB’s real power is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of Iraq. Unless its Parliament comes to select the Prime Minister by means of RB, it may not hold & the country, region & world will be in danger of going to war over some ancient grudge, oil well, multi-ethnic city, or sabotaged pipeline. While their new constitution does call for the selection of the President by a 2/3 vote in the first round (even if only by the parliament & not the people) (who may then decide who will form the new government) & then by a run-off between the top two vote getters in the second round, if that fails to move all three tribes to nominate centrists, then the resulting handful of old men in a back room will fall far short of RB’s ultimate retail politics. RB would be equally useful for all electoral systems (parliamentary or presidential, the parliaments choosing their PMs by RB from among their members, lest they produce another Hitler) coops, collective leaderships, tribal groupings, religious confessions, political parties, associations or, even cabals. Whoever gets there first wins. For leaders to best represent their country, or district, whether chosen at large or by a representative body, they must be the perfect compromise, most exactly in the middle, as is given by RB. Because it gives minorities a real say in which member of the plurality/majority gets chosen, RB is the only thing that will lead Iraqis, or anyone else, to support any plan more than inadequate confederation. RB will result in “phantasmagoric subtlefaction”, real-time alternatives to all proposals, from wherever: market, coop or social, or tribal, theological or universal, answering infinitely more questions at a time than the two party system’s “who is least bad”. Both more Liberty & Justice can be found in RB than in any ideology. With brakes & reverse comes no more need to suppress popular movements around the world. RB will give us subtlety, responsivity, light-footedness, long-sightedness, objectivity, economy, unity, accountability, integrity & victory over extremism. Palestinians & Jews will give up fighting over a sliver of desert & become members of global cooperatives. All the various forms of hegemonism, whether up front, subterranean or unconscious, will be given up, in exchange for leading the world to the light, & America will finally realize the need for an adequate, howsoever minimal, safety net as the price & foundation of a free market. Help put this idea, in time, to as many as possible, before “Clockwork Orange” (overpopulation), “1984” (high-tech dictatorship), cosmic collision, tectonic, economic or environmental collapse, or literalist or criminal contretemps. The cost of a full page national US ad (sufficient to put RB to virtually all the world) would be repaid in no time, once all that money gets put to actual productive use, at pre-9/11 US annual defense spending of ~$10,000 per family. Ten to the power of ten (ten levels of groups of ten) would be sufficient to organize & unite all mankind. RB is very freeing. Because it always chooses the one most in the middle, all who support it are perfectly top-dead-center, with no more need to fear self expression. Politics will become a family discussion around the kitchen table, with no more jumping back & forth between extremes, or absence of the economists’ requirement of predictability for growth. All that’s needed is to let go of the nut to get your fist back out of the knothole, to free yourself, & to rest in the knowledge that RB will give us perfect Freedom & perfect Justice, at one & the same time, even if not necessarily in the form imagined, as if anyone would then care. Unless all the world’s women have total control over their own bodies, no program or condition will ever amount to anything, because over-population will just eat it up. No woman ever got pregnant to have an abortion. Good enough for New Zealand, Australia, Kerala India, Iraq, London, Ireland, Cambridge Mass, Burlington & 95% of the townships of Vermont, Pierce County Washington, St Paul & Minneapolis Minnesota, the Utah Republican Party for the selection of statewide candidates, the platforms of both the Green & Libertarian Parties & 50 college student bodies across the US with more places coming every year, but not good enough for the rest of us? It must be in somebody’s interest! How can any wish it of others if they do not have it themselves? Having spent every spare moment from the invasion, to the vote on the constitution emailing every Iraqi we could find about RB, we would like to claim some little credit for the reforms they did adopt. The only imaginable definition of Freedom (& Morality) is “Do as you wish, but harm no other”. The maker & sustainer of this world (& cosmos!) could have no need of one bit of it. The fiercer the history of the planet, the sooner it would have been blissed out behind ethnic homogeneity, & thus democracy. Tax consumption, not investment, & spread the productivity around. All powers to their lowest appropriate level. All human evil is due to the out of phase fluctuation of population & food supply, so no-one alive is responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, except for what they do now. Justice is the redress of past violence, Freedom the current absence of violence & Nonviolence the only basis of all Morality. Just go out & collect signatures, asking those who sign to collect them for you as well. The more the merrier. (The “additive” form of RB is to count the first choices & if no-one has 50%, to add in the next choices, & so on until someone finally does.) Imagine the condition the world would be in today, if Hitler had never come to power, there was no need, or possibility, of using the fear of the theft of democratic revolutions to suppress democracy itself, all the parliaments of the world, as well as the US, had been using RB right along & perhaps the Bolsheviks hadn’t managed to steal the (preferential) Russian Revolution. “Men do not light a light & set it under a bushel.” zoe morgan roman norman sydney christian z, preferentiality@gmail.com, preferentiality@yahoo.com, USA
Adrian Tawfik says
Thank you very much for your remarks. We are taking a look at ranked ballots and other reforms with experienced mathmaticians from around the world. Some of them completely agree with your views on ranked ballots. Please stay tuned in the next week to see the beginning of our series on elections and mathmatics. I think you will find it interesting.