Posted on 05/16/2012 12:26:21 PM PDT by robowombat
Bush: 'Arab Spring' Is ‘Broadest Challenge to Authoritarian Rule Since Collapse of Soviet Communism’ By Elizabeth Harrington May 15, 2012
(CNSNews.com) – Former President George W. Bush said Tuesday that the Arab Spring is “the broadest challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet Communism."
“These are extraordinary times in the history of freedom,” Bush said in a speech in Washington, D.C., sponsored by his presidential foundation, the George W. Bush Institute.
“In the Arab Spring we have seen the broadest challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet communism," Bush said. "Great change has come to a region where many thought it impossible.
“The idea that Arab people are somehow content with oppression has been discredited forever," Bush said. "Yet we’ve also seen instability, uncertainty, and the revenge of brutal rulers. The collapse of an old order can unleash resentments and power struggles that a new order is not yet prepared to handle.”
“Freedom is a powerful force,” Bush said, “but it does not advance on wheels of historical inevitability.” The event at which Bush spoke was entitled “Celebration of Human Freedom.”
While praising the Arab Spring, Bush said its critics adhere to a foreign policy that is “not realistic.”
“Some look at the risks inherent in democratic change, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and find the dangers too great,” Bush said. “America, they argue, should be content with supporting the flawed leaders they know, in the name of stability.”
“But in the long run this foreign policy approach is not realistic,” he said. “It is not realistic to presume the so-called stability enhances our national security. Nor is it within the power of America to indefinitely preserve the old order, which is inherently unstable.”
Two years after Bush left office, the Arab Spring uprisings swept across the Middle East, leading to major unrest in Syria, Tunisia, Jordan, and Yemen, and the toppling of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.
According to a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Egyptian parliamentary elections in January resulted in a massive victory for Islamist parties.
“Of the 498 elected seats, Islamists of varying sorts control nearly 70%, with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)-led Democratic Alliance controlling the most at 47% (235 total),” the Feb. 8 report stated. “The Islamist Alliance-list led by the Salafist Nour Party came second with 25% (125 seats).”
“Salafists,” the report states, “who take a conservative, literalist approach to interpreting the Koran, are expected to focus on infusing Islam into domestic and foreign policies.”
Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul-Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader, is also a frontrunner in the upcoming Egyptian presidential election, which will be held on May 23. Abourl-Fotouh called Israel an “enemy” in a televised presidential debate last week, and has said a 1978 peace agreement with Israel is a threat to national security and should be revised.
The former president’s remarks came a day after a poll found that 61 percent of Egyptians want to abandon the Egypt-Israel peace treaty that has been in place for over 30 years, up from 54 percent a year ago.
President Bush made his remarks while announcing the launch of his foundation’s Freedom Collection, which will highlight the stories of dissidents around the world struggling for liberty and democracy.
“America does not get to choose if a freedom revolution should begin or end in the Middle East or elsewhere,” Bush said. “It only gets to choose which side it is on.”
“The tactics of promoting freedom will vary case by case, but America’s message should ring clear and strong,” he said, “we stand for freedom and for the institutions and habits that make freedom work for everyone.”
In his second inaugural address on Jan. 20 2005 Bush said, “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”
“So it is the policy of the United States," he added, "to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
While praising the Arab Spring, Bush said its critics adhere to a foreign policy that is “not realistic.”
“Some look at the risks inherent in democratic change, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and find the dangers too great,” Bush said. “America, they argue, should be content with supporting the flawed leaders they know, in the name of stability.”
“But in the long run this foreign policy approach is not realistic,” he said. “It is not realistic to presume the so-called stability enhances our national security. Nor is it within the power of America to indefinitely preserve the old order, which is inherently unstable.”
Freepers lets hear your take on this neo-Wilsonian philosophy. My personal belief is that as with Jimmy Carter 'religion as social work' damaged the persuit of national interests.
“The idea that Arab people are somehow content with oppression has been discredited forever,” Bush said.
I’m sorry, but, I must say: You, sir, President Bush, are an idiot.
Is he back on the sauce?
Does President Bush recall the “Iranian Autumn” in 1979?
That really worked out well.
But, not to worry, Mr. Obama has the situation well in hand.
He was on “The View” yesterday.
I’d say the greatest opportunity for authoritarian rule since the collapse of Tsarist Russia.
Drinking the koto laid but I don’t know what else he would say since he kicked off the “democracy” movement in the Middle East.
A globalist like his daddy. He sure does not know the This twit is looking through
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
the wrong end of the telescope.
G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Go back to bed, George.
On one hand he is right. It WAS unstable.
On the other hand he’s completely deluded. The results of the Arab Spring, will be highly flawed authoritarian Islamic regimes along the lines of Iran. If we’re lucky, they’ll be unstable, too.
Oh, and, outside of Israel, Christianity will be pretty much extinct in the ME.
This is the same guy who convinced many (and me, a little bit, for a time), that “it’s a Religion of Peace,” perhaps our biggest screw up in our modern war with Islam.
No thanks, George.
George, I thought that Arab Spring was supposed to put strict Islamists in power, who would impose Shari’a Law on the people there. Shari’a is not democracy of any kind.
I also (apparently naively) thought that the “brutal dictators” in these countries had to clamp down hard to prevent hard-line Islamists from taking over and imposing Shari’a law.
From what I have seen, Shari’a Law is worse than what a dictator can dish out, and it’s done at the neighborhood level.
Darn iPad. That was supposed to be koolaid.
Yeah, let’s get those mean old authoritarians out and replace them with muslim theocracies. That ought to free people from having to think for themselves.
He still doesn’t get it, he never was fit to lead, Cheney should have been president, he could have been Forest Bush.
Amen.
Mubarak was a thug, but he kept the radicals in line. The Middle East is going to turn into a complete anti-America, Sharia-loving society that will treat women like dirt, along with anyone that doesn’t agree with them.
President Bush has definitely jumped the shark.
Thank you. Alas but there is yet a single visible promising result of the socalled Arab Spring. Instead it appears to be a fancy phrase to cover up the delivery of numerous nations and peoples to people who (thus far, anyway) espouse the worst sorts of Anti-American hostility ... and who burn down churches and preach violence against Christians and Jews. In other words, we may be witnessing the rise of the new Muslim Caliphate (including the crazies in Iran). All “enabled” from Washington DC (and in some cases, forcibly installed by means of American military intervention or assault on their former regimes). When there is a single primarily-Muslim or “Arab Spring” country that changes into a reasonably free type of society with some meaningful representational goverance and friendship to America, Christianity and Judaism (their socalled Peoples of the Book), Christian nations, Israel, and the West — please let us know right away! But, absent even a single example of anything approaching such a “success” for our pro- “Arab Spring” policy, it cannot be said to be a success (except from the perspective of those seeking to create the second Muslim Caliphate and undermine or take over the West).
One RINO that was able to withstand the extreme left wing of the DNC—for a while at least. I haven’t forgotten his attempts to force Mubarak into “democratic” elections, and the Muslim Brotherhood were infiltrating the government at one time by running under the banner of a “secular” political party. With these recent statements, he looks like he’s swung even further left—and why not since he has no political career to worry about anymore.
The Bushes...sigh.
It’s certainly not a question of “may be” when it comes to a new Caliphate.
“The idea that Arab people are somehow content with oppression has been discredited forever,” Bush said.
I’m sorry, but, I must say: You, sir, President Bush, are an idiot.
NWO fool!
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