Punditry StaffAmericans love and protect their freedom enshrined in a resilient democracy. But when the same people who embrace, empower, and defend their freedom at home, they are not so keen to defend freedom and human rights in other places like the Middle East. This oxymoronic behavior is placing US democracy in peril as presidential candidates and hopefuls, like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, become enormously envious of the total control autocrats exercise over their own governments. Autocrats like Mohammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.
That kind of rare power makes Trump salivate over when there are no checks and balances, or an institution to hold the line to the rule of law. Just imagine what the Fuhrer is capable of when he has absolute powers to understand the danger to our country.
The perilous side effects to our image of supporting autocrats in the Middle East is their human rights records. These miscreants will hold on to power at all costs even if it means jailing, torturing, and killing their own people. To include women and the innocent.
Mohammad bin Salman dismembered Jamal Khashoggi because he criticized him in the Washington Post. How is that dangerous to us? Why not sanction delinquent and mental dictators to hold them accountable? When we don’t, we damage US image overseas.
Since el-Sisi came to power, he has jailed, tortured, and killed tens of thousands of these Islamists to the delight of their enemies.
THE CAULDRON SMOLDERING
Look at what is happening in Iran today. Or how this NBC article highlighted the dismal human rights of Egypt as the country hosts COP27, a global climate control event.
Hyder Abbasi wrote for NBC about the human rights record of the Egyptian president el-Sisi :
It happens to be that Alaa Abdel-Fattah is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood whose ideology is a threat to the millions of Egyptian Copts (Orthodox Christians). Since el-Sisi came to power, he has jailed, tortured, and killed tens of thousands of Islamists to the delight of their enemies.
This kind of re-indoctrination and reality-check may promote alternative views more commensurate with our modernity.
LAZY DIPLOMATS
What price is the US willing to pay when it defends our democracy at home but it is quick to ignore it on the international stage?
The solution lies in pressuring the Middle East dictators to curb their sadist behavior. When we don’t, we get a dismembered Jamal Khashoggi on our hands.
Instead of breaking someone’s religious will by violating their human rights, a country could re-educate or re-indoctrinate the extremist Muslims intent on spreading centuries-old Koranic interpretations. While some may have views that were cultivated in the seventh century — Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia — or at the turn of the 20th century – the Muslim Brotherhood born in Egypt — that are engraved in stone, one can promulgate some pragmatic views many of these extremists have a hard time understanding or considering.
As an example take the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, a staunch enemy of Israel. To this day the organization does not understand how it lost the civil war to Assad despite his weakness. It is intent on spreading a 100-years old ideology that the modern world will never accept. Not the United States, not Europe, and certainly not Israel, Syria’s neighbor to the south.
This kind of re-indoctrination and reality-check may promote alternative views more commensurate with our modernity. This requires a big effort on the part of the United States it is not willing to undertake. The easy way out is to let each dictator handle the problem any way they see fit, which drives their dismal human rights records.
IS US DEMOCRACY IN PERIL?
Meanwhile, our own politicians turn a blind eye to these excesses, which places US democracy in peril. Is this a wise policy? Shall we turn away from our responsibility in support of human rights when dictators excessively use their absolute powers to kill people even when the danger to us is elementary?
Given the last few years of the anomaly of Donald Trump, we must ask ourselves this very important question: Is it possible that because we did not impose our value system of freedom and human rights unto many countries that these countries reversed their dictatorial influence unto us?
Something to think about really hard.
US Democracy in Peril When It Supports Autocrats Overseas
Punditry Staff
