Re: Arab Spring still inspires, Editorial Feb. 2

Arab Spring still inspires, Editorial Feb. 2

I agree with the editorial’s headline, or at least it inspires me; perhaps many of the originators have lost hope. However, I disagree with many of the Star’s presuppositions. The editorial basically follows what our Western governments want us to think.

The real question is: Why did the movement seem to fail? Who was really behind the failure? Hosni Mubarak was mainly a puppet for the U.S. and the West, whose views Hillary Clinton espoused. But when the people revolted, we in the West found him expendable and went along with the move to get him replaced — by someone else we could control.

We misread new President Mohammed Morsi apparently, who stands up to us at times but is also a dictator who wants only Islamist religious rule, and who fits in well with Al Qaeda mentality.

The Star ignores the fact that former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, while a cruel dictator, also had raised the standard of living for his people. But he was uniting Africa behind him in ways that we didn’t approve of. So we took him out, with the results we see in Libya today.

You also put all the blame for deaths and chaos in Syria on Bashir Assad, again a cruel dictator, but what part in the revolution was instigated here in the West? How much of the problem comes from the revolutionaries from other countries that we’ve armed? Is Syria worse than Saudi Arabia, or Israel in Palestine, where people are treated like garbage?

Look at the results we’ve accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan with the leaders we have set up (democracy?). Have we set the people free, or set up governments that sell us oil while trying to not to turn the people too much against them? And now we can see what we’re doing in Tunisia, Mali and other parts of North Africa.

It seems to me that we should be seeing a pattern here, and it isn’t one where we are making things better for the people there. I don’t really see success over there, as the Star seems to see. (And before anyone condemns me as being anti-American, know that I am a U.S. citizen.)

Larry Carney, Clifford

You note that the martyr Mohamed Bouazizi did not immolate himself “only seeking the vote.” But this misrepresents what happened. Bouazizi was protesting the violent expropriation of his goods by corrupt state agents. His sacrifice was then seized as a rallying point for elite intellectuals who support violent systems of oppression like democracy, including the leaders of the so-called Arab Spring and the Star.

So a protest against state violence is co-opted by other statists who wish for their brand of violent coercion to replace that which is currently in place. They “sweep autocrats” from power, to be replaced by other autocrats.

When replacing one violent tyranny with another only leads to more violence (a seemingly obvious conclusion in hindsight), Star editors and other Western media outlets urge Arabs not to give up. Could you and other supposedly “liberal” influences from the West be part of the problem?

Technically Egypt has been a “democracy” since the British left in 1932. How long should they continue to follow this failed ideology while their “leaders” lap up gifts from Western powers in exchange for largesse? Spreading democracy has proven to be code for spreading corporatism and neocolonialism. Down with the state!

Mike Sampat, Toronto