I am excited about
what I heard on TV this morning. New Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani said before the United Nations that he does not want to
build an atomic bomb and is willing to sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
If that is true and I believe it is following on the tail of Syria President al
Assad agreeing to sign a ban on poisonous gases, it will be a great victory for
democracy in the Middle East.
Iran-Israeli relationship has been the “elephant in the
room”, to use a tired old trope, on all peace negotiations in the Middle East. The
real obstacle to democracy has been religion rule verses secularism. However,
it is also clear that the various factions or Islamic sects are fighting to
prevent one or other from dominating the situation. In that sense, the entire
region is embroiled it is a “civil war”, sort of a “birds without boarder” war”.
The overlooked part of the turmoil is that religious leaders were overriding national
sovereign leaders. Sect leaders were controlling the people, which obviously would
not be acceptable to the elected leaders if democracy is to mean anything. All
one has to do to confirm this is to read the news coming out of the Middle East.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is involved in almost political decision
making in every country in the Middle East. In addition to Hezballah, there are
leaders of al-Queda, Hamas, and Lalshkar-e-Taiba involved in the political
affairs of several countries. Layer this on the existence of various sub groups
within each nation, which leaders label terrorist groups depending who is doing
the labeling.
When President Rouhani knocked on the door of diplomacy,
the bomb, bomb, bomb, crowd, namely Lindsey Graham, responded by saying Iran
was showing weakness and should be bombed presumably for no other reason then to
show them who was boss. On the other hand, President Obama said lets open the
door and see what they want. When President al Assad of Syria used gas to kill
his own people, the President responded with what he saw as a big stick, a limited
barrage of cruse missiles. The bomb, bomb, bomb crowd suddenly said no, lets
destroy the country. I assume they mean “carpet bombing” like Second World War Dresden
and get rid of al Assad as we did with Saddam Hassan. Our president said no. The
president was right because we all know how that turned out. If we do that, several
sect based terrorist organizations would control the country: more chaos.
Putin of Russia knocked on the door of diplomacy over the
poison gas crisis and the bomb, bomb, bomb crowd said Putin is a communist and that
makes him a bad person, so do not deal with him. Obama answered the door and we
are now on the way to signing a treaty to band gas weapons in the Middle East.
The United States is nurturing the Arab Spring and it is
growing; caliphates are waning and democracy is flourishing in many countries—democracy
is never neat and tidy. President Obama has had victory after victory in the
Middle East, which is the result of his
new approach to foreign relations. What is the new policy? It is the new
governments as they are being born are free to make choices. They are not our
puppets on strings or on a choke collar. The government of the United States will
only give aid to nourish democracy not to support dictators even if the dictators
bow to the wishes of multinational corporations. We will not interfere in other
countries internal affairs unless they violate what the collective human psyche
considers inhuman. It should not come as a surprise that the 193 nations of the
world are beginning to respect us and not fear us. This is all good news but good news does not make headlines. The result
of that fact is that the world will have to wait a long time before realizing
how good Obama has been.
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