Are there limits to implementing the goal of regime change — particularly if the goal is pressed too quickly?
That’s the view of LeFigaro. In an article translated from the original French by the must-read news aggregator Watching America, the newspaper takes a look at some of the challenges and, in effect, warns that the devil in the policy of regime change is in the nuance:
The American policy of energetic and intrusive support in favor of democracy in the Muslim world has just undergone a full speed crash into much more complex realities. A revision will inevitably be necessary, and soon. Let us hope that this revision is made quickly, skillfully and without giving rise to new victims, because errors in evaluation sadly have their consequences.
Four countries with very different histories and social conditions already challenge America’s entire strategy. They are, in order of increasing importance: Uzbekistan, Syria, Egypt and Iran. Each, in its own way, defies the Bush Administration’s new democratic-humanitarian plan.
The paper looks at each of these countries, pointing to what it sees as complications and stumbling blocks, then concludes:
Islam Karimov, Bashar al-Assad, Omar Suleiman and Hashemi Rafsandjani will never be the four spiritual pillars of a new democratic order in the Middle East. But still, they must be helped instead of sapped — it is necessary to the support rather than loathe them. We are at war and we have one enemy, not 36. This lesson was painfully learned by Churchill, Roosevelt, de Gaulle and the best of their contemporaries.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.