Since the United States has abandoned its democracy-promotion strategy in the Middle East, things have gone to hell. Arab monarchies have cracked down hard on opposition groups, press has been stifled, and elections have been blatantly rigged. This is particularly evident in Egypt, where the Mubarak monarchy is literally trying to eviscerate all opposition. Besides the jailing and harassment of numerous anti-government activists, the independent press has also taken a beating in recent days:
Ibrahim Eissa, one of the most courageous independent journalists in Egypt, has just been sentenced to a year in prison on charges that his newspaper al-Dustour published false and malicious rumours about the death of Hosni Mubarak, and also of insulting Mubarak and his son Gamal. Three other editors of independent weeeklies [w]ere also sent to jail: Adel Hamouda, Wail al-Ibrashi, and Abd al-Halim Qandil. This is nothing short of a massacre of Egypt’s independent press. (Marc Lynch)
The Egyptian monarchy is getting away with this, in part, because the Bush administration isn’t speaking out against this latest crackdown. There has been barely a word of protest from either the American Embassy in Cairo, the State Department, or the White House. Indeed, pardon my cynicism, but these days in Washington, no one seems to care much about human rights or democracy in the Arab world. Ah, the triumph of realpolitik…now I remember.
Thankfully, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, democracy-guru Thomas Carothers sensibly explains the need to abandon such cold-hearted realism and he lays out how the US can get its Middle East policy back on track.