In 2009, the average Eritrean's quality of life,will...

	... be better than 2008.
	... be worse than 2008.
	... no different from 2008.
	... I don't know

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I Understand

Look, I know how it feels. I am just as guilty. You have a worldview that you don’t want to be disturbed by inconvenient little things like facts. I have my sins. Every year, I expect to hear something bad about the Chinese economy because, in my worldview, people who are not free can only have stagnating economies. No, no, say the Chinese: you can oppress people all you want; as long as you have a free enterprise system, you can have a growing economy. And every year, the Chinese report 10% growth in GDP. Every bloody year! How do you think that makes me feel?

Exactly how you feel, when you hear about how Bush is transforming the world for the better. After all, according to you, he is a cowboy, he is dumb, he is a religious fundamentalist and he knows next to nothing about the Middle East. Some of you—admit it—were rooting for the invasion to fail and for the Iraq elections to collapse. Not because you are bad people; but you wanted to be vindicated. You wanted America to learn a lesson: never again intervene!

When thinking of the United States with unchecked powers and, at its helm, a man as assertive about its power as Bush, the emotion that comes to some is not exhilaration but terror. I can relate—I would be terrified if China had the power of the US. I mean the Chinese government, not the Chinese people. Nothing against the Chinese, some of my best friends…oh, who am I kidding: I don’t know a single Chinese person. And the Chinese are hording the US dollar and one day… now that is truly scary: a world modeled after China.

And now for the points you made….

1. What Do I Think Of “Guantanemo Bay” and “Abu Ghreib”

Pick any adjective: I found them appalling, embarrassing, disgusting, disappointing. “Why is it”, is the question, “you write redundant pages about the crimes in your homeland but never say anything about those in your adopted country?” Here’s the answer: how did I learn about Abu Ghreib? An American TV station, CBS, told me. How did I learn about the terrible things that go on in “Guantanemo Bay”? An American newspaper, the New York Times, told me. The point is that in the US, there are so many watchdog groups—journalists, human rights groups, opposition politicians, bloggers, that me adding my voice is less than pointless. It would be like complaining of the problems of owning a Ferrari, when there is a Pinto with four flat tires.

In a related subject, I happen to think that the United States is the best country in the world to practice Islam…but that is a completely different subject.

2. What Do I Think of “Fahrenheit 9-11”?

I liked Pearl Jam’s Masters of War, John Fogerty’s Fortunate Son, and System of A Down’s Boom. Although, if you are really into System of A Down, I’d highly recommend their latest, Toxicity, which… you are talking about the soundtrack to the movie, right? No, pardon the misunderstanding. You mean the movie? OK. Of course I saw it; how could I not with every lib friend proselytizing about it for weeks: “you GOTTA see this movie! You just have to.” I did. And? As I told my proselytizing friend: how about you give me every photo that was ever taken of you and then you give me a day. I won’t biddho* them; I will just pick the least flattering, the most-out-of focus, bad-angle pictures, arrange the sequences and, underneath the photos, I will write funny captions. Technically, the pictures are all yours, but are they the entire you? It is factual, but is it true? That is what I think Moore did with Bush.

* Biddho (v): to apply Photoshop to a picture and then add horns, blood, and Dracula outfits. Example: Don’t make me go biddho on you. See also: embayemelekin.com and ethiopianreview.com.

3. What is your problem with Canada, anyway?

Nothing at all. That was an inside joke, a family joke. Some of my best family members are Canadians. Really. America ignores Canada and Canada gently enjoys a sense of superiority that it has all the benefits of America without the hatred it generates from the world. This gentility was recently abandoned by Axeworthy (a diplomat and a university president) when he berated his “friend” Condi using language straight from Eritrean Internet message boards. Tsk, tsk.)

4.What is your problem with petitioning tyrants?

Nothing. I used to be a member of Amnesty International in the 1980s when they used to have letter-writing campaigns and they used to send testimonials from prisoners who were released as the result of the campaigns, mostly in South America. In most cases, it just is not enough. In the appeals to Eritrea, for example, Amnesty International cautions that the fax machine at the president’s office does not work. With some hard cases—like Saddam, Qaddaffi, and the Chinese tyrants—letters are entirely meaningless.

5. Do You Know The Difference Between Kabul and Afghanistan?

The most frequent criticism I got was a lesson in geography. Remember, I had said that Afghanis had an election. Some of the letters I got were in the spirit of: “This Is Kabul. This is Afghanistan. See the difference?” Their point being: elections were held only in the capital, the rest of Afghanistan is still a big, bad chaotic mess. This is “the loaf of bread is not as big as you thought” argument and the answer is a simple: it is better than nothing. In fact, it is a lot better than nothing. I cannot put it better than how Christopher Hitchens, the acerbic journalist put it: “Afghanistan is the first country that has been bombed out of the Stone Age.” Hitchens cannot be accused of being a “right winger”; in fact he writes for the Bible of the Left in America, The Nation magazine, among others. He has been to Afghanistan a few times and he reports that the US presence in Afghanistan is achieving progress throughout the nation. He is a classic liberal who actually believes that distant people in distant lands should not be left to suffer under tyrants. My turn to recommend a reading: his piece in Vanity Fair that appeared in November 2004.

6. A Republic, Not A Democracy

A friend sent me a piece authored by the paleo-conservative (“Close America’s Borders! No American blood for those people!”) Pat Buchanan, author of many books that bear titles like “How The Right Went Wrong.” Buchanan ridicules Bush’s assertion of exporting “democracy” on two counts: (a) America is a republic not a democracy and (b) what happens if the countries America is trying to export democracy to, democratically choose a government that is, say, Islamist. Hmmm?

Believe me, I understand the trepidation with democracy. Recently, some outfit named the John L and James L Knight Foundation was trying to understand if the people understand/support the First Amendment to the US Constitution. They surveyed 100,000 American high school students. Here were the results: 100% of the respondents said, “who the hell are you, again?” No, I am kidding. It was actually quite disappointing:

Nearly three-fourths of high school students either do not know how they feel about the First Amendment or admit they take it for granted.
More than a third think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

And so on. In the US, the justification for setting a republic, and not a democracy, was fear of “mob rule”—thus the Bill of Rights to protect the minority from the excesses of the majority. But as early as Toqueville’s visit to America, the “mob” was taking over, as he makes clear in his book Democracy in America. Now, there is little to remind one that America is “a republic, not a democracy” other than the confusing and quaint “electoral system” that appears every four years during the presidential elections. In reality, the distinction is so diluted now that the only person to whom the “America is a republic, not a democracy” means anything to is Al Gore.

As for Buchanan’s second point, that is precisely why Bush is praise worthy. In the bad-old republican times such as when the man for whom Buchanan wrote speeches, Nixon, was in the White House, it is this sort of bad calculation of “national interest” that placed America in bed with all sorts of despicable tyrants, making a mockery of its ideals. Then “détente”, “stability”, “real politik” were the commodities. What George W Bush is saying (in fact, he actually said it in a speech) is that all past presidents, including his dad, were wrong to pursue this policy of “we cannot support the democrats in the world because who knows whom they will elect.” It so happens, he says, that pursuing America’s ideals is in the best national interest of America and the risk of having governments whose values are not in synch we America is a risk worth taking. Why? Because the people sometimes get it right, sometimes they make a mistake and elect the wrong person. The beauty is that, with democracy, the people have the opportunity to correct their mistake.

Buchanan and like-minded conservatives come from a school of thought that believes that only a fraction of the world’s population can handle democracy. Certainly not, in their calculation, Muslims, Arabs and other people not steeped in “Judeo-Christian” traditions. (Buchanan is not even sure about the Judeo part of that phrase.)

So we are back to the Churchill statement that democracy is the worst form of government, except for everything else that has been tried.

7. Are You Advocating Intervention?

Yes, and so are you. I think you supported intervention to stop the massacre of Rwanda. I think you supported intervention in Bosnia. I think you support some sort of intervention in Palestine. When we ask the US to pressure the Eritrean government to improve its human rights, we are advocating intervention. Our difference is on when and who should spearhead the intervention, and what type it should be.

Most people accept the fact that Saddam was a brute and the Iraqis are better off without him. I know because every writer told me so. Now, let’s see where we differ. If there had been an uprising and the people rose up and overthrew him, would that have been ok with you? Sure. OK. Now, let’s look at outside intervention. What if a group of Arab nations had done the intervention and overthrown the brute. Maybe you would have warmed up to it. Ok. What if it was an Arab force, approved by the Arab League and the United Nations? Maybe. What if it were an Arab force, approved by the Arab League, the Islamic Conference, the UN and every human rights organization, which had disclosed massive torture chambers, and killings?

The point is that some of you are absolute Wilsonians who take to heart the concept of “non-intervention”—a system that was designed to avert the World War I disease of Europe. That is OK, as long as you recognize that “non-intervention” gave us Bosnia-Herzegovena, Rwanda, China and now Sudan. You have to recognize that with “non-intervention” Saddam would still have had his torture chambers and roughly the same number of civilians who died in the war would have been killed by him.

Some of you support intervention—but only if it is for humanitarian disasters, and only if it is approved by the UN or some collective group. That is OK too, so long as you acknowledge that that is an achingly slow process that condemns millions of people to be subjected to unspeakable torture and pain for decades. The OAU had nothing to say about Ethiopia’s terrorization of Eritreans (and Ethiopians) because “that was an internal matter.” The Arab League said that it would not “recognize” the new Iraqi government because it does not represent the Iraqi people, as opposed to Saddam, who did and was a card-carrying member of that distinguished club.

Some of you oppose any intervention by the United States because you question its motives. And given its record during the Cold War, that is not an unreasonable position. From my perspective, in the New World Order, what Bush is proposing is tearing down the old North vs South, Atlantic vs Pacific, Rich vs Poor, Donor vs Recipient, and proposing a new order of Free vs Tyrannical. Part of the problem is that he is not very articulate. He has not articulated this well, but he has done the next best thing: which is to tell the whole world which book best reflects his thoughts: it is Nathan Sharansky’s The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom To Overcome Tyranny & Terror. There is a section in the book (page 18), which is a quote from….well, I won’t tell you who said it, so you can give it fair judgment:

There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don’t; that our attachment to freedom is a product of culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values, or Western values….Ours are not western values, they are the universal values of the human spirit. And anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

That really is the debate, isn’t it? Between people who want to be free, and their tormentors who deny them freedom and have been getting away with it, for decades now, by telling the world that their people don’t want to import Western values. This has been internalized now, with millions of people actually believing that there is something inherent in a people’s culture, tradition, religion, that makes democracy incompatible with their way of life. Respectable people like Bernard Lewis authored a series of books making exactly that point, when it comes to Arabs and Muslims. And Bush, and his ideological mate who is quoted above (Tony Blair) have been the first Westerners to question that assumption.

I am all for intervention. When a Western African alliance told the dictator-wanna-be in Togo that he just cannot shred the constitution and become a dictator-for-life, that was intervention. I am all for that kind of intervention: free and relatively free countries telling the tyrants, “No!” In case you are wondering, I am against intervention from Ethiopia but not because they are “foreigners” or our “blood enemies” but because Ethiopia has no record of being a democracy. You cannot export what you do not have.

8. Has Democracy Ever Been Imposed At The Point of A Gun?

Of course, it has. The three most famous ones are Germany, Italy and Japan. In each case, the experts warned that this was impossible, that democracy was not compatible with the culture of the three countries, particularly Japan, whose culture supposedly venerated despotism and authoritarianism. Intervention by the US has helped in planting seeds of democracy in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan (I mean Kabul) and, soon, Lebanon. I think this is being reluctantly conceded to, as a correspondent put it, in an uncharitable way: Eli glul Bush em meglelu seni wede gebi'e. In his craziness, the crazy Bush may do some good.

Now, if only Bush could straighten up the UN and the World Bank. Oh, he is. Crazy like a fox.

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ADF: Update # 2, (3/4/2008)