Originally Posted: 2/22/11
To say that the
recent uprisings and revolutions through out the Middle East and Northern
Africa scares me would be an understatement. Several people believe that this
is a good thing, more democracies will form, but we don't know that these
countries will enter into democratic governments. Ever since the Tunisian
Revolution in January it has been like a domino effect has been enacted across
the region knocking out country after country. It has moved from Tunisia to
Lebanon to Egypt and then on to almost every other country in the area as can
be seen from the map. Part of what worries me about all this is that it took
the revolution in Egypt to get the attention of the rest of the world. How many
people in the United States knew that there was a revolution in Tunisia before
Egypt got on the news? How many people even know that the March 8th Alliance,
led by the Hezbollah, walked out of the Lebanese government and caused a
collapse and re-election in favor of the March 8th Alliance and support of
Hezbollah? I'll bet no one except those of us that were following those
particular countries or Political Science professors who have feelers out at
all times for great political distress.
Don't get me wrong,
more power to all these people who are fighting for their freedom. I am in full
support of them and their causes, but I also fear the outcomes that could come
of all this revolution. There is so little stability in the Middle East and
Northern Africa as it is that in all truth I don't feel like the these
countries are ready for democracy though I don't feel like they should be
subjected to the horrible reins of dictatorship any longer. Unfortunately, I
can't help but be pessimistic in the current era, what with the economic
crisis, the growing animosities between countries, and the elevated
polarization of ideologies all over the world. It seems like it would be all
too easy for all the countries that are liberating themselves to fall into
dictatorships or imperfect democracies all over again.
One thing that
scares me more than any of the stability issues is all the violence that has
begun to occur in Libya. Though Egypt was relatively quiet and peaceful for a revolution with few actual casualties with these developments in Libya it seems
likely that like revolution, the violence and suppression could spread as well.
With all the dictatorial regimes in Northern Africa and the Middle East I would
not be surprised is a counter domino effect begins to happen and violent suppression began to spread across
the countries and governments causing these sights of hope in our eyes to
devolve into sights of horror. I worry that these governments will care more
about their power over the people than the people themselves and the country
they rule over.
Several people are, also, criticizing the government reactions,
or delayed reactions, to these revolutions all over the Middle East and
Northern Africa. Many people believed that people like President Obama would come out of the first day and declare support for
the revolution and those protestors. When he didn't come out on the first day
and then on the third day took a stance that left him wiggle room between his
ally Murbarak and the protestors, some people became enraged and upset.
Unfortunately, I believe that many people did not understand that Obama and
several other world leaders were stuck between a rock and a hard place with the
Egypt situation and all the other revolutions. Many of these leaders are United
States allies and we cannot just go out and talk on a whim. The United States
holds a privileged place in the world as the Superpower and due to this we pick
up a lot of responsibilities that, as much as many of us would like us to, we
cannot shirk or leave to the countries with the problems. The United States is
not being silent, we are only saying what we can. Behind the scenes there is
obviously more going on that we can't see where the world is locked in a
discourse about what should be done and how to handle such a mass of revolution
and how to make it work in everyone's favor and not spark some international
war.
I would like to
give one positive not about all this craziness that is going on in the world. I
have never seen news spread so quickly in my life and, truthfully, we only have
social media to thank. With this emergence of social media and cell phones news
about events like this has gotten to people around the world at astronomical rates. I, personally, was watching Tumblr explode with news about
Libya last night. Something new was posted and flooded through the dashboards
almost every couple minutes. The same can be said about Twitter and to an
extent Facebook. The use of technology in such extents is a brand new tool for
the protestors and people to get out the information of what it truly happening
and the feelings of those revolting. It has become such a useful tool that now
governments have begun to shut down the internet during revolution and protest
as well as cell towers, such is the example of Egypt. It's an important new
development and will be very interesting to see evolve.
Overall, I am
extremely (probably overly) scared of what is to come. Having no idea how all
this could pan out and all the implications of what could happen if things go
badly. Many people are able to be optimistic about such a situation since they
don't live in those countries, but personally this is what I plan on going into
as a job. Analyzing and predicting the ends of events like this. Since these
events are so out of the norm I can't see a good outcome at all and that scares
me. It makes me happy I was born in a developed country, but makes me wish
everyone could be so that they could have the opportunities I have had.
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