Ted Koppel really got my dander up this morning with his arguments about the inconsistency of the American approach to the various revolutionary and humanitarian crises in the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Koppel said that our approach is inconsistent in our treatment of the various revolutions in the North Africa and the Middle East. And if this action by the UN was truly humanitarian, then why isn't there the same call to action in the Ivory Coast or the Congo.
Laurence Lewis in his well-written diary on the front page of Daily Kos displayed a similar myopia when he said that our approach is not marked by "noble intentions," but instead is part of the same cleoptocratic foreign policy that is evidenced by the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He says:
But if human rights and support for democracy and freedom truly were the motivating factors, there is no reason we wouldn't be seeing a consistency of response to all these revolutionary movements, and to all elsewhere in the world. And hardly at all mentioned is that all these movements were inspired by Tunisia, and Tunisia was inspired by the depth of its government's corruption, which only came fully to Tunisian public consciousness with the release of the U.S. embassy cables by WikiLeaks.And Laurence is right that the inspiration for these movements have come from one source: the selfless act of one Tunisian fruit-vendor. I would ask all who read this diary to also read the inspiring Washington Post article by Marc Fisher of Mohammed Bouazizi, the man who through the act of self-immolation has changed the region and the world.
But Laurence is wrong when he asserts that this inspiration means that we should treat the Arab Spring of 2011 consistently. We are seeing a revolutionary movement that the world has never seen before. The Arab Spring is completely different than the revolutionary spirit of the late 18th century, the European revolutions of 1848, the colonial revolutions after World War II and the anti-communist revolutions in 1989.
We CANNOT act reflexively as a nation or as part of the international community. And we as activists cannot hold our leaders to our ideals without fully understanding what the Arab Spring revolutions mean and how they are different than prior revolutions and different in each country.