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Tyrants Are Not Our Friends

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Last month, an upset apple cart led to political revolution.

On December 17, Tunisian government agents tried to confiscate Mohamed Bouazizi’s livelihood. When he refused to hand over his produce, he was slapped by a female inspector and then beaten by two of her colleagues, who took his scale. When he went to the municipal building to get his property back, he was beaten again.

Later that day in the public square, Bouazizi doused himself with lighter fluid and set himself on fire. He died weeks later, but not before demonstrations erupted in his home town and spread throughout Tunisia.

Tunisians had long labored under the repressive dictatorship of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who repressed both political speech and commerce. No longer. He’s been ousted.

So do our leaders celebrate with the Tunisian people? No. The New York Times reports that Ben Ali was “an important ally of the United States.” He’s now in exile in Saudi Arabia, another dictatorship allied with the United States.

Protest has spread further, most notably to Egypt, yet another repressive government supported by America’s State Department . . . and taxpayers.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reassures us that, “the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

That response? To imprison and torture bloggers and opposition political leaders.

Our most effective aid to Africa would be to stop subsidizing repressive regimes and pretending that slavery is freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

9 replies on “Tyrants Are Not Our Friends”

Absolutely, Paul.
Wouldn’t term limits have had many of those involved in your post – OUT by now?
Would like to see term limits on the media, too sometimes – they fit the same lowest common denominator at times: entrenched, smug, power weilding, self serving, distrusted

Amen, Paul! We should keep our noses out of the internal affairs of other nations. We created Saddam Hussein, and later had to oppose him. We should not prop up Mubarak or Ibn Saud nor any other tyrant.

Can’t have a new world order without allowing for a repressive regime here and there.
After all, some folks are going to fixate on liberty and freedom and try to upset the apple cart.
If you don’t keep those folks repressed and either jailed or killed, why, they’ll likely spread their crazy ideas and the next thing you know they’ll be wanting a republic.

I’d like to point out that Wikileaks exposed the reality that our government employees knew what was going on in Tunisia, but were happy to let Ali be a tyrant, since he was an “ally.” With allies like this, we don’t need any enemies, as supporting them will surely make enemies among their citizens and others.

Our meddling in foreign countries, should be limited to speech, and letting the populace know we support freedom which includes human rights.

We can thank Wikileaks for exposing the lies of our government employees. And for telling the Tunisians what we should have told them in the first place.

“Tunisian government agents tried to confiscate Mohamed Bouazizi’s livelihood. When he refused to hand over his produce, he was slapped by a female inspector and then beaten by two of her colleagues, who took his scale. When he went to the municipal building to get his property back, he was beaten again.”

In principle, not all that different from the M.O. of the IRS when you don’t contribute to the bureaucrats’ sinecure fund.

Very well said…for people outside the US, the starkest US government hypocricy is that it gives sermons on freedom and human rights while simultaneously supporting awful leaders around the world as “strategic allies”.

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