NOVANEWS
Source–the passionateattachment.com
In a very revealing February 14 op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Larry Diamond, a prominent figure in Washington’s “democracy promotion” establishment, wrote:
The toppling of Egypt’s modern-day pharaoh through peaceful mass protests, aided by Facebook and Twitter, marks a watershed for Egypt and the entire Arab world. Contrary to widespread anxieties in the U.S. foreign policy establishment, it will also serve the long-term interests of the United States—and Israel.
Diamond, a founding co-editor of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Journal of Democracy and the author of The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World, seemed quite content with developments in post-Mubarak Egypt:
Think of what could have happened. Many observers (including myself) worried that the growing alienation of young Egyptians might flow in anti-American, anti-Israeli and radical Islamist directions. The inevitable eruption could have turned violent, resulting in the kind of bloody suppression that gripped Algeria in the early 1990s, when 200,000 died. Or it might have been hijacked by radical Islamists who would ride the popular revolution to power, as in Iran in 1979.
So far, none of these have happened. The millions of Egyptians who have poured into the streets of Cairo and other cities have not been chanting “down with America,” nor have their protests been about Israel (or the Palestinians).
Moreover, as an ardent supporter of Israel, he felt “reassured” by the outcome:
Egypt’s new (and hopefully temporary) military junta has quickly reaffirmed the country’s treaty obligations. Few protesters are calling for abrogation of Egypt’s peace with Israel. Most protesters resent Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and want an independent Palestinian state, but mainly they want to transform their own country politically and economically. They know their aspirations for human dignity and economic opportunity can only be met with far-reaching internal reforms, and that the worn-out theme of anti-Zionism is a divergence from that. Israel and its friends should thus welcome democratic change in Egypt. The only way to guarantee a lasting Middle East peace is to root negotiated agreements in the same democratic legitimacy that undergirds the stability and resilience of Israel’s political system.
The senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution scarcely expected it would be otherwise, however. As far back as May 7, 2008, he was publicly advocating the replacement of Mubarak by democrats such as Ayman Noor. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California, Diamond criticized the Bush administration for having “walked away” from its post-9/11 “forward strategy for freedom” in the region after 2005—”that horrible year for democracy,” in which Islamist parties such as Hamas, Hezbullah and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood saw varying degrees of electoral success. Instead, he advocated a new policy of “gradual democratization” which would allow time for a party based on the model of the “moderate” Justice and Development Party in Turkey to emerge as “a third alternative” to the region’s “bifurcated playing field” of autocrats vs. Islamists. According to Diamond, the democrats he had met in Cairo the previous month told him: “We are only asking for a gradual opening to democracy. We’re not even asking for democracy tomorrow. We don’t even want democracy tomorrow. Because we need time.” Presumably, three years has been enough time for NED to prepare Egyptian democrats to take over the reins of power.
Diamond was hardly surprised by the well-organized protests either. At the State Department-sponsored Alliance of Youth Movement’s inaugural 2008 summit in New York, which was attended by members of Egypt’s April 6 Youth Movement, he moderated a panel discussion entitled “How to Begin: Taking it to the Streets.” Just over two years later, when Egyptians did take to the streets, they were organized and directed by April 6 activists.
In an indication of what a small world “democracy promotion” is, Diamond was introduced by AYM founder Jared Cohen, the then State Department official charged with counter-radicalization in the Middle East, who described his Stanford mentor as “one of the people that’s had the most profound impact on my life.” Interestingly, Diamond is not the only prominent NED figure to have influenced the precocious Cohen, who travelled extensively throughout the Middle East to meet with pro-democracy activists prior to the “Arab Spring,” making sure they had access to social media. Referring to one-time NED director Frank Carlucci, Cohen once told the New Yorker: “Secretary Carlucci has been a wonderful mentor to me.” Like the former Deputy Director of the CIA, who had an uncanny knack for showing up in countries as coups were taking place, Cohen just happened to be in Egypt during the street protests that toppled Mubarak.
In the Howcast-produced video of the AYM panel discussion moderated by Diamond, Cohen is incorrectly identified as Howcast CEO Jason Liebman. Perhaps AYM sponsor Howcast, which makes how-to videos on everything from the mundane “How to Perfect Your Golf Swing” to the political “How To Be an Effective Dissident” and “How to Protest Without Violence,” need to make one entitled “How to Recognize Your Own CEO.”
Like Diamond, the social network of Cohen, Liebman and Nicole Lapin, the daughter of a controversial former Miss Israel, doesn’t seem to be overly concerned that Arab democracy will harm Israel.
It’s worth noting that Diamond, the fervent advocate of Arab democracy, is on the advisory council of the Iran Strategy Task Force, a joint initiative of Freedom House and the Progressive Policy Institute, a hawkish pro-Israel “think tank,” which is “aimed at shifting American policy on its central regional foe, Iran, toward a more aggressive focus on democracy.” He also coordinates the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, which was “created to understand the process and prospects for democracy in Iran and the rest of the Middle East. The central goal is to help the West understand the complexities of the Muslim world, and to map out possible trajectories for transitions to democracy and free markets in the Middle East, beginning with Iran.”
While many find it hard to believe that the United States had anything to do with promoting regime change in a country ruled by a friendly dictator like Mubarak, there may be far greater surprises in store. In his October 2, 2010 New York Times column entitled “Third Party Rising,” Thomas Friedman cited Diamond’s sharp criticism of both Democrats and Republicans:
“We basically have two bankrupt parties bankrupting the country,” said the Stanford University political scientist Larry Diamond. Indeed, our two-party system is ossified; it lacks integrity and creativity and any sense of courage or high-aspiration in confronting our problems. We simply will not be able to do the things we need to do as a country to move forward “with all the vested interests that have accrued around these two parties,” added Diamond. “They cannot think about the overall public good and the longer term anymore because both parties are trapped in short-term, zero-sum calculations,” where each one’s gains are seen as the other’s losses.
