Friday, March 25, 2011

Ironies of this Arab Spring . . .

Amr Moussa
(Image from Wikipedia)

I read an interesting excerpt in the New York Times yesterday from a recent interview of Amr Moussa in Cairo by Raghida Dergham, diplomatic correspondent for the Al Hayat. Titled "The Goal in Libya Is Not Regime Change" (NYT, March 23, 2011), I gather from Moussa's remarks that his thoughts concerning Syria also do not include regime change:
Dergham: You haven't said much about Syria. Why so quiet so far?

Moussa: Because the situation there is still unclear.

Dergham: Do you want to wait until a lot of people die before it is clear?

Moussa: No, certainly not. We do not have the full picture as to what is going on. Is it in Deraa alone, or is there violence and crackdown in other places?

Dergham: You have seen the people asking for change, and you supported them strongly in Egypt, but you are hesitant to support them in Syria? There are demonstrations, and people are dead and people are wounded in Syria. What is your message as secretary general of the Arab League on that issue?

Moussa: I am certainly on the side of the free expression of the people, and I am certainly on the side of revolutions and the new uprising in the Arab world. No question about that.
Amr Moussa is the former (or at least 'departing') secretary general of the Arab League and has declared his candidacy for the presidency of Egypt, and while I can understand his difficult position on the issue of calling for regime change in somebody else's country, I think that Dergham has underlined the irony well. Moussa supports the "revolutions" without openly supporting "regime change," but isn't that what revolutions do? Change regimes? Didn't that happen recently in Egypt? Isn't Moussa a beneficiary of that Egyptian regime change? Isn't he running for the presidency of Egypt.

That's all I have time for today . . .

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8 Comments:

At 5:31 AM, Anonymous dhr said...

Well, Mussolini too exalted his coming to power as the outcome of a revolution, but he had been called and chosen as a Prime Minister by the King.

 
At 6:51 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

That's the ambiguity of 'election' . . .

Jeffery Hodges

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At 7:14 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff, I have been eribly remiss about your blog 90% charged to the fact that I simply don't know how. I've decided to learn and become at least somewhat proficient. I'm starting from zero. "Tuck"

 
At 7:20 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Glad to have you aboard, Tuck, and I like the new word coinage -- "eribly," a fusion of "err" and "terribly."

It will prove eribly useful.

(Honest, I like the word.)

Jeffery Hodges

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At 11:54 AM, Blogger Carter Kaplan said...

There is a specialized term for that political space that falls between revolution and regime change:

"Chaos"

 
At 1:12 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Next comes the cosmos if we follow Milton's upward flight . . .

Jeffery Hodges

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At 2:40 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well now Tuck,

Now I've somebody besides Cran to play on Jeff's site with.

JK

 
At 5:46 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Watch out, JK. Tuck can handle himself.

Jeffery Hodges

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