Iraqi blogger Omar has an interesting post on a big rumor circulating in Baghdad lately; namely that the U.S. is going to stage a military coup and install a Sunni general to crack down on everybody and allow for an early withdrawal of American troops. He analyzes how this rumor has spread due to its serving the purposes of both sides: The Sunnis, who like to fantasize that they will be ascendant again with a single blow, and the Shi’ites, who use the story as justification for maintaining their large, armed militias.

This reflects that there’s still a big chunk of the population here in the Middle East that is having a hard time believing that the change has happened, understanding democracy and throwing behind the old conspiracy theory mentalities; a tough but essential struggle for establishing a new system.

What worries me a lot is hearing people in Iraq in particular and in the Middle East in general saying that this region not good enough a land for democracy and that these countries will always need dictators to put things in order and preserve security and stability; these are remarks I hear all the time and some even go as far as saying that Saddam’s reign was good for Iraq.

The indisputable fact is that dictatorship did not lead us to become an advanced nation and I never heard of a dictatorship that was able to make a nation free and advanced and the results we reached from decades of dictatorship was nothing we could ever be proud of.

Some here say that Saddam managed to control the country but they admit he was bad and they think that if only he looked after economy better than he did then things would’ve been way better … maybe the common dream among my people of generation is to become the one good ruler who can fix all the mistakes of the previous bad rulers but reality proves that everyone who came to power in any of the earlier nationalist tyrannical governments turned out to be “bad”.
In fact this has nothing to do with the individuals in power and perhaps that’s the core of the problem; here in the Middle East we need to understand that it’s all about the system we choose for our countries and we’re yet to absorb this.

It’s a fascinating view from someone in the thick of it — by all means read it all.

...................
Share this!

Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• Mixed Up Confusion
• Osama versus Omar
• Slowness, Steadiness and Races