By Mark Rhoads -
Western news media organizations continue to do a horrible job of covering power struggles in the Middle East. The fake media line about an "Arab Spring" tries to sell the idea to western audiences that each internal power stuggle in every country is about heroic rebels who are in a battle to set up a democracy and overthrow tyrants and despots. To be sure, many tyrants and dictators needed to go, but that does not necessarily mean that the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic factions are in favor of democracy. They are not. They only want to replace old secular dictators with new radical religious dictatorships of their own design.
The test of a democracy for Egypt is not a one-time only vote of the people held to impress the west, but the ability to hold more than one election on a regular basis under the rule of a written constitution.
In Syria, the rebels that President Obama wants to help take down dictator-President Bashir Assad are in fact Sunni Muslims who are at war with the minority Alawite Sect that Assad represents. The wars between Islamic sects and their allies cross the lines of national borders. No one in any sect in the Islamic world favors the western ideals of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. There are no good guys to root for--not in Libya, not in Egypt, and not in Syria. The only truly democatic government in the entire region remains the state of Israel and that is why America needs to stand by Israel and its democratic values for as long as we have any influence to use in the region.
