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US misjudged appeal of Western democracy for Middle East during Arab Spring – CIA’s Brennan

Erm, pretty sure that reason CIA started the whole Arabic spring farce is due to the fact Egypt was trying to move away from USD and build an African economic union.

This is probably the dumbest opinion I have ever heard in PDF for a long time (Only to be succeeded to the like of Ultron).

1.) US won't start a continental revoke just to keep one country in line, in term of work needed to be done, there are many other simlier choice than to start a general revoke across a whole spectrum of country.

2.) African Union is deeply enchrenched and aligned to the US, even if Egypt left the US sphere of influence (And it did not), the African Union is still heavily influenced by the US and its demoninator currency.

3.) Egypt is not as big a player in the region than Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, all have more power than Egypt, egypt may have been the top dog in the 1970s, not anymore.

Hence, I am pretty sure what you said is wrong.

US misjudged appeal of Western democracy for Middle East during Arab Spring – CIA’s Brennan
Published time: 10 Jan, 2017 12:38

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A protester stands in front of a burning barricade during a demonstration in Cairo January 28, 2011. © Goran Tomasevic / Reuters
Arab world protests, Syria unrest
“I think there were very, very unrealistic expectations in Washington, including in some parts of the administration, that the Arab Spring was going to push out these authoritarian regimes and democracy is going to flourish because that's what people want,” Brennan said in an interview with CNN.

Earlier this year Brennan, who spent years stationed in the Middle East, already admitted that the Arab Spring uprisings that began in late 2010 created fertile ground for terrorists. But in his latest comments, he said the focus should not be solely on the “symptoms of the problems” like terrorism and violence, but rather on the underlying factors such as governance.

Read more

‘US-supported Arab Spring created power vacuum across Middle East’


Assessing the prospect of Western-style democracies taking root in Middle Eastern states, he concluded that what the people of this area actually want is freedom “for themselves, or their group, or their tribe,” while the “concept of democracy is something that really is not ingrained in a lot of the people and the cultures and the countries out there.”

The CIA head also discussed the ongoing crises in the Middle East, noting that some of the decisions Washington has made over the past two decades may have contributed to the current state of affairs.
For instance, he pointed at the 2003 invasion of Iraq as “the reason why there was the tremendous slide into violence and bloodshed in that part of the world,” adding that “history would have been different” if the US had not fully withdrawn from the country in 2011.
Echoing his previous comments, Brennan said he sees the move to leave Iraq as “a contributing factor” to the instability in the region and the rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

“If we knew then what we know now in terms of what ISIL was able to do, in terms of just this explosive growth in Iraq that then was able to lop over into Syria, would we have pursued the same course? Probably not,” the official stated.

READ MORE: ISIS, sectarian conflict & chaos: Iraq 10 years after Saddam Hussein’s death

Brennan also said the Syrian civil war could have played out differently had the US provided more active help to the Syrian opposition when the crisis first unfolded – as US critics of the Obama administration suggest should have been done.

“If additional support was provided by various international actors to the […] Free Syrian Army, early on, might that have made a difference? Maybe. Because at that time, the Syrian regime was reeling and was more vulnerable,” the official noted.

Read more

‘Brennan’s crocodile tears over scorched Syria give hypocrisy a bad name'


Brennan warned, however, that providing military support to the Syrian opposition earlier would have presented its own challenges, with the opposition being an unstable, “very eclectic” mix of secular and extremist groups.

Supporting the opposition blindly and throwing weapons over the transom into Syria could have led to a worse outcome than today,” Brennan concluded.

The CIA chief recently slammed Russia’s anti-terrorism efforts in Syria as a “scorched-earth policy” far from “something that the United States would ever do.”

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov last week said that the operation does indeed differ from the actions of the US coalition, which are focused on “methodically and steadily destroying Syrian economic infrastructure.”

President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Russia’s NTV channel in December, said that the Arab Spring itself and the negative consequences for the region occurred because key nations “preferred not to observe” the norms of international law “to satisfy their geopolitical interests.”

Putin noted that the late Russian Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov warned about the possible harmful effects of the Arab Spring, but stated that at the time Russia “could not influence directly and practically the development of events, or our opportunities to influence those events were rather limited.”

The so-called Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups and civil wars in the Arab world that began in December 2010 and spread throughout the countries of the Arab League and its neighbors. It led to the overthrow of the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, and caused civil wars in Libya and Syria, as well as mass disorder in Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Oman, and other countries.

The problem is, you cannot start anything unless the local population willing to, or at least see the need to, using your forest fire analogy as an example, yes, once a fire start in a part of a jungle, it will just be at time burning thru the whole jungle, but the queston is, there got to be someone who light the fire in the first place, in another word, a fire need to be started before it can burn thru a forest.

Starting revoke is not as easy as it seems, The trianglar factor is power, population support and initiative. Lacking one, your revoke fail, Failing a revoke does not necesarily mean the system you want to adopt is not suitable for a region. But rather, how you apporach a revoke in a technical viewpoint.

The so called "Western-Democracy" does not start in the west, the ancient democracy started in Classicial Greece and today, there are not exist a classical Greece model anymore, Modern Democracy is a mix of Democatic and Autocraticism, the problem is, the west in iteslf adopt Classical Democracy, and implementing their own Democratical belief over the year. By definition, if you adopt an ideology, that ideology would change to suit your need, there are no copying from one to another, that has not been seen in any form of political ideologism, not in Democracy, Not in Monarchism, not in Communism, not in Totalitarianism.

I think you have taken brennen word out of the context, it is best said with his quote

Earlier this year Brennan, who spent years stationed in the Middle East, already admitted that the Arab Spring uprisings that began in late 2010 created fertile ground for terrorists. But in his latest comments, he said the focus should not be solely on the “symptoms of the problems” like terrorism and violence, but rather on the underlying factors such as governance.

Source: https://defence.pk/threads/us-misjudged-appeal-of-western-democracy-for-middle-east-during-arab-spring-%E2%80%93-cia%E2%80%99s-brennan.471859/#ixzz4VgTxQgyz

Basically, it says, "It fail, it mean it fail, nothing more"
 
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