Maybe. But this is just another pseudo-democratic kleptocracy that doesn’t come close to Tweed, with draconian Islamic laws. They are currently gearing themselves up to execute a Christian (as soon as the international community takes their eye off the ball for one second) and take Women’s Refuges under ‘state’ control (complete with Police at the door) because the women inside are ‘prostitutes’.
And the Central Bank is on the verge of collapse because Karzai and his relatives have looted it into insolvency.
This does not even begin to approach a democracy so let’s not pretend. It is just another vile, torturing Islamic kleptocracy that’s quite happy to let the West shed its blood to keep their looting, drug-dealing snouts in the trough. It is no more on the road to democracy than Mubarak’s Egypt was.
No, not by any rational, non-deluded analysis. He promoted a mass uprising against what he and the Palestinians view as a “foreign occupation” by an outside invader. Nor did he call for democracy. The only hair thread of a connection is "demonstrations’’ which would be like making some tortured connection between say your President calling for successful democratic protests and then going, Simpons like, ‘"Har har’’ if violent demonstrations broke out around his party congress. There’s no logical similarity or connection.
It would only have a connection if say he called for Israeli Arabs to demonstrate against the Israeli state - that would be something logically connected and be "eating his own words’
Quite right.
HE said nothing about autocracy or domestic rule as far as I know.
While I agree with your evaluation of AFghanistan, I don’t see where “Islamic’” comes into it. It’'s yet another 3rd world tribal & clan based kleptocracy. Seems pretty clear to me from say my experiences with WEst African Muslims that there is nothing particularly Islamic in the specific nastiness of the Afghans.
The accusation is Chadian mercenaries (because they’re saying the ‘mercenaries’ speak French). I suppose it’s possible. Libyans have been mucking around in the Sahel for a while and there are plenty of unemployed young idiots they can hire.
I don’t claim to be an expert on middle eastern politics and certainly not on the political reality of running a dictatorship - but can the protests actually bring Qaddafi down if the army is able and (it would appear perfectly) willing to fire on the demonstrators?
CNN reports mentioned that all this is going on in Benghazi where Gaddafi has never really been popular, but it doesn’t matter because everything is centralized in Tripoli.
