Last month I wrote an issue about American election and the presidential race and the relationship between the next administration in the White House and the Arab world , and Muslim brotherhood too.
I found most of my issue translated in English by Tarek Amr .
this is the link of global voices online topic and here is what was written there:
"Abdel Rahman Ayyash- Al Ghareeb - wrote an introduction here about the Presidential elections and the struggle between the two major parties in the US:
In America there are two main parties, the current ruling party, the Republicans, and represented by George Bush as the President, and the majority party in the Congress, the Democrats. And it was represented earlier by Bill Clinton, and [may be] it will be represented in the next election by Hilary Clinton, the candidate who will most likely become the first women to become the President of the United States.
Whoever follows the American media, will know well that the struggle for the power is not is far beyond a struggle between individuals. It"s an organization-based struggle, where major firms support candidate campaigns. For example, Hilary got much support (Although she herself criticised the Republicans for the same reason and called them (Firmians) for their dependency on the support of firms).
Abdel Rahman Ayyash describes himself in the “About Me” section that he tries to show good model of a young Egyptian Muslim man, who believes that Islam is the only solution to all problems we face. Hence he tries here to analyze the presidential elections race from an Islamic - and perhaps a Muslim Brotherhood - point of view:
I will try here to show some suitable flexibility in order to try to understand the American voters theory, and how those voters evaluate the candidate who can represent them in the elections. For sure it is not possible to compare the American society with that Arab one (except the Lebanese society), in terms of political awareness, which represents an important aspect in the culture of most of the citizens of the United States.
Ayyash then continues to analyse George W. Bush policies and it"s effect on the voters decision in the next elections:
Bush bad policies in general, led to a severe weakness in the trust between the American citizen and his president. The huge gap (which is somehow new), between incomes in the United States, and the big drop in dollar prices, as well as the social and national security issues and health care ones, and before all these comes the main issue … Iraq.
So … the situation now generally … dictates that Bush administration had a big failure (I am not talking here about Fox news and its reports) but … the evidence that the Bush administration has failed, it is the results of the polls that shows how his popularity is at its lowest levels now. Also the results of the Congress elections proves that the Americans are looking for a counter-Bush ideology. An opposite ideology for Bush"s one in my point of view is an opposite ideology of the White House hawks … the opposite of Dick Cheney … in other words … the opposite of the Neo-Conservatives.
I think the American voter is really aware of this, and that"s why we are seeing an increase in the evidence that the Democrats will succeed in the coming elections, because the Democrats lay the question … Who will get out of Iraq first? And the answer for sure is for their side. (Even though Hilary Clinton herself is supporting the war on Iraq and Afghanistan).
He adds that most of the Arabs don"t see any difference between the Democrats and the Republicans:
The majority of the Arab street doesn"t see any difference between Clinton"s administration that laid a siege on Iraq that led to the death of half a million Iraqi children due to the stupidity of two regimes one of them speaks Arabic, and between Bush"s administration that started a war on Iraq.
One of the commenters on the Neo-Conservatives topic in Aljazeeera.net wrote:
“There are no Hawks and Pigeons in the American administration … Both of the Republicans and the Democrats plays are a pre-written role in a show, and they all have one goal at the end, but the methods are different … For example … Clinton started a siege on Iraq that lead to the death of half a million children … He killed them all but without sending a single tank there … while George Bush on the other hand declared war and attacked children and old men, and so on. So they all hate us, and have evil intentions and plan to ruin our countries, but each according to his role”.
I can say that many Arabs think the same way, the way that I am not able blame or comment on.
Ayyash then tries to shed some light on the main differences between the Republicans and the Democrats:
The clichés and the broad lines of the United States leadership on the world, are found a lot in the Republicans speeches. They consider the Middle East as the cornerstone of their control on the New World Order.
Energy independence, is one of these broad lines, where most of the Americans care a lot about the independence of energy in this period, (they believe that the Wahhabi"s may practice some pressure on Saudi again, like the one practised earlier during October 1973 war), and because of this many Americans are afraid of their dependence on the Eastern energy, which shall come to an end.
Economics is another broad line; Iraq is a third; Democracy and terrorism and many other broad lines which will identify the agendas of the candidates and the voters.
Most of the Americans are afraid in this stage of a recurrence of what happened in the sixties of the last century, including the time called the Great Depression, economic collapse or so, very high unemployment rates, all what is going on now under the administration of President Bush is a prelude to the recession, other than that, reports and polls confirm that most Americans expect that the coming year 2008 they will have another recession.
The political program of the ruling Republican Party is now talking about Bush"s battle and the transfer of justice to Afghanistan and Iraq. In my opinion the program is nothing but deception once more, deceiving the Americans before us.
So, the Republicans do not have the will to fix many of those mistakes that they committed in the Middle East which affected the American internal unity for sure, from economics, politics, media, and for sure the society which started to fight the minorities, and mainly the Arabic and Muslim minorities, and there are many evidences of that.
I am not saying that Hilary Clinton with her Democratic Party and its political program that tends to build a strong and respectable America is totally right, or that such program will even please the Arabs (whose leaders consider America … everything), but for me, I think the American people will choose Hilary, maybe just for change to the better, or looking for the last hope to be saved, or at least looking for another strategy in the war of terrorism, that has been led by Bush for seven years, and is still going on. For sure the Liberals and Democrats there in America are dealing with Arabs and Muslims the same way like the Republicans, by considering them as terrorist groups with various ideologies, but united under the same goal which is causing harm to the United States, and may be not the States only, but the free world as a whole too.
Hilary is not the only candidate in the Democratic party, Barack Obama, is another strong candidate, and lately he achieved a significant success after appearing with Oprah Winfrey on TV.
Anyway, I am not a Democrat nor Republican. I am just watching and trying to evaluate the situation from a distance … a far distance.
He then tries to summarize the previous paragraphs, and added some examples to illustrate his point of view:
Overall, it is not possible to say that there is a radical difference in the perception of the Arab and Islamic world, between the Republican and Democratic parties, but certainly there are some outstanding issues, which the Democrats have totally different solutions than [the Republicans], for example, they both seem to agree on how to deal with the Palestinians and the Israelis, there is almost an unwritten agreement between the successive American administrations, that Israel is the spoiled child of the United States, and that the Palestinians must but put under pressure to make sacrifices for the sake of the Jewish people, and in favour of a just and comprehensive peace in the region. In my opinion … the only difference is that Madeleine Albright departed, and Condy succeeded her.
The agreement also is very acute with those repressive regimes that govern our countries and the silence of both of the American Democratic and Republican parties towards them. It is the same regime that tried to overthrow Chavez, and tried to overthrow Fidel Castro, but did not overthrow him because he is a dictator who works to suppress his people, as the ones we have, but he refused to become a tool in the hands of the American administration. On the other hand they are totally silent towards our regimes and their repressive and brutal deeds towards their own civilians, as in the case of the military trials of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the case with the electoral fraud, and the eternal power promoted by the President and ruling party in Egypt.
Of course I did not mention the economic vision of Democrats or compare it with that of the Republicans. I was just talking about the relationship between the American administration and the Islamic world in general.
The Islamic world is not expecting much from the American administration, but … many are waiting for the American (Democrats) way of dealing with reform and human rights issues to be different from that of the (Republican). And the American way of dealing with moderate Islamic movements must change, for instance, with the Muslim Brotherhood. The next administration must realize that the Muslim Brotherhood are not enemies.
Labels: America, Arab world, Muslim Brotherhood
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