So Much for Democratization

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Have the Bushies have given up on promoting democracy in the Middle East? A new crop of articles in the Daily Star, Foreign Affairs and the Washington Post all say that they have.

“The rhetoric of the Bush revolution may live on,” writes Philip Gordon in this issue of Foreign Affairs, “but the revolution itself is over.” The reasons he posits are both practical and philosophical: having overstretched itself in Iraq, alienated key US allies, and worn down domestic support for spreading democracy abroad (only 20 percent of Americans today say that should be “a very important goal”), the administration just can’t do it anymore. Another reasons, the other two authors say, is fear of what free elections might bring, fueled by Hamas’s ascendance in Palestinian elections and the Muslim Brotherhood’s in Egypt. Plus, Gordon explains, Bush’s post-9/11 revolution in foreign policy was enabled by “a feeling of tremendous power.” And, well, we have seen what that did for us. Good job, George.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

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