The US is finally playing the role of facilitator, not party to the conflict. That is a good sign, and a hopeful one for the Syrian people.
Peace in Syria depends on a gradual devolution of power and diminished use of violence by non-state actors. It cannot depend on using non-state actors simply as tools for regime change.
The new Tunisian leaders would prefer that westerners invest in Tunisia by building factories and processing plants, creating thousands of jobs for Tunisians at home and quality goods at fair prices.
Europe’s hypocrisy and latent racism was also displayed after the Paris attacks.
Tunisian voters seem to declare that they hold no indiscriminate prejudice. They simply have a problem with incompetence, corruption, cronyism, and abuse of human dignity.
It is now the US shift in institutional power that is threatening the process and undermining the President’s efforts.
Political actors must address the place of religion and ethnicity, as defining identity markers, in the post-Arab Spring countries. The Arab Spring, after all, may have signaled the beginning of the end of exclusionary models of nationalism, and all the other isms that eventually lead to genocidal
It is in everyone’s long-term interest to stop purposefully undermining developing democratic processes.
Last week the US president, Barack Obama, visited Saudi Arabia. Fighting extremism, the crisis in Syria, and Iran's nuclear programme would all have been live concerns. Human rights, however, was not.
Once again, the people have a chance to prove that the Arab Spring was not a fluke, that non-violence is the only constructive path for social change, that Islam is compatible with representative governance, and that authoritarianism is not the only guarantor of security and stability. العربية
Every time the Gulf States’ rulers justify their support for violent rebels in Syria or the military regime in Egypt by appealing to the unalienable right of peoples to basic rights and representative governance, they legitimize the Arab Spring in the eyes of their own peoples, too.
The only way to start a war against another country without UNSC authorization is in self-defense. The President needs to make the case that the Syrian government is an imminent threat to United States’ national security. He needs to make that case to the American public and Congress.
