Bahraini Government Hacks Activists with NSO Group Zero-Click iPhone Exploits

You can use all the softpower you want, and i see no problem with this, but it's up to the majority of the people to decide what to do.

Meanwhile, the west can go back home and instead of bombing democracy into these countries, we compete with their model (like we did with communism), we outperform their model and they will want our model.

We didn't win against communism with bombs, we won against communism with widespread increase of wealth. We had more wealth, more rights, more freedom, a better life.

Our own democracy and our own values have severely suffered after the downfall of communism, we are not on top of our game anymore. If young people from poor countries look at our countries and feel _hate_ instead of _envy_, then we are doing something wrong.

What we did is saying "here, look at our awesome democracy, which bombs your weddings, no matter if a Black progressive or and Orange lunatic is in power, doesn't even make a difference".

Almost all young people in Northern Africa are trying to run to Europe. They want what we have. Let's proof to them that democracy and liberal values are the way to get what we have.

And to put it in the bigger picture why USA will never let a democratic process in Muslims majority country happen is simply the existence of Israel, you know exactly what the first thing Muslims will do if they united.

This only works if social changes are made allowing for these things to happen.

This principle of being able to get rid of those you voted in is more important in a democracy than the actual representation of the "will of the people", because the "will of the people" can change and so the people should not be allowed to make a democratic choice that robs them, the oppositions and the coming generations of their future democratic rights. This is what we in Germany call "wehrhafte Demokratie" ("militant democracy").

If your democracy can be lost by voting in facists or religious nuts it is not a sufficiently enough militant democracy, seperations of powers didn't work as intended etc. Democracies should be designed for this case in mind, not for the normal "we have leaders who are a tad bit corrupt but things are otherwise ok"-case.

So every nation should be able to vote in whoever they please, but those voted in should not have the power to abolish democracy, human rights, etc. because it, is not their right fundamentally.

This is why one can be for democracy in a state and at the same time be against certain antidemocratic powers that will ignore, circumvent, undermine democratic guarantees like the ones mentioned. But the whole discourse is quite old already and had been well discussed by Karl Popper: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Should we tolerate the intolerant in a tolerant society? No. Not even if they are the majority.

Democracy is "dangerous" in that people who wish to secretly concentrate power can become elected; Once elected they figure out ways to remain "elected" forever.

Any democracy that fails to listen to the will of the people is a failed democracy; so inherently anything that's "installed" is immediately failed.

There's also a huge populism argument here too, things that sound good are often very _not_ good; and it's difficult to make that kind of call for yourself let alone making it for other people.

But we should not be in the habit of installing governments, that shit is colonialism v.2.

That's your problem right there. Many of these countries are either under direct occupation of the US or its allies, or having a puppet government which answers to them and not to the population in any significant sense (e.g. Jordan, Bahrain when it's not occupied by KSA). So when you write "you let", the subject is the foreign occupier.

The most important thing which should happen is for "you" not to be able to "let" or "not let" people manage their lives one way or the other.

> get a foothold in many of the muslim-majority states, the winner of a democratic process will very likely be what the west perceives as a religious fundamentalist group

On the contrary. This happens when, in that country, you have fundamentalist forces which have been trained, equipped and sometimes even ferried in by the US (e.g. via the CIA) or its allies. Examples: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya. There is also the effects of decades of trying to suppress left-wing forces in various places in the world, which leaves a vacuum which fundametalist Islamist forces may fill, as in the case of Iran.

When that's not the case, you get something like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen in the 1960s, Egypt in the 1950s, Iraq in the 1950s, Palestine in the 1930s etc.

Bottom line: When the US (and other Imperialist powers) don't intervene and manipulate things, the results are not what you're worried about.

> every single value that the west holds dear (including democracy itself).

Assuming "The West" means the EU states and the US, then I don't see how they hold democracy dear. They routinely prefer their national ruling classes' interests over democracy. We have even seen a recent example of this within Europe itself, where nobody opposed the Spanish Monarchy's suppression of Catalonian democracy.

Tell me, how long did you live in any Muslim-majority country, let alone the Middle-East? Because I’ve lived in, and regularly visit, one for the past 21 years.

They have as much capacity for democracy and “liberal Western values” (whatever that means) as the West.

I could flip your question around and ask why the US deserves democracy, since it inevitably elects a bunch of war-mongers that have wrought untold destruction across the world.

In Latin America, given the choice between 'a democratic process that will lead to socialism' or 'a regime that is authoritarian (with or without any "western liberal values" included)' the United States picks #2 basically every time.

- A lot of protests are anti-Islamic.

- Democracy is still bound by its constitution to protect the minorities, so a democratically elected fundamentalist government that is bound by a proper constitution can still be a viable regime.

> Which is it, and why?

It has to be the former, because the latter is unsustainable and builds further local opposition to liberal values equating them with shams covering Western imperialism in the service of commercial interests of foreign elites (because in that case that's exactly what they are, once you limit “liberal values” to those that can be enjoyed without giving substantive power to local opposition to the Western-imposed regime.)

Of course, the thing is, the actual motivation, not just the incidental result, is commercial imperialism in the Middle East—“liberal values” are an excuse, access to and influence over global markets for resources (particularly oil) are the actual critical concern.

One of Chomsky's oft-repeated facts is that Eisenhower commissioned a report while president, to figure out why is the US hated so much on "the Arab street" (but presumably including Iran, etc.)? The report concluded that the US is perceived to have installed and propped up authoritarians, and generally to have meddled in internal affairs and elections, and what's more that it's all pretty much true. I never found the report he's referencing, but you can easily find info about meddling, even on CIA's own website (pre-revamp), such as an internal CIA historian's favorable review of a history of their commission of the Iran coup.

I think this has to be taken into account when trying to explain the current dynamics.

For example, the PKK wants to establish a modern secular Kurdish state. Turkey, Iraq, and Syria are opposed because it would be in “their” territory (never mind the desire of the people in that territory for self-governance).

But why is so much of the “democratic” west unwilling to support the PKK? Because they want a socialist state.

Similarly, there is a large contingent of Palestinians that want to establish a modern secular and non-anti-Israel state, but you never hear about them and they never get a seat at the table—even though lots of people hate the PLO and Hamas—because they’re socialists.

The west really does prefer authoritarian rule with the minimum of western liberal values to democratic socialism with a full embrace of western liberal values. Profit above all else, so any attempt at socialism must be opposed even at the expense of those values.

I don't even know why they keep saying "U.S. values" - USA doesn't have values (no nation does) - it has policies and those policies are self-serving/pragmatic and change as per geopolitical needs. U.S. values are no more than Hollywood's populist marketing scheme. Countries basically use those "values" as shields/excuses when needed and set them aside whenever it is required/convenient to do so.

Has that dynamic changed in more recent years?