From the President:
A Look at the World Outside DeKalb

by Jennifer Little

Let’s take a break this month from Georgia and DeKalb County politics and allow me to reflect on something more Americans ought to be concerned about: our foreign policy in the world’s most volatile region.

Who would have thought when the new year began that Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, a U.S. ally for nearly three decades, would be removed after massive street demonstrations and his military’s promise to honor the people’s demands for more democracy? Yet it happened, and the ramifications are something we all ought to think about. The Mubarak ouster sparked anti-government riots in Mideast countries ranging from Libya to Yemen.

Even the Islamic religious dictatorship of Iran is again coping with pro-democracy protests. What should the United States do amid all of this turmoil? The Wall Street Journal recently gave an answer we all should ponder regardless of party affiliation: “We suggest dusting off a copy of President George W. Bush’s second inaugural address. That speech, widely derided at the time as unrealistic and overreaching if not outright utopian, had as its signature argument the line that ‘it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.’”

Democratic and Republican administrations have traditionally distinguished between enemy dictatorships and pro-U.S. ones that our nation needs to protect our strategic and economic interests. To friendly authoritarians, President Bush advised: “To serve your people you must learn to trust them. Start on this journey of progress and justice, and America will walk at your side.”

What happens in Egypt is a pivotal moment for America and the entire Mideast. The fact that demonstrations by young Arabs can force a peaceful change (aided by the military, in Egypt’s case) is a healthy model that counters the radical Islamic message that violence is needed to oust the region’s pro-American regimes. But one indicator of how Egypt proceeds on a democratic path is whether the constitutional stipulation remains that political parties are banned from using religion as a basis for their politics.

It will also be instructive to see guarantees of freedom of religion as well as women’s right to vote, their ability to own property and to get a divorce. Will radical sharia law be winked at in some areas, which allows everything from “honor” killings to male and female segregation in public places? Or will Western-style rule of law prevail?

Events continue to move quickly in the Mideast. Let’s hope President Obama realizes that, as the leader of the free world, we have an obligation to press for more freedom and more human rights, but all in conjunction with advancing our strategic interests in the continuing war against Islamic extremism.