Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader
You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead — your next stop, the Twilight Zone.
—Rod Serling
By Barry Rubin
Ah, the gap between Middle East reality and official U.S. government-approved reality. Here are four examples:
–“Here is the next challenge for the citizen movements that are advancing from Tunisia to Syria — and eventually, surely, to repressive non-Arab states such as Iran and China. Once they have toppled the secret police, the revolutionaries need to draft constitutions affirming the rights of the individual.” –David Ignatius, Washington Post
Yes, on the way to the Middle East utopia do stop off and adopt a Bill of Rights. It made such a nice adornment to the Soviet Constitution. Who says the secret police have been toppled? Any really democratic state will need them to deal with Salafist terrorists, while the Islamist-ruled regimes to come will need them to suppress democrats, secularists, Christians, feminists, and those who will be called Zionist and imperialist agents.
How much faith these people have in elections! One balloting won by anti-democratic forces and you’re home free.
Continue reading The Middle East Policy Twilight Zone: Four Examples
(seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East
(Wiley), and The Truth About Syria
(Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas MediaTechnorati Tag: Middle East and Media Bias.
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