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Sorry, I don't see how any Tunisian could look at Iraq and say, "man, I wanna be like them!" Iraq may be a democracy at this point, but it's not a very good example of one. Internal factors in each of these countries played a much bigger role. If you can provide any evidence that the Tunisian protesters took to the streets because they looked to Iraq as a shining beacon, I would like to see it. Not to mention, why wait so long? Iraq has been a democracy since 2003-2004. What made Iraq in 2011 so special?
AAARRGGGHHH you are so frustrating.
What made them special in 2011 is the 2010 election that was completely safe under complete Iraqi security. A few months later Tunisia sparks the Arab revolts. Prior to this 2010 vote, Only the Shia and the Kurds voted. The Sunni boycotted. In the years that followed, Sunni and Shia Iraqis (and Sunni Arabs elsewhere) were proving that democracy will only bring misery and death as they slaughtered each other while American troops got the blame. But this changed in 2010 when they all voted together, without American security, with little to no violence. I have shown this in legth and detail already on this site in another thread with you.
You don't see it because you do not understand the Arab culture. You see countries with borders. They see the Islamic nation and the Arab world. When one Arab nation decided to invade and hate on the new Israel, they all decided to invade or support the Arab/Israeli War. When one militarily coup'd in the 1950s (during the era of independence), they all began to militarily coup and seat dictators. Is it so hard to see the Arab trend? The Arab civilization? When one proves that Arabs do not have to live under dictator rule and can embrace democracy, they are all going to lean and travel in the same direction. There is no coincidence in these trends. This is why I have argued for years that Iraq is going to change the world. Turkey is not Sunni Arab. Iran is not Sunni Arab. Indonesia is far removed from the Sunni heartland. Lebanon attempted and failed at democracy during the "Age of Independence" due to their tribal mixture. But every single one of these rebelling and emerging democracies in this region are Sunni Arab. Not Ottoman/Turkish, not Persian/Iranian and not Kurdish (They are perhaps the most screwed over among the Muslim tribes). Remove the lines on a map and you get one civilization full of little differences. Remove the lines within the USA and you get the same thing. The "nations" in the Middle East should not exist as they are and they know it.
Your idea of evidence only keeps you clinging to your fixed position so as to pretend that Iraq is a separate closed shadow nation unseen by the masses throughout the Middle East. I have produced plenty of statements made by Muslims throughout the region that have proven that Iraq is not invisible. And that plenty have pinned hopes upon a success because they know what it means. Even Iranian activists have been watching since 2003. If their neighbor can do it, then they can. They seem to know their culture better than you and they aren't even educated (for the most part). It is what it is. And with Saddam Hussein sitting on his Baghdad throne concretely enforcing the tired idea that Arabs deserve only dictators, the Arab nation was never going to get a successful story for anything better. The Arab nation needed a success story after decades of failure. Iraq was it. And as soon as they (Shia, Sunni, and Kurd) voted freely without outside security, they had it. Months later you wish to pretend that Tunisians were incapable of seeing what every individual in the region was watching? You are going to go as far as to pretend that each one of these nation states are oblivious to each other? That some how centuries of Arab tradition halted so that we can pretend our Iraqi protests had merit?
I don't know what else to state about this. It's extremely obvious and it meets with the cultural experts forecasts. And no, CNN and FOX was never going to get anybody to this truth. They are too stupid, deceitful, and morally decrepit. No reporter was ever going to deliver the big picture because small details of death sell papers. No politician was ever going to produce the bigger idea of the "War on Terror" because they are either too stupid or too ensalved to getting re-elected and big business payoffs (oil and such). But the Muslim people within this region have always tried to deliver truth. They have been voicing for democracy ever since the Europeans showed up, carved them up, drew unnatural borders and dropped in brutal babysitters to keep them behaved. The problem is that two World Wars and a Cold War (also of European creations) had the rest of the world focused elsewhere and after the Cold War we pretend that all this bottled up rage would simply go away. After 9/11 people's focus only saw the radicals and extremists above the modernists. But since Iraqis proved that Arabs can do it in 2010, each and everyone of these Arab nations are rising up and demanding truth. Tunisia was the spark. Even now, people like you deny them what they have been struggling for, one way or another, because you need to pretend that you know better about them then they? That their 1400 years old culture stops at an unnatural border somebody else created?
The truth has always been that the tribe sticks together. They all fell under one (sometimes more than one at a time) caliphate. If one gets colonized, they all get colonized. If one gets independence, they all get independence. If one gets a dictator, they all get a dictator. If one begins to produce extremists, they all begin to produce extremists because they all share the same religious heritage and are audience to the same rhetoric. If one gets democracy....... But protestors need the trend to stop around 2003 don't they?
And once again, you don't see it, because you don't understand this. This "War on Terror" was never only about Al-Queda. Al-Queda was just the easy target for Americans and Europeans that represented the entire region. If you have children and they grow up to join the military, they will be involved in this "War on Terror" one way or another because this was always generational and it spans an entire region. Morons in Europe bombing this or that in the name of an organization that don't even know them are just distractions.
C'mon man, why can't you see this? It might be that I study Middle Eastern culture, but there is a lot of common sense here.
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