A-Infos (en) For real democratic change in the Middle East by Mazen Kamalmazauthor

The real story of totalitarian Arab nationalist regimes is not yet told fully by 
the Western liberal media. Let's talk, for example, about my country: Syria. We 
have been told that the Bush administration was constantly criticizing the 
Syrian regime since the fall of Saddam's regime because of the oppressive 
practices of this regime, and that the real intention of Bush's administration 
was to substitute this regime with a democratic one as part of its project to 
democratize the Middle East. While, in fact, the real reasons of that conflict 
were related to the administration's project to dominate the Middle East, 
starting with Iraq. As the Syrian regime felt the threat, its major focus turned 
towards keeping the American troops busy in Iraq. Its role in sustaining the 
resistance against the Americans there was vital, something that the Bush 
administration did not forgive at all.

Another cause that is openly stated by administration officials is Palestine and 
Lebanon, where the Syrian regime "supported" rhetorically the forces of 
resistance in order to use them later in bargaining with the Americans and 
Israelis. Bush himself, and other high ranking officials from his 
administration, continuously argued for the Syrian regime to change its conduct 
in order to ease the American pressure on it.

In this context, the Western media was able only to observe the oppression of 
the regime against the elite, failing even to see the dreadful impact of the 
regime's policies on the living conditions of the masses - the majority of 
Syrians. In fact, these conditions have never been as bad as they are. Prices of 
essential goods steadily increasing, increased unemployment and the rise of a 
new class that is organically rooted in the ruling bureaucracy, due to the 
large-scale privatization of industry and services, has led millions of ordinary 
Syrians into more poverty, misery and even hunger. These sufferings were simply 
neglected by the champions of democracy as they presented themselves, simply 
because they were the outcome of exactly the same neo-liberal policies that were 
forced everywhere in the name of capitalist globalization, leading to the same 
outcome everywhere.

That is in contrast to the noisy coverage of the regime's repression against a 
small group of elitist intellectuals and politicians who embraced neo-liberalism 
as the only expression of freedom, which means considering US pressure or even a 
direct invasion of our countries as the main power that will force real 
democratic change.

In fact this helps to reveal the real meaning of democracy as preached by Bush 
and Rice over the whole previous eight years, the rule of a satellite elite, or 
a friendly one, as the new rulers of post-Saddam Iraq were found to be less 
pro-American than thought before. The fact that Bush is going to leave the White 
House doesn't mean that this is going to change. In fact, the Syrian regime, and 
even Saddam and Al-Qaeda itself, were at times allies to America, that was in 
the middle of the cold war when the Soviet Union was there to offer these 
regimes political support and arms supplies. This can mean only one thing, which 
was right from the beginning: that real democratic change means only the 
liberation of our peoples and that this has nothing to do with the US domination 
over oil sources in our region. That the conflict between the oppressive powers, 
either local or foreign, "nationalist" or global, over domination isn't related 
to the struggle of our peoples, including Syrian and Iranian, for freedom and 
justice, for better living conditions.

And that the only part that has real a interest in total freedom is these 
masses, the real victim of the policies of the regime and the Western champions 
of globalization at the same time. And that even the creation of a multi-polar 
globe, in contrast to the total control of US now, doesn't mean the 
democratization of our world, it only means that the pie will be divided between 
more than one greedy power, not that it will be justly divided.

Mazen Kamalmaz
Syrian Activist
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