16/05/2015 - In the mediocre film The best defense is escape of the 1984 with Eddie Murphy, the US was at war with a hypothetical Iraq that had invaded a hypothetical Kuwait. The film choice of Iraq seemed politically correct because in the reality of those years Iraq was pampered by the US (scandal Irangate apart ...) in the Khomeini war against Iran.
No one, including Iraq, could have complained.
Sometimes though, History knows how to be more comical than movies. In the 1990, not caring about cuddling, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait for real, initiating an American intervention this time not only cinematographic and the First Gulf War.
We do not know if the director's clairvoyance was inspired by Allah or a blow to the ass, but we know that in the collective imagination Saddam quickly turned from a paladin of Western secularism into a dirty and bad monster. So bad that when the 9 2003 of April the Americans entered Baghdad to cut its biography and the Gulf War, nobody complained.
Under the effect of aoverdose of democratic conscience, all analysts in a transversal way judged the fall of the rais as a good and right thing. Apart from the trade antagonists and some rare exceptions, progressives and liberals embraced to celebrate the end of a dictatorship. Saddam had combined too many and the same disdain Liberal for his television hanging he was sacrificed on the altar of the democracy at all costs. If there had been debates and divisions during the military campaign, they all agreed on the end of a dictator.
What would have been of Iraq in the following decade, the blind also saw it. In light of the facts, the democratic satisfaction began to dilute slowly, until it became doubtful and even remorse over the years. In other words, to admit with due cynicism that Saddam's Iraq was better than today's, in geopolitics no longer seemed a blasphemy.
Unlike other mammals however, humans often have short memory. If you just need a piece of music to train a bear at the circus, not always the falls of the rais Arabs are enough to reflect.
When the so-called Arab Spring came out of the incubation in the 2011, it began to roll the drum of good thinking again. Instead of analyzing case by case the political scenarios of the countries involved in the street riots, the fever from democracy at all costs began to rise again fueled by puddles analysis, clichés and rock journalism.
In one month three columns of the Arab world fell: Bel Alì in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya.
If the satisfaction of the crowds in the countries concerned seemed understandable, the univocal satisfaction in the West was less justifiable, once again grappling with the refrain "When a dictator falls we are always on horseback". The reasoning could be logical for an ethical approach in virtue of the social problems of the countries in revolt, but could not be thought in terms of geopolitical equilibrium.
The example of Egypt is emblematic.
The blind applause from Western public opinion to the Tahrir uprising in the 2011 did not take into account the disturbing scenarios facing the country. Despite corruption and widespread malpractice, Mubarak had always been the continuer of the policy of opening up to Israel, which in the wake of Camp David had given the world an alternative to the repetition of the Arab-Israeli wars. Above all from thought frees itl, at least this credit to the Egyptian president was expected.
Fallen the dean Hosni from the Cairo warden, a certain West had even winked at the rise to power of Morsi, elected president with suffrage in 2012.
Beyond the political content, the feverish secularism that hypnotizes the West could not see the historical danger: with the rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood, for the first time a great Arab country was led by a party that at least on paper mixed heavily Islam and politics.
It took another whole year for the craving for democracy to deal with practical interests. Although started with the risk of uncovering other dangerous pots (the American ultimatum to Assad and its deflated defenestration), the 2013 seems to have brought good sense. Great progress has been made in Europe: one has even avoided protesting the military coup of Al Sisi.
We'll see if it will last. The 16 May of 2015 Morsi was sentenced to death, with postponement of the final decision. The convictions received for acts carried out by the president, were added to those for the previous conspiracies.
More than a judicial act, it is a political act. If anything was needed, it is yet another message of the current power system in Cairo.
Likely that the hands of democracy in Egypt, already very late, have made other shots back. Probably the phenomenon hastily baptized as the Arab Spring a few years ago, has today been coagulated forever.
It may seem cynical but in a strategic country of 80 millions of inhabitants constantly poised on a precipice, that this is bad, it's all to be demonstrated. Geopolitics, like Diplomacy, does not coincide with law.
We look forward to the next thud of a rais and the stupidity of the West to echo him.
Giampiero Venturi