What you and I are watching unfold is history in the making. Of that there is no doubt. Popular revolutions all across the Middle East are taking place. In Egypt and Tunisia, they’ve already won their freedom. In places like Bahrain and Libya, brave souls fight on to secure theirs. The question I pose to our news agencies, our governments, to everybody is why didn’t we see this coming?
Supporting Egypt wasn’t the US’s and the West’s only blunder in the Middle East. Tunisia, too, was held up as a pillar of a stable society in the Middle East. It was frequently used as an example of what a country should be in the region. We couldn’t have been more wrong. We misjudged Bahrain, too. The opening to the Formula 1 seasoned was scheduled to be held in Bahrain in a few days time, but that obviously isn’t happening. How is it that a country with such a brutal regime is able to hold F1 races? Libya may be our greatest mistake of all, however. In 2004, when Gaddafi finally decided to scrap his nuclear weapons program, we greeted him with open arms. Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi, Nicolas Sarkozy, John McCain; they all held mettings with the Libyan tyrant, praising him for his progressive policies and his quest for “peace.” Hell, there’s even an Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights. (The irony is rich, I know). Our governments have been wrong about the Middle East for a very long time, and I’m sad to see that we supported these monsters for decades using billions of dollars worth of taxpayer dollars.
The worst crime of all, however, isn’t that our governments supported these dictators. Deplorable as that may be, worse still is the fact that we didn’t know about these brutal regiemes. I understand that government censoring was tight in many of these countries, but nothing is that secure. Why haven’t any of our news agencies publicised any of the stories about repression in the Middle East? Stories about people being jailed for years over speaking out against their government, stories of hundreds of people disappearing thanks to secret policies, stories of people being beaten to death by police forces, and other equally horrific stories are only coming out now. Before these uprisings, I’m ashamed to say that I knew next to nothing of the oppression occurring in Egypt and Tunisia. It is the job of journalists to provide us with information such as that. We rely on journalists to tell us the state of the world, and if journalists are willing to turn a blind eye to horrific stories like these, then I don’t know who to trust. Enough with your political banter and irritating pundits on both sides of the political spectrum. Just tell us the news, as it is. The real news, uncensored. Don’t turn a blind eye to certain parts of the world just because you think your audience won’t be interested. I understand that new agencies have to make money, but don’t curtail and censor the news just so you get the ratings you want. News isn’t meant to be a money making machine, it’s meant to keep the citizens of the world informed. So inform us.
The revolutions in the Middle East should serve as a wakeup call to all of us. It’s time we stop focusing on just ourselves and realise that there’s a world around us, and people are being abused and unjustly attacked every day. People are living without such basic freedoms such as freedom of speech, and we aren’t even hearing about it. The revolutions in the Middle East will succeed, and there’s nothing we can do to influence them either way. When such events happen again in another part of the world (for I have no doubt that they will), such as East Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, I can only hope that we are in a position to help. I can only hope that we will know of the situation of each country before they are caught in revolution. I can only hope that we will throw our full support behind the protestors, and I can only hope that freedom will once again succeed, as it has succeeded. Perhaps next time the birthplace of modern political freedoms can serve at least a small role, and perhaps next time it will make me proud to be an American rather than ashamed to be one.
