Posted: 15 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST
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During this weekend's McLaughlin Group, Monica Crowley did her best to continue the fearmongering that we've heard out of her fellow Fox contributors about how the Muslim Brotherhood is going to take over the Egyptian government if they're allowed to have fair and free elections.CROWLEY: Remember that President Bush began this public discussion about economic political liberalization in the Middle East. You had the Iraq War. But understand something, that yes the regimes in the Middle East from Jordan's King Abdullah to Saudi King Abdullah, all across North Africa and the Middle East they have to be very worried about the impact of this. But remember that the only Arab democracy that we currently have in the region is the one built by the United States in Iraq.You've got to love these conservatives. They only like democracy when it's at the point of a gun or when we get the results we want from another country's elections. Otherwise we're content to keep their dictators propped up and bought off. Robert Dreyfuss has a really good article at Mother Jones on the Muslim Brotherhood, sans the fearmongering -- What Is the Muslim Brotherhood, and Will It Take Over Egypt?
So when we talk about democracy the way we talk about it here in the west has a fundamentally different meaning than it has in the Middle East and because you have so many devout Muslims across this whole region, if they are given the vote, the chances are you're not going to get a Jeffersonian democracy. John you are going to get very strong Islamists influences. Just as we saw in 2006 with a vote in Gaza. Remember we're hearing the same kind of talk now with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
We hear now that the Brotherhood would only get 20-30% of the vote. That's the exact same percentage we were told Hamas would get in Gaza and guess what? They got 70% of the vote. Tread very carefully here.
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