In Kuwait, Who are We Rooting For?

The Washington Post yesterday had an interesting article about Kuwaitis (including many women) using text messaging on their cell phones to organize sudden underground protests. What the article failed to mention was the irony that the current Kuwaiti dictatorship was placed back in power by the U.S.! Of course, Shrub and co. would have us believe that the current regime-changes in the Middle East are all inspired by the altruistic hopes that them dagnab A-rabs will convert to more democratic ways. But what could have been simpler than to simply hold elections in Kuwait after the liberation? The current royal family could have been held in Guantanamo pending torture charges while the U.S. left the country in the hands of the phone-messaging democratic mobs. In this case, the U.S. could have had its "bastion of democracy" in the Middle East with the sign of a pen.

Perhaps them wacko physicists are right and there truly are separate universes out there. On the one hand, we have the idealistic universe of the Quiet American, willing to do anything to make the world safe for civilization (=Christianity =Capitalism). In this world, Kuwait has been rescued from a terrible Hitler-wannabe who is later pulled out of his hole in the sand; the dust-speckled bearded poppy-growers of Afghanistan have been conquered by blue-eyed Green Berets.

But in a parallel universe, we watch fundamentalist regimes (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt) being propped up by American money and intelligence, a growing fundamentalist movement in Afghanistan (the Taliban) and Iraq, both of whom rose to power based on U.S. support, and sky-rocketing drug-exports that seem to coincide with the first American boot touching down in a country (e.g., Panama and Afghanistan.)

So who are we supposed to root for? The Kuwaiti dictators and their henchmen that our tax dollars and military placed in power? Or those mad mobs of middle-eastern text-messagers dodging secret police as they insist on radical notions such as female suffrage?