How Not to Promote Freedom in Africa

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Two inspiring victories for liberty this month, in Sudan and Tunisia, were achieved with no help from America's multi-million dollar democracy industry; one might say despite it. In other countries, ranging from Algeria to Zimbabwe, passing by the Ivory Coast and Africa's longest-lasting unresolved colonial conflict, Western Sahara, the contribution of our "democracists" to freedom's cause has been zilch.

The regime of Omar el Bashir's Congress Party, based on Arab Muslim tribes from the Nile valley to the east and north of Khartoum, has been scolded by successive U.S. administrations for its violent repression of the southern Sudanese, who predominantly belong to sub-Saharan tribes that were evangelized by British missionaries a century ago. Bashir himself is under indictment by the International Tribunal for crimes committed against Muslim groups in Darfur, in Sudan's northwest.

In Tunisia, the regime of Zine Ben Ali, has for 23 years received American support as a partner for progress and more recently against terrorism.
It would be quite respectable to say -- it was first said by John Adams -- that there is very little we can do in these remote and little-understood countries, each of which has its own discrete historical complexity. To proclaim our commitment to freedom, however, spend a lot of money saying so, and then watch like morons as freedom movements go right by us, is at the least embarrassing; at the worst, it fuels anti-Americanism and gives openings to our enemies, who as it happens are usually also enemies of freedom.