omissions st no one of your. cross talk is coming up here on r.g.p. but first a look at today's top stories in egypt tens of thousands have gathered in the center of cairo angered by president mubarak's latest refusal to step down that's despite him vowing to hand some power to the vice president omar sunni in a televised address. russia's foreign minister sergei lavrov says moscow is willing to cooperate with tokyo but lines of claims from the crew real islands this comes as the japanese foreign minister entered talks with his counterpart on his visit to the russian capital. and sweden's under fire for its controversial wiretapping law

slammed as the most far reaching eavesdropping plan in europe wiki leaks cables on the country's close cooperation with the us suggest it was adopted under american pressure. coming up peter the bell and his gas discuss why the u.s. is set on the promotion of global democracy and why it yields unintended and mostly negative consequences heated debate is coming your way in crosstalk. and you can. still. love me and welcome to cross talk and peter lavelle even under the worst kinds of oppression people all around the world demonstrate time and again they want freedom and democratic institutions and who's to say what kind of democracy people should live under and does one size fit all. you can.

discuss the many faces of democracy i'm joined by lease mithun washington he's a senior editor at the weekly standard in well in for a we go to eleanor and he's an award winning investigative journalist and in springfield we cross to david men because he's an assistant professor of public policy at the university of massachusetts amherst and another member of our cross talk team you know on the hunger gentlemen this is cross talk to when you can eat that means you can jump in anytime you want i to go to allan first i'd like to ask you a very provocative question i hope it'll get lee to react to that too what you're about to say is let's for its face a democracy democracy promotion coming out of the west particularly the united states is to serve american foreign policy interests and to protect its allies promote its allies and punish its enemies and ideology doesn't really have a whole lot to do with it it's a cover. god well it's

the west like all big powers is anti democracy so is russia so are the rulers of russia so are the rulers of china and those of the us as well. russia and china are more direct about it and saying that they oppose democracy including. you know what i would say different lives the difference is he meant to say russia doesn't promote democracy russia doesn't promote democracy it's saying you have to develop your own and yes that's right so i'm not yes that's russia's that's certainly not an anti-democratic country not by any extreme go ahead oh well they were impressed . in the sense internally i go in now and i had please please let me put it russia russia repressed russian represses dissent internally as this china and the way the us does not do the us is agree with me we are gnashing about western democracy promotion interest but internationally emotionless

internationally the us is the main but but but internationally the us is the main suppressor an opponent of democracy by finding a series of repressive regimes egypt is only one of them egypt is getting attention now but it's not even close to being the worse the other day i was talking to a survivor of the terror island do you think that the obama it is frustrating when you think you watch an administration and we were recently released and we actually let you have bridge are you going to let alan what do you get something out of me to answer the question of life in the coverage of. we we were watching the coverage of the uprising in egypt and he asked about how many have been killed there and said well it's about three hundred or more and he said that's that's nothing in indonesia in where they occupied timor in ahci and pop what they have murdered hundreds of thousands the military has with us support hundreds of thousands of people who are demanding democracy this is the us practice overseas internally the

us was compelled by popular movements over the years to give internal political democracy and to refrain finally from internal political assassination but extra only oversees the us has not been compelled to stop that maybe tunisia in egypt with their uprisings could be the beginning of this a revolt of the arab revolt of the client states the beginning of a movement to stop the u.s. backing regimes that kill civilians ok and we you want to jump in there are right right from the beginning go right ahead. well i mean if the point is to go back throughout the course of the twentieth century u.s. history. and u.s. foreign policy and u.s. strategy around the world then i'm certain quite certain that alan has a point but one of the things that we're seeing or i would agree part of the alamo one of the things that we're seeing in washington right now with the obama administration and with the bush administration before it is that there is a lot of internal debate here how much we should be supporting democracies and i

think that we should be supporting democracy even if it might not necessarily be in the immediate u.s. interest and this is part of the debate that's going on in the white house in the state department right now and it's part of what happened in the bush administration as well so no i think just to say that the u.s. automatically suppresses democracy around the world for its own interest of we're looking at egypt right now no it's preposterous this is precisely what is not happening there would be no debate in the white house nor in the state department if the u.s. just automatically sought to deprive suppress democracy we don't even know what's going on in egypt is actually protests for democracy we don't exactly know why people are on the streets but there are large parts of the bush would rather the obama administration which is i don't support this these demonstrations right david we haven't heard from you well you know what you do david we have in the u.s. you are using the weapons to to egypt the u.s. is sending the weapons to israel the u.s. is sending the weapons to indonesia the u.s. says is backing the dictatorship in respect to stand the u.s.

this batman or is this really pressure and along the i wish there's not how do you . what matters is not the internal debate what matters is the actions the actual triggers that are pulled that blow people's brains out that's what the u.s. is doing and it doesn't automatically elicit i think otherwise i mean if you mean we haven't even naming his david. theall job in washington go ahead they do not sell it democracy i actually did they did alan jones david. but it's more. than that i mean you know that there are basic i mean if we want to really be as simple as we can in washington there's there's a trade off between two sorts of policies one that seems to serve our ideals and other that seems to serve other kinds of interests and and allan is right that oftentimes u.s. policy runs in the direction of stability and stability is often perceived as supporting more repressive regimes because the more people have to mark receive the

more they're likely to to disagree on you know what the government's aims can be it but i think that also has a point that what we're seeing at the moment is the obama administration not trying to suppress what's emerging attorneys are in egypt they're walking a very delicate line and even though it's very easy for the administration to go along with you know the old stability path wanting to keep friends in power even if they're not the most budding democrats in fact what is happening right now is both in tunisia and egypt the administration is trying to sort of step back a little bit and see what kind of leadership emerges and so if if the policy is more or less legal you know backing is the politics of the egyptians and tunisians . well they they have been but i agree with you i mean exactly as we're hearing that a lot of people used to be able to live if if you live in

a country where the secret police can kick down your door at night and drag you away that's not stability but you know i totally i stoutly if you're without it i was in egypt the u.s. cannot invade and says i don't think that this so the u.s. is not i'm. going to create a secret always very old and i'm going to go out of our support when you say to do in your head over each other and if you listen to tom handed over each other all right lee i'd like to go to you i mean what you said i find very interesting is that really so much improvement in the the american white house right now because there. every indication they want somehow to support suleyman and the army that's going to be the savior stability egypt will keep its international obligations and you know what i'm talking about i mean it seems to me the democracy issue really isn't there they just they have this dilemma and they want it solved and they have one partner there and they also are big right in the dilemma is not merely the dilemma is not merely between people in the white house and state department who support democracy and those who want to promote stability what we're calling

stability here but the idea is we don't know exactly what it looks like in egypt what sort of institutions are there i mean look you can certainly blame mubarak for tearing apart whatever sort of centrist opposition there might have been to him but the fact remains we don't know what there is without mubarak so i think this is part of the debate as well i think the white house definitely would like to find some sort of democratic keller's in the opposition where precisely they are we don't know and evidence of that is they've looked at mohamed el baradei who has precisely no constituency in egypt nonetheless because he's a known yeah a medley why there is just wait why i sternly we're asking about the egyptians is there some kind of object david if i can go to you can't we just step back finally and step back and watch what the people do on the ground let them do what they want with me the most rational climatic thing to do right now instead of saying well who should we should be backing who we shouldn't be backing and judging candidates eccentrics enter go ahead. well i think that to some extent that's exactly what the

administration is doing i mean certainly and to nature that's what's going on the i mean we don't see how the interference on the part of the white house in terms of what's going to emerge in the emerge in tunisia is you know ongoing kind of democratic process and i think that there's certainly a tendency to want to let the egyptians do just that and that's why the protests have gone on in part for as long as i have that being said i mean i think that what is you know the real issue in situations like this is that every country has are a variety of interests and needs with respect to foreign policy and so with egypt and the united states all sorts of other things that it's concerned about so at the same time that i think the the inclination at the moment is indeed let's sit back let's see what emerges let's see you know what the egyptians want of course it's reasonable for people to be concerned about you know what what happens can there be

a stable democracy you know what should the role be and i think that the administration really has a lot of hard questions to ask itself and it isn't as simple as they're against democracy therefore it's a marker see or they can simply set back step back and you know sort of not think about what they have to do in the long run now and if i go to you before we go to the brits and you like you know i didn't know any i could not tell we just why don't the world just let the egyptians alone leave the egyptians alone leave the tunisians alone leave the people of palestine alone leave the people of lebanon alone and let them decide their fate and then we can deal with them yes that would be the best course but that would involve. it would not involve in action it would involve reversing the status quo namely the u.s. would have to cut off the los alamos labs and president of the united states to its to its to its strength to its to achieve any of our out there who has a ring of that for you is there any reason why it had to do with a string of repressive to a string of what is not alan was client state and really interest of the united states of america it's. go ahead i am not i am not out watching out for the

interests of the united i am not watching out for the interests of the united states of america or not i'm trying as he was and being that i want to speak to sound and say what i'm trying to say how nice it would bind i'm prone to trying not to try to get him into being then i just say that we should not be killing innocent people we should not be torturing innocent people i am opposed to the u.s. government i am an opponent of the us government and i am pointing out that the u.s. government if it's going to let people make their own choices will have to go around cutting off those who have been killing them that would mean entering all military jump in here gentlemen we're going to go to liberation right now ace after a short break we'll continue our discussion on democracy stay with our feet. and.

we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from the realms of. the future are covered. the official location. i pod touch from the samples to. life on the. video on demand. an r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. machine. and.

welcome back and sometimes i'll remind you we're discussing different forms of demand. but first let's see how russians define the word democracy and the law of supply and demand the world is now witnessing demands for granted democratic changes but such moves raise questions about how democracy can be achieved and under what circumstances the public opinion agency a lot of sun also questions how they see democracy so tonight percent link this form of government with economic prosperity in a country thirty eight percent seem prayed it was speech and religious exercise fundamental to democracy maybe associated with low fullness and direct elections the values of democracy have deep roots in western culture but do they really serve the interests of all. all right let's continue our discussion on the micro see and

i would like to go to david i mean one of the big issues that we have obviously when we're talking about this issue is islam and democracy and in the number of examples that we've seen through history where the west just claims that the islamic world is not ready for democracy we had vice president suleiman in egypt say that as much in the last few hours ok and a lot of people in the in muslim lands would say you deny us democracy you don't recognize our elections and in this sends a message out throughout the the muslim world that democracy is only for them but we can't have it and they'd support dictators to oppress us i mean that's a pretty obvious historical lineage that you can get from this narrative. three quick points on this first of all again i think that the issue with respect to the united states and the west is a little more complex in that what often happens is that. there will be

a lot of talk about democracy promotion and real efforts to do so but then there can be fear about you know what sort of government will emerge and it's not as simple as active suppression we could like but that more second point islam is clearly compatible with democracy you know we have muslim democracies in turkey and into nature in lots of places it's a false dichotomy this is probable stablished the third and more subtle point which goes back to the poll that you just showed the real issue here is that i think that a lot of. people don't agree on what the word democracy means you know even here in the united states we talk about democracy promotion we are advocating a variety of different strategies and programs so islamic democracy russian democracy you know sometimes these terms can be oxymorons but more often the problem is that we don't exactly know what we mean when we say democracy and then you know countries sort of disagree on what this kind of promotion refers to you know but it's very if i go to alan i mean if we there's if we look at all through

the twentieth century and in since the cold war you know if it's latin america if it's the the muslim world you know it's all over the world i mean it gets down to geo political interest i mean again it's very devoid of ideology i mean we all remember. you know what happened in with i india and she lay and things like that again in the more recent ones we have algeria in one thousand nine hundred one where people didn't want to recognize their democracy their democratic will and we all know what happened after that i mean again it and i'll agree with what we heard you know what does this mean this word democracy mean but should we disrespect how it's played out on the ground and the an expression in the muslim world since what this is part of the newspaper what we're doing on this program today. well the question of islam and democracy is just an excuse it's a rationale that's used to justify invading and backing terror and in muslim countries you know in two thousand and six for example in the west bank and gaza they had a parliamentary election hamas won the next day president george w.

bush gave a press conference where he was asked about the elections and people should go and read the transcript he basically said yeah it was a fair straight up election then soon after that the us weighed into to crush the results of that election those weren't muslims doing it that those were the people of other religions who run the government of the united states it doesn't matter it doesn't really matter how you define democracy what matters is you have regimes were people can speak freely where they're not dragged away for for protesting the u.s. it doesn't matter what kind of programs you have the u.s. policy a democracy promotion programs the u.s. policy for years has been selling because we had like a whole lot. else out what excuse me what amala el salvador honduras hand them democratic speeches with one hand and hand the rifles and electroshock equipment with the others it's the actions that matter not it's the actions that

matter not the words and also democracy itself is often overrated people think that with democracy i think things will happen nothing will necessarily happen it's only it only gives you some space if you take advantage of it there are democracies that carry out horrible internal repression like in tunisia and colombia democracies that commit some of the world's worst aggression like the us in israel and there's almost no connection between democracy in the alleviation of hunger which and. horrible poverty and mass disease which are really the worst problems of the world and in terms of the u.s. attitude to. democracy the us attitude toward democracy over the years has been very clear they wish democracy on their enemies and they they wish secret police for their allies and if democracy can be used in their allies to maintain stability then they're all for it but it's just it's just a tactic we should have

a world order in which the murder laws are enforced in which the bush doctrine isn't forced george w. bush's doctrine said if you arm a terrorist namely someone who kills civilians you are a terrorist i agree with president bush entirely but by his definition he himself was a terrorist as is the current us government because when you're arming regimes that kill civilians you're breaking the law politicians can still get away with that today there are no international institutions the work of the international criminal court won't step in and arrest mubarak or arrest obama so the people have to do it themselves and that's what they're starting to do in the streets of egypt this is very inspiring ok it's not just a lesson for the arab world this is a lesson for americans for people everywhere stand up for your rights revolt and stand up if your government is depriving others of their rights ok me media want to reply to that yeah i mean you know i think that that's the that's right what you've just said i mean that is to say it's important that. you know we observers people

in the media really pay attention to when people in countries who know say they've really had enough for their government and that can be that can happen whether the technical form is democracy whether it's a dictatorship like in egypt you know whether it's a monarchy in some of the other arab countries the reason that i think it really is important that we think about a concept like democracy and try to unpack it and see how it's understood is precisely that oftentimes whether something is you know technically democracy that is representative democracy or monarchy or something else matters a lot less than the degree. of ability that citizens have to speak up for themselves and i think that it's precisely something like to nature or egypt today or eastern europe in the in the one nine hundred eighty s. . you know holds lessons for when governments ought to step back and let people

decide for themselves what they want what do you think about that we i mean i mean what is the what is the score card here i mean how well is the united states done in democracy promotion this way since the end of the cold war here because a lot of people when we see all of these exceptions that we have or examples that we've mentioned it looks like your pockets he doesn't it. i'm not sure with what looks like a pocket well remoting we know i'm not denying the outcome of elections they're going to limit the legitimacy of some political parties i mean if you like as below zero in libya in lebanon it's the same the largest is a little entity the single largest one even christians vote for it as we all call it which is not legitimate and and when when we have politicians there that to support american policy everybody's really happy but when hezbollah uses the the constitution and legalities they're called you know how are these going to work we'll know precisely what have we done. well you know i mean you don't want to do

you know everyone is terrified of dealing with has not even though their democratically elected well has got a lot of the answer they were you know has over the go ahead. i know they did they didn't know what it was they overthrew they overthrew them in the sense that through a democratic parliamentary procedure a parliamentary maneuver of the kind that occurs all the time in parliamentary systems has no that was just on a tear has an aide on just got a low interest joke. out of their head in his prime ministers why has he only did that and the us and the us to announce the us denounce that as a model of seeing thirty was zero zero election even though the love of the earth now is that created this may harlem is because they were not up a lot is a rock through a lot in that system three percent of your eyesight in america and another one says forgotten that doesn't mean what they say is right or center of the boat god what utter nonsense it's anti anti american government it's anti-american government

policy so you're making the mistake you don't know what happened you don't know what you're talking about guarding lebanon that's like saying something about that's like someone who that's like someone who was attacked saying that someone who was attacking mubarak is attacking the egyptian people that's nonsense let's look at let's look at another example the case of haiti we're talking that has nothing to do something about what happened as knocking has nothing to do in your eyes you don't understand later on he says you don't know what happened i respect what you want to do is see that as a very serious you know you said it was very much either you or you that i noticed the strange who leave these gentlemen let's go to david in springfield the gentlemen after which the jumper and you know it's he can't return to haiti but baby doll he's of all the the former dictator trying his back now in the u.s. is saying can't return in country after country when it's not convenient the u.s. simply knows the results of democratic votes or in the recent case of lebannon it we got the result right gentlemen but i'm going to jump me in gentlemen i'm going

to have you know david you wanted me to say clearly in haiti billy's allen did go ahead and. really think i mean you know i i appreciate the passion of fortressed saying. you know at the end of the day it's too simple a description i mean you know would that american policy in this this is this is always something that you know it's easy to say would that american policy were so uniform and all powerful that it could actually you know have a unified well abroad if you were think you know where policy is play and uniform. it is it isn't at all you know i mean and look i mean i'm i mean as an academic i'm neither staked in the system or particularly you know stake in anything else that's not the right. time i think one thing we have crews on the proven on this program there are all good democrats many thanks to my guest today in washington springfield well of course and thanks to our viewers for watching us here or to see you next time remember last time.

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