We the Cambodian People

By Khmer Democrat, Phnom Penh
Power to the Cambodian People Series

Maybe the U.S. in Cambodia will also pause to reflect upon the wisdom of its policy and mission in Cambodia in coddling this Hun Sen regime and in funding the military. Democracy and freedom are what the Cambodian expect of the U.S., not arms and a rerun of Cold War politics, 21st-century style. Excerpts with my emphasis:

We the Egyptian People
Roger Cohen
The New York Times, February 4, 2011

CAIRO — There are a bunch of gated exurbs on the fringes of this sprawling city with names like Beverly Hills and Mayfair. They are the retreats of the super-rich who’ve thrived on connections to the Mubarak [Hun Sen] family.

[…] And, how was all that water arranged in a nation where farms aren’t getting enough for irrigation and subsidies for beans and bread keep the masses fed and anyone making over $100 a month is lucky? Oh, the owner smiled, my good friend Ahmed el-Maghraby sees to that.

El-Maghraby, the former minister of housing, is among those high-flying government officials who’ve now been named and shamed by the new government of Hosni Mubarak. In a desperate attempt to stem rage, Mubarak’s latest brigade has frozen the bank accounts of several former ministers and cronies from the puppet National Democratic Party [think, Heng Pov, associates of Sar Kheng in the corruption “clean up”]. No matter that most of these officials shipped their fortunes to Switzerland long ago: The great clean-up, it is said, has begun.

Egypt’s not alone in seeing the gulf between its wealthy and the rest widen; that’s a global trend [CPP Cambodia]. But in a country of 83 million where almost 30 percent of the population is still illiterate, and the big bucks have often depended on an entrée to Mubarak’s son, Gamal, or his circle, the pattern has been particularly inflammatory.

I’ve heard many complaints in the tumultuous streets these past few days, but no words reappear as often as “corruption,” “stealing” and “thieves;” and nothing galls as much as a system of state-sponsored lawlessness where right and wrong is determined not in the courts but in Mubarak’s [Hun Sen’s] head.

Egypt had a Western-backed free-market economy run by a family with contempt for freedom: That’s problematic. It puts the global forces concentrating wealth into overdrive in the service of the chosen few.

“There’s no accountability, no independent judicial authority, no oxygen,” one Western diplomat told me. “Nobody knows the parameters. What system are you being arrested under? And if a judge does happen to order your release, they re-arrest you.”

[…]Without the transparency and independent authorities that would come with accountable and representative government, theft will just take new form. Somebody else will be arranging for those lawns to get watered for the croquet while farmland lies parched.

But 10 days into Egypt’s uprising, it’s still unclear whether Mubarak is ready to make way for that sea-change in the Arab world. One thing is clear: His time, like that of Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, has passed.

All of this raises a question: In the name of what exactly has the United States been ready to back and fund an ally whose contempt for the law, fake democracy and gross theft flout everything for which America stands?

There are several answers. To stop the jihadists, who threaten American lives; to ensure the security of another ally, Israel; to spread free markets, however distorted, from which U.S. corporations benefit; to secure stability in the most dangerous of regions. Hey, the world’s an imperfect place. Sometimes the best strategic choice is just avoidance of the worst. It wasn’t only during the Cold War that our thugs had their place. [In Cambodia: to counteract China’s power, to protect Chevron, to whitewash history of US carpet bombings by propping up DC-Cam and Youk Chhang, to fight terrorism by funding all projects to do with Cham Muslims, etc.]

I understand all these arguments. As our thugs go, Mubarak’s been solid. But such views have endured through a persistent blindness: The unwillingness to see that the Middle East has evolved; that American hypocrisy is transparent to everyone; […]

In Tahrir Square, the mini-republic that is the Egyptian uprising’s ground zero, I ran into Seif Salmawy, the managing director of a publishing company. He was smiling; I asked why. “Suddenly we are human beings,” he said. “We think we can decide and that what we decide has worth and that we have some value as humans. Before there was the president, the police, the army and their money: We the people were just there to serve them.”

“We the people.” Isn’t that how good things like “the general welfare” begin?