Peracchio: The awakening of Arab democracy

Adrian Peracchio, a former foreign correspondent and editorial writer for Newsday, is now a lecturer at C.W. Post College's Hutton House Lectures program.

It's not all about us.

That's what Americans - and certainly the White House - must accept as they view the gripping human drama that's unfolding in the tumultuous popular uprising in Egypt.

Above all, this is a revolt by Arabs against their corrupt and oppressive Arab overlords, not an attack against the United States and all it stands for. Quite unlike the viciously anti-American rants of the mobs in Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, the banners and placards waved by pro-democracy protesters in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Yemen have targeted their own oppressive leaders, not the United States and its policies. The Arab upheavals represent the convulsive manifestation of a desperate yearning for democracy and self-determination suppressed for too long.

On Long Island, as everywhere else in the United States, Arab immigrants and supporters of Israel alike watch these revolts in fascination, with a mix of hope and fear. There's great concern among them about the consequences of this historic upheaval, and that concern is justified.

The ripples of the revolt in Cairo and Alexandria - and of the Tunisian uprising that preceded and inspired it - have begun to spread to other parts of the Arab world. They may well transform the political landscape of that critical region in unpredictable and discomfiting ways that will have serious repercussions for U.S. foreign policy and Israel's future - and even affect our daily lives.

Oil prices may surge for a time, threatening our still fragile economic recovery. The backups of container ships and oil tankers in the Suez Canal - or the possible closure of that crucial waterway - would disrupt international trade. Wall Street and other markets would react to the uncertainty.

Israel may find itself more isolated than at any time since its creation in 1948 if its peace treaty with Egypt collapses. U.S. influence in the Middle East, predicated for so many decades on the support of autocratic regimes to maintain stability at all costs, may lose much of its former potency. Arab democracy, if attained, is likely to bring to power new governments in which Islamist parties will play a significant role.

For all that, the overriding significance of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings is their potential to bring about an unprecedented Arab awakening, a political renaissance that's more than a century overdue.

So far, it's an awakening to the possibility for an Arab democracy, born of intensely domestic concerns. But what was remarkable in the TV coverage of the massive demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria was the absence of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" placards - the visual mainstays of Islamist demonstrations in Tehran in 1979 and even today.

In Cairo, the signs were plain: "Mubarak, Get Out!" "We want bread, democracy." Despite repeated prodding by Western journalists in street interviews, demonstrators never evinced any desire for an Islamic theocracy or the imposition of strict Sharia, the Islamic law.

The contrast between the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and the Egyptian revolts of today could not be starker, despite superficial similarities. Yes, in both cases a popular rebellion brought down an autocratic overlord with deep ties to the United States. But in Iran, the top-down revolt was planned in advance and orchestrated carefully by exiled clerics with a clear ideological agenda - the creation of an Islamic theocracy. Not so in Egypt or Tunisia, where the bottom-up revolts were utterly spontaneous, without any clear leadership or political agendas other than the overthrow of a despised leader and the eventual creation of a democratic system.

What's been evident in the painstaking caution with which President Barack Obama and his foreign policy team have reacted to the Arab crisis is the realization of how little leverage the United States now has to influence events in that region. The White House caution is justified, born of the moral dilemma the United States faces: It has preached democracy for decades, but no president has made much of an effort to persuade or pressure an Arab despot to move toward democratic reform. It was easier and more pragmatic to support autocrats, so long as they could guarantee stability, oil, and the repression of radical Islamist activists.

The one time when democracy was reluctantly fostered, by the administration of President George W. Bush in the Palestinian elections of 2006, the White House rued the result: a landslide victory for Islamist Hamas. And when Bush decided to push democracy at the point of the gun in the disastrously misguided invasion of Iraq, the results were ambiguous at best, bringing about a rise in anti-Americanism across the Arab world.

Now Obama has a chance to use what leverage he has in Egypt - $1.3 billion in yearly military aid is not to be sniffed at - to persuade the Egyptian army to ease out the despised Hosni Mubarak, assume temporary control and work with credible leaders arising from this crisis to set up democratic elections that will lead to a better government.

Obama already has accepted the unavoidable participation of the Muslim Brotherhood in the political process and a future government, so long as the Islamist group renounces violence and pledges support for a democratic process - something the Brotherhood already has done and publicly reiterated Thursday, though no one can be certain the shadowy group will live up to its commitment if the revolt takes a more radical turn in the coming days.

In ultimately siding with pro-democracy activists and working to ease Mubarak out of power, Obama not only would help lift ordinary Egyptians out of a life of constant misery - most live a hand-to-mouth existence on less than $2 a day - but he would demonstrate that the American commitment to bringing democracy to the Arab world is not a hollow pretense. Even though the Arab upheavals are not all about us, we as Americans can gain some degree of respect in the Arab world - and even some self-respect - in how we respond to this crisis.