Israel Matzav

Egyptians would be better off sending Mubarak into exile

It might look like the Tunisians have it worst, lacking any way to punish the man who oppressed them for 23 years, while the Libyans can rest assured that Gaddafi will sooner or later either die or stand trial. The Egyptians, who can’t feel sure that sympathetic generals and judges won’t eventually let Mubarak retire to his seaside villa, are somewhere in between.

In fact, the real calculus is something like the opposite. Tunisians are lucky to have Ben Ali off their hands while they try to set up a new democratic system. And Libyans are stuck in a civil war in large part because of Gaddafi’s international prosecution.

No, this is not the position of Western human rights groups, which have been hailing the ICC’s pursuit of Gaddafi, urging on Egypt’s prosecutors and suggesting that Bashar al-Assad of Syria should be next. But the history of revolutions against dictatorships — in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East itself — tells a different story: The more immediate and uncompromising the justice for a dictator, the worse it is for the post-revolution regime.

Labels: Arab spring, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:57 AM