HOPE FOR MORE INTELLIGENT ACTS AND RESPONSES

Do not point your nose too high, do not swell your chest too much, do not boast too loudly, do not be puffed up, let not your ambitions be excessive or take a wrong direction, remember you have done nothing at all, you are just the same member of society you were last week, you are on no higher plane, deserve no new consideration, and will get none and nowhere.

These words !!! How pertinent and timely would they be, pronounced by different Arab leaders and their regimes in power, to all of the uprising populations and youth in their countries. In every one of the Arab countries, Libya Syria and Yemen, Bahrain Jordan and Morocco, even the very repressive kingdom of Saudi Arabia, just a few with ongoing violence and total disdain from the rulers toward their own populations seeking freedom, dignity and well deserved change.

Those of us who live in the developed world are becoming increasingly disturbed by this capacity to do one another harm. We are less tolerant of violence and the behaviour of repressive regimes toward their uprising populations. We are totally uncomfortable with ideologies that demonise whole populations, justifying their abuse or outright destruction.

BUT the evidence of change is undeniable. Most readers will have viewed pictures and documentaries of brutal violence, in which whole towns turned out, as though for a carnival, only to demand more freedom and dignity. To be brutally repressed.

One would have hoped for a different response from the different leaders and regimes in all or most countries, I would have surely hoped for a very different response and approach from the young Syrian leader, any dialogue trying to understand and accommodate would have been smarter and by far more fulfilling, than repeating the same rituals of brutal killings, exercised by his predecessor decades ago, or by his contemporary friends in Libya and Yemen.

The history of these Arab countries will become even more annoying and difficult to contemplate, and future generations will marvel at the ways that we, too, failed in our commitments to the common good of these populations. We will embarrass our descendants by not upholding historic moral progress.