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Check out Elliot Abrams' remarks here:
Israel Partisans Prefigure ‘Arab Spring’ at 2009 FPI Forum on ‘Democracy Promotion’
MR. ABRAMS: You know, dictators will use every argument they have; and, if the Iraq war is unpopular, they’ll say, well, see, that’s democracy promotion. But, I mean, opposition to the Iraq war is not why Hosni Mubarak won’t hold a free election. He will seize upon any excuse that happens to arrive that year. So, you know, actually, President Bush used to say that there were several examples in the Middle East of where Democracy might appear soon; and the three he used to mention were Iraq and Lebanon and Palestine, where he was hopeful of creating in all three places democratic models. And I think if you ask yourself where have there been free elections in the Arab world, it’s hard to get, first of all, beyond Iraq as a model-free election. So I think that is an excuse that tyrants use. I don’t actually think that it’s a reason, and here is a place where Ken [Wollack, NDI President and former AIPAC legislative director] and I disagree.
You use the term “enabling environment.” You know, when you go to Cairo and meet all smiles with Mubarak, and give a Cairo speech that actually plays down Democracy, I think that’s creating an enabling environment for Mubarak to continue what he has continued now for decades. It’s not pressure. I mean, I’ll put it a different way. During the last four years of the Bush Administration President Mubarak didn’t come to Washington because he was so annoyed at the pressure on human rights Democracy. He had a very happy visit to Washington now, which it seems to me is not necessarily a good thing for Democrats in Egypt.
Read full transcript here.
Uprooted Palestinian 
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