europe and the revolution

The intervention in Libya avoided a massacre. Irrespective of the doubts one may have on the actors, the act was justified and life saving. Those ignoring this reality are hypocrites who put their anti western allergies before universal values.
That said one must not forget the real lesson of this crisis. The west must stop investing in stability by supporting dictators sometimes by farming out its dirty work to combat illegal immigration and terrorism.
Secondly for democracy to succeed and take root in the Arab world the European Union has to seize this historic opportunity by opening up a political and economic process in which the new democracies are treated as equal partners. Surely participation in this partnership must be conditional on respect of human, women and minority rights.
But it should also offer concrete economic benefits and prospects in a re-united Mediterranean as well as a rethinking of migration policies designed to keep people out rather than circulating and sharing ideas. We should not forget that while Europe is getting demographically older, youth is blossoming on the southern shores.
The only long term solution to the migration of desperation is economic prosperity and openness coupled with social and environmental standards which in Europe we take forgranted.
Unlike Sarkozy I believe that the first step in this partnership is EU membership for Turkey. This will change the way we define ourselves as Europeans. Secondly we should start thinking of transcending the narrow confines of European identity on cultural/ethnic lines and start thinking in terms of cosmopolitan identities united by shared democratic and pluralistic values.
Facebook, twitter, satellite TV are redefining identities challenging the notion that democratic aspirations are a prerogative of the west.
The long term prospect could be different layers of shared sovereignity which gradually brings down the invisible wall which splits the northern shores from the southern shores of the Mediterranean.
Rather than sterile pacifism which is unable to stand up for great republican universal values which we inherited from the French revolution, this is the way forward for progressive politics.
I much fear that in the absence of this vision a counter revolution will prevail in the Arab world and the only option left to the young educated people of north africa will be that of emigrating to europe while new repressive movements and dictators will emerge to brutalize the people without a prospect.
Just as Israel and Hamas are in some ways interdependent, European xenophobes feed on the fear generated by islamic fundamentalism. The rise of Arab democracies makes a mockery of the narrative of the right wing in both Israel and Europe and undermines apartheid in Israel/Palestine as well as frontiers of fortress Europe.
Rather than the stuff of right-wing scaremongering Eurabia may be a worthwhile destination.