What the writer of this review, Christoper Farah,
doesn´t mention, and which many, many people
doesn´t know, is that almost all of Arab countries
are based former European colonies. There were few
attempts to create anything that can be describes
as democracy by the colonial powers. In most cases,
the old elite was used by the colonial rulers to
run things. What was dangerous to them, was dangerous
to the occupying country.

So, when these countries became independent, the
existing state bureaucracy was build on the premise
of keeping the country in question under foreign
rule. The members of armies and police were old
time servants of the colonial rulers, just like
in South Vietnam. They were trained to oppress
their own people, and had rarely been held
accountable for their unlawful actions.

There were no "nation building", little plans of
creating representative governments accountable to
the ordinary people of the countries. And when
these countries became independent, the former
colonial powers tried to bring in power and keep
in power people that they thought would help them
to serve their own interests in the country in
question and in the whole region. And United States
and the Soviet Union had no problem in trying to
get oppressive regimes to their side.

So, the western powers occupied large parts of
the Arab lands, created bases for oppressive regimes,
then when these emerged (sometimes with their help),
they supported them for decades, not caring about
democracy. And now the saintly Western democracies
demand democracy and reforms and etc, like all that
was before hadn´t happened at all. And few people
in the West seem to understand, that if they do want
to forget the past, the Arabs will not.

This isn´t ancient history. The members of the
American and British governments were almost all
adults when the Great Britain still ruled Qatar,
Bahrain, Oman, the Arab Emirates, Aden and Kuwait.
Before the World War II, the only independent Arab
countries were Egypt(independent in theory 1922, in
effect 1953), Iraq(independent in theory 1932, in
effect 1958), Jemen, Saudi Arabia(established in 1932)
and Transjordania(independent 1920).