Politics & Power Quote by Donald Evans

A sentence like this isn’t really aimed at Moroccans. It’s aimed at everyone watching the U.S. perform its ritual of polite affirmation in the Middle East and North Africa: praise the “trajectory,” validate the “institutions,” keep the relationship warm. Donald Evans, speaking as a Bush-era public servant, uses the safest possible vocabulary of democracy talk. “Development” is the key tell - it flatters without committing to a verdict. Development can mean genuine political opening, cosmetic reforms, or carefully managed pluralism; the word conveniently covers all three.

The second tell is the blanket “All Moroccans.” That’s not sociological description, it’s diplomatic choreography. By assigning unanimous pride to an entire population, Evans sidesteps the inconvenient fact that democratic legitimacy is usually contested - especially in a monarchy where elections and parties operate within clear red lines. The phrase “justifiably proud” preemptively defends the claim against criticism: if you object, you’re not only disagreeing, you’re denying people their rightful pride.

The context matters: early-2000s U.S. foreign policy wanted “moderate” partners, market reforms, counterterror cooperation, and a democracy narrative that didn’t threaten stability. Morocco, often framed in Washington as reform-minded relative to its neighbors, fits the slot. The subtext is transactional: you are the kind of ally we can publicly applaud, and we will call your incremental institutional changes “democratic” because that naming helps both sides - Morocco gets international validation; the U.S. gets a success story that costs little and complicates nothing.