Asylum For The Dictators

While The Middle East Unravels At Unholy Speed, It's Business-As-Usual In Washington

The unrest which started in Tunisia and which has spread to Egypt and Yemen, with nascent movements in other countries, is a clear as it could get – all of these countries are currently ruled by Western-leaning secular dictatorships.  While these governments have provided the West (chiefly the U.S.) with a modicum of cooperation, they’ve done so at a horrific price to the locals.

Most of the people in these countries are poor.  They live on the equivalent of two dollars a day, and the slim hope that someday they can better their lot either through winning the metaphorical-lottery of the patronage and sponsorship of someone higher-up the food (read: ‘political’) chain, or by emigrating to a country which isn’t as economically and politically repressive.  They have one real hope to which they cling:  That Allah will bless them, someday, and make their afterlife, if not the present life, a good one.

I’ve said it before, and history backs me up – people won’t die for hot water and electric razors; not willingly – but they’ll do so, and in great numbers, for a cause and a belief.  The people in Egypt, Yemen, and Tunisia have both – the desire for a say in their lives, and a belief in a better life when they die.

The people of Egypt are slowly surrounding the Mubarak regime with the only thing that really matters:  Real power.   Power which has the ability to force him from office, and replace him with either a military coalition which will act until elections can be held, or a religious coalition headed by (most likely) the Muslim Brotherhood.

You might be asking, “Why do I give a damn who runs Egypt?   By the way, where the hell is Yemen?  What does Tunisia have that we could possibly want?”  

Let’s back up a bit.

Since the late 1940’s, the Israeli government has been performing a slow-roll ethnic-cleansing on the Palestinian population.  The U.S. has failed, utterly, to prevent the Israelis from doing this, and the Arab world has been hamstrung from taking any real, unified action against them because of countries like Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, and Lebanon.

While the people in power in those countries are perfectly happy with Rolls-Royce transportation and Savile Row suits, the people see this as an egregious form of hypocrisy and pandering, as well as the collective sell-out of millions of fellow Muslims – and they’re fed up with it.

(At this point we could discuss the differences between theocracy, theonomy, religious democracy and their economic counterpoints – but I’ll leave that for another post.   Right now, it’s not important to understand anything past this:  The Arab world views self-determination as something entirely different than the West.   They believe in their religion first, and a government second; they view themselves as Muslim before any other identity.  By way of example, if this weren’t the case, there’d’ve been a second revolution in Iran a long time ago.)

For good or ill, the Muslim world sees us very differently than the ‘Marines-kicking-soccer-balls-with-kids’ nonsense we see on CNN.   They understand that we’ve killed millions of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan for no real purpose.  They understand that we’ve destroyed a nation’s infrastructure in Iraq with nothing to replace it, and left the Iraqi’s vulnerable to an enemy on their eastern border (Iran).    

While they might not understand the meaning of the term ‘surrogate warfare’, they also understand that the F-16’s and M-1 Abrams and M-16 rifles and Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the Israelis, as well as their own governments, have “Made in U.S.A.” stamped all over them. 

They also understand, in large measure, where the money comes from to keep those regimes in power.

As we’ve seen over past few days, the military in Egypt isn’t terribly interested in shooting fellow citizens.  The army in Tunisia isn’t willing to defend its regime, either.  The reasons are simple – not only have these regimes acted against the interests and basic human rights of their citizens, they’ve become virtual client-states of the west.   They’ve failed to produce a better life for their people, and they’ve failed to stand up to the atrocities committed by the Israelis. 

Our name is stamped all over these failures.  We’ve spent sixty years cultivating the wrong friends in Arab countries, and the bill is due.  Not next year – today.

We’ve spent those same sixty years operating under the notion that a secular dictatorship trumps a religious democracy in the Middle East – and we’ve turned a blind eye to the CIA-funded police-prisons; the grinding poverty; the oppression of other Muslims by well-funded and well-fed Israelis.  We’ve ignored the reality, and accepted the fantasy. 

So, how is this going to turn out?

Again, the dots aren’t hard to connect. 

First, if you're expecting something like free-elections in those places, you're going to be roundly disappointed.  What's going on right now in the streets of Cairo is the election; it's just a lot more efficient than spending millions of dollars to hold conventions, primaries, and the whole voting-process.   You won't see Hillary Clinton out there carrying a banner and egging-on the protesters - her milquetoast calls for a 'gradual change to democracy' are so much candyfloss-for-the-brain; business-as-usual is what Washington wants, needs, and has to have, in order to maintain the damnable status-quo.   Keeping millions of Arabs in poverty is also what keeps America's favorite punk-state, Israel, in power - and it also keeps that oil flowing, too.

(I have to wonder, however, with the heads-of-state in Saudi Arabia also in their eighties, if Obama, Clinton, and the rest on both sides of the aisle aren't peeing their collective pants over the potential for change in that country.)

That's not to say that the old cocksucker, Mubarak, hasn't kept the peace since I had a full head of hair - he has; albeit with an ocean of American money and the assistance of the CIA.  As to his likely successor, ElBaradei, the very notion of putting his hat in the ring would have landed him in a CIA-run prison a year ago - mute proof that the real power in the country is in the streets.

Yep, I think it’s safe to say that Mubarak is history.  So are the secular dictatorships in Yemen, Tunisia,  Jordan, and the pseudodemocracy in Lebanon.  It’s more than likely that any potential peace between Israel and the Arab states is done, replaced by a more-unified - and hostile - coalition of Arab nations.  We’re likely going to see the wholesale-rejection of ‘cooperation’ between Arab nations and the Western powers, mainly the U.S. 

Rather than shutting down those tunnels into Gaza which supply most of the Palestinian homeland’s food, pharmaceuticals and other necessities, we can look to open cooperation between the Palestinians and the new Egyptian government.  Israel doesn’t like glorified model rockets coming from Gaza?  No worries.  Guided missile technology is on its way.

Israeli submarines and warships through Suez?  You can forget about that – along with anything else which doesn’t fit the worldview of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Another ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in Gaza?   Don’t count on it – because Egyptian F-16’s would be screaming over Jerusalem in a heartbeat, and this time there wouldn’t be a damn thing the Israeli Air Force could do about it.

More American bases in Arab countries?  I wouldn’t count on that, either.  In fact, I’d count on many of ‘em closing up shop, after being shown the door by some brand-new governments.

Remember that oil-embargo in 1973?  I sure as hell do.  Like it or not, we’re going to have to start behaving ourselves, and dealing on their terms – rather than subverting whole nations and dictating terms accordingly.

(That, by the way, is why we care who runs those countries - and why the odds are slim that we can do much by way of mending fences now, having supported the oppression in those places for decades.)

It’s been something of a national-policy to ‘save Israel’s ass no matter what’ – and for good or ill, that door is closing, to be replaced by a narrow window through which we can convince the current regime in Jerusalem that further genocide against the Palestinians equals their national destruction; that 'god' is not their damn real-estate-agent, and that democracy - real democracy - isn't the lip-service bullshit which is the Knesset, while tanks roll over tin-and-tarpaper shacks in apartheid-like 'homelands'.

I wouldn’t count on the U.S. changing its policies any time soon, though.  Remember Cuba?  We backed Batista, after Castro came to us for help.  Remember Vietnam?  We backed the French, after Ho Chi Minh made an eloquent pitch invoking Lincoln and our tradition of democracy.  We have a history of Getting Shit Wrong, and that’s not likely to change.

Chances are, it’ll be asylum for the dictators; brandy for the troops, and water for the horses – or business as usual in Washington.