Author: John Glaser

There have been various moments since the start of the Arab Spring where the level of blatant, outright support for Middle Eastern dictatorship on display should have embarrassed Obama and his team, but yesterday was a highlight.

The Bahraini Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa visited the White House, meeting with Obama and his National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. The President “reaffirmed the strong US commitment to Bahrain,” praised the King’s supposed “efforts to initiate the national dialogue” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), and looked forward to (some fictional) “compromise to forge a just future for all Bahrainis.”

This reaffirmation of support on behalf of the American people to a Bahraini government brutalizing its own citizens who are fighting for their own dignity should warrant terrified gasps and accusing disbelief. But no, not in the Imperial City. This is protocol.

This is the same Bahraini government who has been gunning down unarmed activists with live ammunition, unleashing “live rounds, metallic pellets, rubber bullets, and teargas” at protestors for months, and violently supressing this eruption of peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations at every turn. This government, Obama’s close friend and ally, arrested and sentenced doctors and nurses who treated protesters injured by the horrible repression, and followed up by declaring martial law and stepping up unprovoked attacks on civilians. Protests have still not moved the country toward more freedom and democracy and thus the Bahraini people remain enslaved under a harsh criminal regime.

All this, and the only thing the Hope & Change Candidate can say is that his support is strong and reaffirmed, and that the regime’s perfunctory lifting of martial law and entirely rhetorical credence to “national dialogue” is a positive step in the right direction.

Centrists and establishment types try to justify this as necessary for long term stability and in the best interests of America – those code words for empire – while simultaneously sympathizing with poor Obama and how hard it must be for him to have to be diplomatic with Bahrain. But the truth is that so long as the U.S. continues to meddle in the affairs of every single Middle Eastern country experiencing these revolutionary changes, the prospects for positive change for the millions of people living there are dim. The truth is, this kind of support for repression and tyranny needs  to start eliciting the gasps and condemnation it warrants.

Former Bush official and current senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations Elliot Abrams is salivating with eager anticipation over the prospect that the U.S. – in its omniscience – will oust another Middle Eastern regime. I’m sure he can’t contain himself, and all the terrible death and destruction and law-breaking of the Bush regime has exited his mind forever, as he explains how “powerful” is the argument for “getting Assad out.” After all, it would be a kick in the knees for Iran and Hezbollah.

The strategic argument for getting Assad out is powerful: it would be a huge defeat for Iran and Hezbollah, and indeed the greatest defeat we could administer to Iran short of ending its nuclear program.

(What nuclear program?)

Forget the fact that Iran is basically a threat to nobody, we can see here how embedded is the notion of regime change as a legitimate function of the U.S. government in the minds of the political intelligentsia. He sees nothing wrong with donning America as ruler of the entire Middle East, granting governments the right to exist, or not so, by our own righteousness.

Even as he urges America towards the same brutal and lawless foreign policy its had for a century, he does present some interesting findings about the opinions of the Syrian population. France 24 reports:

I find this interesting for two reasons. First, it shows that Syrians have not been so excessively cut off from the world by Assad’s regime – one of the most restrictive in the region – that they can’t develop cohesive, reasonable political opinions with great importance for their role in the region. This presents a hope that they can mobilize a viable alternative representative of their preferences if Assad were to be overthrown.

Second, its interesting how Abrams can easily recognize why an entire country of people can protest and chant slogans decrying another government’s repressive and intrusive policies. The only reason he has the ability to recognize this, and understand it for what it is, is because in this case those intrusive policies come from Iran. When Iranians, however, or Egyptians, or Iraqis, or Pakistanis pour into the streets and chant “Death to America!” or some such slogan, that’s an exemplification of how radical and illogical Middle Eastern societies are; it’s a sober reminder for why America needs an interventionist foreign policy and why we need to ensure that democracy is suppressed throughout the region.

He suffers from the same fallacy driving all of these calls – Republican and Democratic – for the administration of regime change in various cases of this Arab Spring.

Unfortunately for us, the Elliot Abramses of the world did not depart with the Bush administration.

Joseph Dana:

The demonstration started off peacefully and then the army attacked the nonviolent demonstration with tear gas and stun grenades. Some Palestinians began throwing stones.

via Matt Yglesias:

It’s often been suggested in the American press that if Palestinians would stop engaging in terrorist violence and adopt non-violent protest that they’d make more headway in their quest for a nation. Putting that idea to the test, earlier this week a group of Palestinian protestors attempted to cross through the Qalandia Checkpoint in the West Bank that separates Ramallah from Jerusalem.

Yemen’s current head of state, Vice President Abedrabo Mansur Hadi, has rejected offers to negotiate an transitional government until President Saleh returns from Saudi Arabia where he is receiving medical treatment for wounds suffered in an attack on his compound. There are still mass demonstrations, largely peaceful, occurring in the captial Sana’a as well as some scattered, deadly fighting in the south. A Joint Meeting of opposition parties has actually agreed to recognize Hadi for the time being (while still trying to play for a transition), there are whispers of at least some informal ceasefire, and army troops loyal to Saleh have withdrawn from the streets (here).

But there are good reasons to believeSaleh won’t be returning to Yemen any time soon: he has shrapnel in his chest, burns over 40 percent of his body and a collapsed lung. Daniel Pipes at the National Review lists some other reasons he may not return and also believes there is a power vacuum developing:

If Saleh is history (as he likely is, since too many forces have arrayed against him for him to return to power, and the Saudis may not let him leave), his successor will have difficulty ruling even the meager portion of the country that he controlled.

Because many factions with diverse aims are competing for power — Saleh’s allies, Houthi rebels in the north, a secessionist movement in the south, al-Qaeda-style forces, a youth movement, the military, certain tribes, and the Ahmar family — they will not coalesce into a neat two-way conflict. Anarchy, in other words, looks more probable than civil war; Somalia and Afghanistan could be models.

With Saleh’s potentially permanent departure, it’s not clear how the conflict proceeds. Initial concerns of an all-out civil war may, as Pipes suggests, diminish given the fractured nature of the tribal and factional struggle now. To boot, Yemen’s economy and infrastructure is more terrible than many have been letting on:

The problem begins with an increasingly cataclysmic water shortage.Gerhard Lichtenth?ler, a specialist on this topic, wrote in 2010 about how in many of the country’s mountainous areas, available drinking water, usually drawn from a spring or a cistern, is down to less than one quart per person per day. Its aquifers are being mined at such a rate that groundwater levels have been falling by 10 to 20 feet annually, threatening agriculture and leaving major cities without adequate safe drinking water. Sanaa could be the first capital city in the world to run dry.

And not just Sana’a: As a London Times headline put it, Yemen “could become first nation to run out of water.” Nothing this extreme has happened in modern times, although similar patterns of drought have developed in Syria and Iraq.

Scarce food resources, columnist David Goldman points out, threaten to leave large numbers of Middle Easterners hungry.  One-third of Yemenis faced chronic hunger before the unrest. That fraction is growing quickly.

The prospect of economic collapse looms larger by the day. Oil supplies are reduced to the point that “trucks and buses at petrol stations queue for hours, while water supply shortages and power blackouts are a daily norm,” according to the Arab Times. Productive activity is proportionately in decline.

My guess is that for the moment the Saudis are in the front seat in terms of external influence, and I speculate that any decisive action by the U.S. will be kept secret for now. Yemen is too unpredictable and potentially dangerous from the perspective of the Obama administration, but also extremely important to maintain dominion over because of its geography as well as the concentration of al Qaeda there. The outlook would be better if there were some viable and immediate alternative post-Saleh that the people (particularly the youth movement) could get behind, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

As I feared yesterday, the Syrian government is using yesterday’s alleged attack and killing of 120 security forces by protesters (yet to be verified) as a justification for a massive use of force upon the Syrian people. Residents of the town Jisr al-Shughour, where the alleged killings took place, are fleeing saying they fear an oncoming slaughter.

The government says it will act “with force” to combat “armed gangs” that it blames for the recent killings. Activists say the cause of the deaths is unclear, and may involve a mutiny.

Residents have posted messages on Facebook saying they fear a slaughter and appealing for help from outside.They called on people to try to block roads leading to the town with burning tyres, rocks and tree trunks. Syrian army tanks and troop carriers backed by helicopters were reported to be on the move.

Activists insist the uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is peaceful and scorn the government’s talk of armed gangs.

Foreign journalists are banned from Syria, so minute-to-minute updates of the news may not be forthcoming. There has apparently been a draft UN Security Council resolution  drawn up by France, Britain, Germany and Portugal condemning Assad’s regime and requesting he open areas of Syria to humanitarian teams. Obviously, Assad is unlikely to agree to such a request and unfortunately Russia is expected to veto the resolution.

Given the fact that Syria is not a client state of the U.S., and that there is even high amounts of tension between us (plus the Israeli factor), there is a possibility the apparently oncoming brutality towards civilians will prompt a direct intervention by the U.S. Some at this point argue it is unlikely Obama would get involved officially in a fourth war in the Middle East, but that is also what was said before our Libya intervention. The two conflicts are beginning to have important similarities (armed insurrection turning into civil war, clear sides to take, 1000+ civilians killed and more expected, etc.). Ground troops are as unlikely as they were in Libya, but attacks from the air aimed at destabilizing the Assad regime and preventing civilian casualties just may be in the cards.

Part of the issue here is that Libya is much less important than Syria. The authoritarianism of Assad’s regime has not been a concern of the U.S. for years. Washington welcomes brutality and virtual slavery so long as the regime in question provides “stability” (Washington code word for obedience on the international stage). This has been one of the primary reasons no intervention has yet taken place. But with the protests and killings at the Golan Heights yesterday, continued “stability” is in question and thus staying on the sidelines is increasingly unlikely.

Another issue is any sort of post-Assad plan. With the U.S. commitment to ruling the world through unlimited geographical jurisdiction, choosing a post-Assad leadership becomes the most important part of the calculus in private, while protecting civilians is most important publicly.

James Dorsey at Al Arabiya:

The potential escalation in Syria poses a dilemma for the United States and Europe as well as for Arab states and Israel. The Obama administration and its allies have so far stopped short of calling for Mr. Assad’s departure because of uncertainty about who might succeed him; fear that Islamists factions could emerge stronger in a post-Assad era; concern that armed rebellion would split Syria along religious lines with Christians and Alawites backing the president and Sunnis and Kurds populating the rebels; and anxiety that the turmoil could spill across Syria’s borders into Jordan, Israel, Turkey and Lebanon, home to the Syrian-backed Hezbollah militia.

The escalating violence is however making it increasingly difficult for the international community to stick to the principle that the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.

That is not to say that there is any love lost between Mr. Assad, who was a key member of former President George W. Bush’s axis of evil because of his ties to Iran as well as Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, and Western leaders such as President Barack Obama. Mr. Assad nonetheless was a predictable foe who refused to engage in US-sponsored Middle East peace efforts and efforts to force Iran to concede on its nuclear program but stopped short of rocking the boat.

French Foreign Minister Alain Joppe, in an indication that an escalation would force the US and its allies to review their view of Mr. Assad, warned Monday that the Syrian leader had “lost his legitimacy” to rule Syria. Mr. Joppe’s remarks were the first time a Western leader effectively called for Mr. Assad’s departure.

The New York Times brings to our attention an up and comer:

On matters like abortion, military spending and religion, Representative Walter B. Jones seems thoroughly in tune with this conservative, staunchly Republican district in eastern North Carolina, home to the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune and thousands of military retirees.

On the issue of war, however, Mr. Jones has defied typecasting. An early critic of the American invasion of Iraq, he has been ostracized by the Republican leadership in Congress. And now he is emerging as a leading advocate for swiftly withdrawing American forces from Afghanistan, a position that has made him, of all things, a liberal hero.

“When you talk about war, political parties don’t matter,” he said in an interview.

Jones was the one who sponsored a bill along with Jim McGovern of Massachusetts that intended to accelerate the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and “26 Republicans broke with their leadership to support it, triple the number who voted for a similar measure last year.”

On a similar note, the WSJ today ran an editorial blasting many Republican Congressman for “transform[ing] themselves into isolationists” now that a Democrat is in the White House.

The most remarkable spectacle was the emergence of the Kucinich Republicans, who voted for Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich’s resolution that would stop U.S. military action in Libya within 15 days. At least Mr. Kucinich is consistent in opposing U.S. force against dictators and other enemies no matter who sits in the Oval Office.

But what is the explanation for the 87 Republicans, including the likes of Indiana’s Dan Burton and Wisconsin’s Jim Sensenbrenner, who transform themselves into isolationists when a Democrat takes over the White House?

The piece (no author) is rife with jingoistic concerns about disunity in war time and confused claims of king-like executive power conferred upon the Presidency by the Constitution, but one merit of the piece is that it points out the political nature of this apparent Republican turn to non-intervention. There are a few antiwar Republicans now in office (Ron and Rand Paul, Walter B. Jones, a few Tea Partiers), but recent history shows that all that the rest will need to jerk themselves back to a state of salivating war-hungry outlaws is another Republican president.

Update: I came late to Glenn Greenwald’s post on a similar topic. Excerpt:

That said, insincerely motivated anti-war and pro-civil-liberties sentiment is better than none at all.  I’ve long argued that the only way for a meaningful defense of civil liberties — and meaningful opposition to the excesses of the National Security State — to arise is by removing those issues from the partisan prism.  All Americans have an interest in barring the government from transgressing Constitutional limits (if, for no other reason, than because a politically hostile President from the other party may use those powers against them: see this Tom Tomorrow cartoon on the Democrats’ support for the Patriot Act).  All non-oligarchical Americans are harmed by the insatiable piggishness of the corporatist beneficiaries of excessive military spending.  And all Americans are inculcated with an instinctive belief in due process and distrust of government power exercised without transparency and checks.