The Arab Spring

It's one of those "what if"s, but I doubt that continued Gaddafi rule in Libya would have been a good thing; from the Western standpoint, making the decision to help the rebels earned a lot of diplomatic brownie points from the locals.

Well, I give both sides.

But I would say its rather a reason not to re-elect Sarkozy and to highlight the hypocrisy of the intervention.

Yea, its always best to not spend too much time in the whats if.

But as far as I see it the Middle east is a mess right now (more that before).

1.Iraq is a fucking mess

2. Afghanistan is fucking disaster.

3. Israel and Iran tensions are at an all time high

4. Bahrain is violently cracking down on protesters

5. Libya is in a state of anarchy

6. Yemen is about to become Somalia II

7. The Syrian army is using rebel towns as artillery shooting practice targets.

8. In Egypt the army has yet to concede power to a democratically elected leader.

On the bright side we could point out that Tunisia seems to be doing fine.

I was just saying. Still, I dont really want to discuss that topic because, as I said, I dislike to discuss what if scenarios. Lets stick with what happened.

edited 29th Apr '12 9:43:28 PM by Baff

Further, and we've been over this before, hundreds of thousands would have been slaughtered by the Gaddafists if intervention did not happen.

Banning religious political parties is not a good thing. Much as it may appeal to us as non-Muslims, this will not help. It's a restriction of democracy, among other things. A separation of church and state? Fine. I'm all for it. But actually banning religious parties? Maybe not. People have a right to vote for whoever they want. If they want to vote in Islamic law, that's their choice. As long as it doesn't interfere with democracy, I have no objections.

Enforced secularism is firstly a trademark of most of the dictatorships propped up by Cold War powers, and secondly never done for reasons as pure as the separation of church and state. Who do you think benefits in Libya if you ban religious parties? The non-religious parties.

edited 29th Apr '12 9:44:44 PM by Ultrayellow

Of course. The thing is, though, those non-religious, liberal parties clearly are the "good guys". Democracy is one thing, what about basic rights? Those I'd say are even, by far, more important. And do you really think those Islamist parties would uphold everybody's basic rights? The only problem I see with this legislation is that it isn't worth the paper it's written on. I give it slightly more chances than a snowball in hell.

Besides, enforced or encouraged atheism was solely a hallmark of Soviet backed regimes. In the Middle East, the USA has basically always already supported the conservative Islamic monarchies. It made do where those were already toppled, but all republican governments with secular leanings in the region tended rather toward the Soviets and/or were leading figures in the Non-Aligned Movement.

edited 29th Apr '12 9:52:23 PM by Octo

Islamists? Depends, I suppose. Probably not in a few areas, but in most, yeah.

Treatment of women is an issue. But I can't think of any other group a good Islamist wouldn't defend.

The US backed Egypt and Iraq, though. Both of those forced secularism on their populations.

The thing about political parties in the Mid-East, though: just about every major political party is "religious" to some degree. While we tend to associate human rights with secular political parties, I doubt that whether a party identifies as "religious" or not correlates to its degree of freedoms. The most recent, infamous secular party in the region was ruled by Saddam Hussein, after all.

I think it's nice that we've heard absolutely nothing at all about what's been going on in Bahrain, because they're America's buddies.

Get a country like Syria, though, that's in bed with the Russians and Iranians instead of us, and all of a sudden we have to send in the Stoßtruppen.

I actually support the intervention, but the hypocrisy is enough to make me sick.

Egypt often switched allegiances during the Cold War, but through most of it was more friendly towards the USSR than the USA, even though that changed in the last phases of it. And even in Iraq, Saddam's nominal power base was the Baath Party, which nominally (but not in reality) was supposed to be a product of Arab Socialism a la Nasser. Of course, these days, what's the Cold War? You're right in so far that most Arabs might associate secularism with US meddling simply out of principle, heh.

As for "good Islamists"... yeah well. There are Islamists and analogues to what's called Christian Democrats in Europe. The latter are obviously okay, as will hopefully be seen in Tunisia. But in most other countries the former are more numerous. So in those countries forbidding them out of principle might in theory be a good idea - in theory, because in reality it's not enforceable, IMO.

We do hear what happens in Bahrain. When the F1 was there (which it really shouldn't have), that was even headline news. We don't hear about it constantly because for the most part nothing new happens there. Low level unrest continues to simmer, oppression and crackdowns go on, but nothing really new which would appear in the news.

Well, even though I follow F1 and was pretty dissapointed, I don't think very many people have a clue what's going on there, whereas the media won't shut up about Syria and our brave struggle to give Syria democracy.

All the hypocritical bullshit we hear about how we should be supporting Syrian rebels just as nasty as the government, nobody bothers to say about Bahrain. It may as well not exist as far as the American government is concerned, because it's one of the brutally oppressive regimes that we happen to support.

If something were to happen in Bahrain, how would anyone know? The media certainly isn't interested. This whole Syria business is just another attempt by the US and it's subsidiaries in Europe to replace the regime with people they can do business with. It's too bad, we could be doing some real good there.

edited 30th Apr '12 1:15:44 AM by Sarkastique

Au contraire—or perhaps not, if general television news is the source of information you're speaking of. Given 22 minutes per news slot, of course information on global affairs is going to be scanty at best; on the other hand, if Bahrain were to erupt beyond the low-level simmering repressions and protests, you can bet that journalists will be flocking to the Pearl Roundabout. (Also, Anonymous appears to have gotten into the action already.)

As for supporting the Syrian rebels or not, I can only repeat the words of Marc Lynch, Abu Aardvark: "Critics of UN's Syria diplomacy are right to be skeptical; I'd like to see similar skepticism about poorly articulated military options." If you get beyond the rhetoric espoused by John McCain and Joseph Lieberman and recognize their viewpoint as a minority one, you'd see lots of debate and the general, nervous consensus among foreign-policy experts that, unlike in Libya, giving support for the Syrian rebels is not likely to achieve anything good, and that temporarily taking the moral high ground for doing so is not worth a potential civil war that's likely to degenerate into sectarian massacres.

Really, can I bet? The only reason Syria is in the news is because it's convenient to the neoconservative, military-industrial complex types who run Washington.

Bahrain is our ally, so when the revolution happens there, we'll hear just as much about that as we heard about Iceland overthrowing its government and jailing those responsible after the financial collapse.

In other words, we won't hear about it, because it's politically inconvenient to those in power.

edited 30th Apr '12 2:06:00 AM by Sarkastique

Aaaand stop. That's where the discussion becomes far too conspiracy-theorist for me to take seriously. Yes, disturbances in Bahrain would be very inconvenient for the Fifth Fleet and CENTCOM, and yes, it's a fair bet that in the interests of security for the base there, the US would be making all kinds of diplomatic efforts one way or another to try to keep the protests from flaring up. Nevertheless, you're attributing far too much power and influence to say that Foggy Bottom could exert much influence on the situation there, let alone in political discourse.

It's not tinfoil-hat thinking at all, it's just acknowledging the obvious political situation the American government is in.

It's funny that you call me a conspiracy theorist and then admit in the next sentence that a revolution in Bahrain would be extremely inconvenient for the government in general and the military in particular, and that the government would make a serious effort to protect the regime.

But, somehow, you think they're above keeping a lid on it in the press? Spare me. They managed to turn Iran into the third rail of American politics for three decades, but somehow it's completely implausible that they'd quietly not mention political unrest in a small country most people have never heard of?

The ignorance of the American population basically does the job for them. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy.

Ugh. I can understand being critical of the US foreign policy. That's very much warranted, because it has a track record of hurting many people all over the globe. But taking this into the other extreme by justifying every government and regime standing against the USA, no matter how bad those are, shows that one does not care about people at all. Such attitudes appear to me to be all about showing off as cool and edgy.

If I cared about your amateur psychoanalysis of my political beliefs from behind a monitor, I would have asked. My concern is not being a jingoistic hypocrite and liar, which apparently isn't a concern for most Americans.

As it happens, your sneer is not just false but ignorant, as I don't "justify" every regime that stands against the United States. Quite a few of them are awful governments that I would like to see dragged behind the shed and shot like the tired, cliched totalitarians they are.

As it happens, I do support any country or people that want to resist the United States bullying them at the point of a gun in their effort to resist American imperialism.

That doesn't mean I like, say, the Iranian theocracy all that much, but I do support their efforts to resist the ridiculous attempt by American warmongers to tell them whether they can have nuclear power or not, and assassinate Iranian citizens in the process.

I don't hate America. I hate the American government and the lethal hypocrisy it spouts everywhere, to everybody, all the time and the suffering, misery, and death it's brought (and still brings) to the world from Bogota to Tehran.

Whether or not I like the people who oppose this too is another matter.

edited 30th Apr '12 3:18:36 AM by Sarkastique

—corner of lip twitches—

Excuse me, but I believe the subject of this discussion is over the uprisings, protests, and new governments in the Maghreb and Middle East.

Huh. This is quite good to hear. It helps that the milias are protesting with pickets and chants as opposed to gunfire, even if the threat is still there.

Lots of news.

There have been deaths in Egypt during a protest against the baring of a candidate from the election, the protest was in front of the defence ministry so in the words of Mohamed El Baradei "Scaf & government unable to protect civilians or in cahoots with thugs." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17920053

The Syrian army is being accused of war crimes by Human Rights Watch. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17921390

It appears that the protests by the militias have worked. The ban on religious parties has apparently been lifted. I would say this is both good and bad as it means that the NTC is listening to the demands on people when they engage in peaceful protests, but it does also open up the risk of extreme Islamists coming to power (though I personal doubt it will happen). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17930578

Call up of up to 22 Israeli Defense Force battalions approved by the Knesset, in response to events in Egypt and Syria.

On the one hand, I can see where the hotheads in Egypt and Syria could potentially use this in claims of Israeli aggressive intent, but on the other hand neither Egypt nor Syria are exactly BFFs with Israel in the best of times, which now certainly isn't, and "external war to distract from internal problems" is hardly unheard of in international politics anywhere on the planet, let alone in the ME.

@Sabre's Edge "That's where the discussion becomes far too conspiracy-theorist for me"

What? It's common knowledge that a) the Syrian state is opposed to the US and b) Bahrain is allied to the US. That the US and it's media subsequently manouvers based on these facts is hardly a conspiracy theory, it's more or less out in the open.

I meant the part about some powerful neocon movement secretly controlling the media and altering perceptions, et cetera. I don't like the neoconservative movement, but that's just giving them way too much credit, and not giving enough credit to general indifference and random chance.

Besides, Bahrain is more or less living testimony that you can get away with a lot so long as you're reasonably subtle about it. That means beating up dissidents indoors where the cameras can't reach them instead of shooting them in the street. Yes, Fifth Fleet's presence does influence things, but if push came to shove chances are that the base will declare neutrality as to what's happening outside. Foreign policy is all about backing the winning horse as long as you're a guest in someone else's house.

As long as things are stable, that is.

The Syrian government has been launching raids of student accommodations in Aleppo. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17937448

I mean no offence, but I don't think it's very wise to reduce socio-political issues like this to single causes and reasons. I do think in the western world there are enough free media outlets. The situation is hardly perfect of course, but government influence over the media is limited, and even though most of the media are in the hand of the economical elite, that elite is not always in agreement with the government. Thus to say that the media does not report about Bahrain because our governments want it to be that way seems very much like a simplification to me.

I think we should not forget that Bahrain also is only a very tiny country, and that the government's excesses are by far not as bad as what the Assad regime does in Syria. And besides, what about Yemen? The USA has no particular interests in Yemen one way or the other; its government is certainly not hostile. Yet, it has fallen out of the news even more completely than Bahrain, despite the clashes in Yemen being more violent and despite the dire possibility that it could turn into the next Somalia. So, in conclusion I think Bahrain for the most part (as I've said, searching for single reasons is mostly a bad idea) is not in the news, because the events in there do not make it through the usual news selection filter.