As the carnage and chaos grow in Cairo, there are no easy answers for the United States in Egypt.
But once upon a time, Republican leaders and their allies in the
conservative commentariat had a simple answer indeed for the Middle
East. Waiving their purple fingers in early 2005, the likes of David
Brooks, Charles Krauthammer and Rich Lowry cheered American democracy
promotion in the region, "God's gift to humanity" delivered by the
barrel of a gun. But with the military's overthrow of the Muslim
Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi, the right-wing's best and
brightest are having second thoughts about their support of the Bush Doctrine.
Take, for example, David Brooks of the New York Times. Faced with a
choice of the lesser of two evils, Brooks declared he would be "defending the coup."
The Egyptian military could offer the people the promise of the
"substance" of democracy, while the Muslim Brotherhood elected by its
"process" could not. The problem for Egyptians, he argued, was all
mental:
Islamists might be determined enough to run effective opposition movements and committed enough to provide street-level social services. But they lack the mental equipment to govern. Once in office, they are always going to centralize power and undermine the democracy that elevated them...
It's not that Egypt doesn't have a recipe for a democratic transition. It seems to lack even the basic mental ingredients.
But back in 2005,
Brooks suggested, President George W. Bush was providing all the
ingredients budding Middle Eastern democracies needed to flower. As his
Congressional Republicans waived their purple fingers to celebrate the
just-completed elections in Iraq, President Bush declared in 2005 State
of the Union address, "We've declared our own intention: America will
stand with the allies of freedom to support democratic movements in the
Middle East and beyond, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our
world." In response, a fawning David Brooks marveled, "Why Not Here?"
This is the most powerful question in the world today: Why not here? People in Eastern Europe looked at people in Western Europe and asked, Why not here? People in Ukraine looked at people in Georgia and asked, Why not here? People around the Arab world look at voters in Iraq and ask, Why not here?...
But this is clearly the question the United States is destined to provoke. For the final thing that we've learned from the papers this week is how thoroughly the Bush agenda is dominating the globe. When Bush meets with Putin, democratization is the center of discussion. When politicians gather in Ramallah, democratization is a central theme. When there's an atrocity in Beirut, the possibility of freedom leaps to people's minds.
Brooks was far from alone in having a change of heart about democracy in the Middle East.
Last fall, National Review editor Rich Lowry
fretted that about Egypt's democratic future. "In the signature
revolution of the Arab Spring, the country turned its back on a secular
dictatorship only to fall into the arms of what looks like a budding
Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship." The new pharaoh, he lamented, was the
same as the old pharaoh, only less "progressive in comparison."
But in March 2005 (that is, over three years before Sarah Plain
prompted him to sit up straighter and see starbursts), Lowry pointed to
the Iraqi vote, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Orange Revolution
in Ukraine and the call for elections in the Palestinian territories as
vindication for George W. Bush. In "When Good News Strikes: Glum
Liberals Try Coping with a Changing World," Lowry mocked the likes of Jon Stewart, Charles Peters and Daniel Schorr, crowing:
By toppling Saddam Hussein and insisting on elections in Iraq, while emphasizing the power of freedom, Bush has put the United States in the right position to encourage and take advantage of democratic irruptions in the region.
And so we have created the conditions for being pleasantly surprised by the positive drift of events in the Middle East, or unpleasantly surprised -- depending on your politics.
Depending on your politics, that is, and who's winning elections in both the Middle East and the United States.
Washington Post columnist and Fox News regular Charles Krauthammer
embodies both contingencies in his support for democratic change.
Applauding the military coup in Cairo, week, "The Brotherhood
leadership, I think, understands that if it does an Algeria and decides
it's going to go and make war on the army, it's going to lose and it
will lose badly and be imprisoned and disperse or go back to the 1950s."
In that sense, at least, Krauthammer was being consistent with his
views from 1993, when Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak first found himself
under threat from his own people. His lesson for the same for Egypt as
it was for the FIS in Algeria and the Nazi Party in Germany:
In the case of Egypt, the question is becoming acute. President Hosni Mubarak is in the midst of a desperate campaign against Islamic extremists adept at terror and committed to a Khomeini-like Islamic state. The fall of Egypt, linchpin of the Middle East, would be an international calamity second only to the fall of Russia, linchpin of Eurasia. Mubarak is no doubt asking us, "Do you support me in my war against the fundamentalists?" Our answer has to be: Given the alternative -- yes.
Are we not violating the very tenets of democracy that are supposed to be the moral core of American foreign policy? No. Because democracy does not mean one man, one vote, one time. In the German elections of 1932 and 1933, the Nazis won more votes than any other party. We know what they did with the power thus won. Totalitarians are perfectly capable of achieving power through democracy, then destroying it.
Moreover, democracy does not just mean elections. It also means constitutionalism -- the limitation of state power -- in political life, and tolerance and pluralism in civic life. Yeltsin and Mubarak are clearly more committed to such values than those who would overthrow them. That is why it would be not just expedient but right to support undemocratic measures undertaken to avert a far more anti-democratic outcome. Democracy is not a suicide pact.
But in the spring of 2005, Krauthammer took the pages of Time to lead "Three Cheers for the Bush Doctrine."
Like Lowry, he insisted American liberals and European snobs owed
President Bush an apology. (They have been "forced to acknowledge that
those brutish Americans led by their simpleton cowboy might have been
right.") As he explained in the Washington Post, "The Arab Spring of 2005 will be noted by history as [a] turning point for the Arab world."
We do not yet know, however, whether this initial flourishing of democracy will succeed...But we do know one thing: Those who claimed, with great certainty, that Arabs are an exception to the human tendency toward freedom, that they live in a stunted and distorted culture that makes them love their chains -- and that the notion the United States could help trigger a democratic revolution by militarily deposing their oppressors was a fantasy -- have been proved wrong.
Krauthammer version 2005 could have been speaking to Brooks v.2013 when he added:
The left's patronizing, quasi-colonialist view of the benighted Arabs was not just analytically incorrect. It was morally bankrupt, too.
As it turned out, it was Bush's cheerleaders who quickly proved to be
morally and intellectually bankrupt. When the White House changed hands
in 2009, these champions of unqualified democracy promotion in the
Middle East suddenly got cold feet when the autocrats' successors took
to the streets and took power. For them, the right answer to that
age-old American quandary about stability versus democracy, realism
versus idealism depends on who is president here and who is protesting
abroad.
But it wasn't just Barack Obama's election which disabused of them of
their short embrace of people power on the Arab street. Hamas, after
all, won U.S. sponsored Palestinian elections in 2006 and conquered Gaza
after an American-backed clandestine operation backfired. (As former
State Department official Liz Cheney
lamented, "I don't think they were ready for it. I don't think we
should have pushed it.")
Now, Libya is in chaos, Iraq is threatening to
descend into a second sectarian civil war, and the bloodbath in Syria
has no end in sight.
Meanwhile in Egypt, many have to be looking at the wreckage and wondering, "Why not here?"
Contentions
Is Obama Losing Egypt Again?
Jonathan S. Tobin
| @tobincommentary
07.02.2013 - 1:30 PM
07.02.2013 - 1:30 PM
Once again the future of Egypt hangs in the balance. The ultimatum delivered yesterday
to the Muslim Brotherhood government by the Egyptian military puts
President Mohamed Morsi on notice that it will not tolerate repression
of the protesters who have turned out in unprecedented numbers this week
to demonstrate against the Islamist movement’s push to seize total
power. Should Morsi agree to early elections, that might avert a
confrontation. But given his determination to press on with his Islamist
project and with a massive following of his own that could be unleashed
on the streets, it’s not clear whether the president will try to call
the army’s bluff or back down. No foreign power, even one with the
leverage that the billions in annual aid to Egypt gives the United
States, can solely determine the outcome of this standoff. But anything
President Obama does or says at this crucial moment can have a
disproportionate impact on what will happen. Thus, the news that
President Obama is trying to play both ends against the middle in Egypt
is a discouraging sign that once again the administration doesn’t
understand the stakes involved in this struggle and where U.S. interests
lie.
As CNN reports,
the United States is sending out mixed messages to the competing
factions. On the one hand, reportedly the president told Morsi that he
should agree to new elections, a sign that finally the administration is
stepping away from its embrace of the Brotherhood government. On the
other hand, it has apparently also warned the military that the U.S.
will not tolerate a move to unseat Morsi or to impose its own “road map”
to a new government, as the army has warned it will do should the
Egyptian president allow the 48-hour ultimatum to expire without
agreeing to respect the demands of the protesters.
While it is clear the U.S. is in a difficult position, Obama’s
attempt to thread the needle in Cairo may well wind up leaving America
with the worst of both worlds. As it did in 2011 when its equivocal
response to the Arab Spring protests helped dump Mubarak while at the
same time alienating the Egyptian people, the administration has not
made clear its priorities. After a year in which the actions of both
Washington and Ambassador Anne Patterson have left the impression that
President Obama is firmly committed to supporting Morsi, the threat of
an aid cutoff if the military acts to curb the Brotherhood may have far
more resonance that its sotto voce whispers about new elections. The
result is that by refusing to fully support the military’s efforts to
prevent Morsi from consolidating power, the United States may be missing
another opportunity to prevent Egypt from slipping irrevocably into
Islamist tyranny.
From the start of the Arab Spring protests, President Obama has
sought to portray himself as a supporter of those who wanted to
overthrow authoritarian dictatorships in the Muslim world. This is a
laudable impulse, but the practical effect of this policy has been to
lend the legitimacy of U.S. backing to Islamist movements like the
Brotherhood who used their superior organization to win the elections
that followed Mubarak’s fall. Elections are important. But when voting
takes place in the absence of a consensus in favor of democratic
principles, it is often a poor barometer of genuine progress toward
freedom. Like the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, the
Brotherhood’s triumph at the ballot box wasn’t an indication that Egypt
was on its way to democracy. As Morsi has proven over the course of the
last year, it was merely a way station toward the Brotherhood’s plans to
remake the country in its own image, something that horrified many
moderate Muslims as well as secular and Christian Egyptians.
It should also have shocked an Obama administration that used its
considerable influence over the Egyptian military to force them to stand
aside and let Morsi and the Brotherhood take over the government last
year. But now that the people have risen in numbers that dwarf the
considerable protests that helped oust Mubarak, it is time for the
United States to make it clear that what it wants is an end to the brief
and unhappy experiment of Brotherhood rule.
President Obama has shown himself to be reluctant to throw America’s
weight around when it comes to defending U.S. interests as opposed to
those causes that can be portrayed as a gesture toward universal
principles. Thus, he seems averse to anything that can be seen as
repressing the will of the Egyptian people. But after a year of the
Brotherhood’s efforts to undermine any checks and balances on its power,
the demonstrators realize something that perhaps has eluded the
president and his inner circle: this is probably Egypt’s last chance to
oust Morsi before he completes the process of consolidating his power.
If the U.S. forces the Egyptian military to back down as it did last
year, then it is highly unlikely that Morsi and the Brotherhood will
ever be successfully challenged. Without the military behind them, the
anti-Morsi protests could be repressed. More elections may follow, but
if the Brotherhood is allowed to complete its conquest of the
bureaucracy, the media and the military, then it is unlikely that anyone
will ever be able to unseat them.
Much as he would like to avoid picking sides, the time is fast
approaching when Obama must choose between his strange willingness to
make common cause with the Brotherhood and its Turkish ally, Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan, and the need to help those who wish to prevent Egypt
from sinking into an Islamist nightmare. In this case, ambivalence and
nuance is not, as the administration seems to think, the same thing as
effective strategy or a defense of U.S. interests. As Egypt heads toward
the precipice, President Obama must make it clear that America will
back those who seek to prevent a Brotherhood dictatorship. If he
doesn’t, both history and the Egyptian people may never forgive him.
The End of Obama’s Brotherhood Crush
Jonathan S. Tobin
| @tobincommentary
07.03.2013 - 6:15 PM
07.03.2013 - 6:15 PM
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/07/03/the-end-of-obamas-brotherhood-crush-egypt-morsi/
There is bad news, good news and better news coming out of Egypt today. First let’s discuss the good news.
The end of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt
is a blow to the cause of radical Islam. The rise of the Brotherhood
and the now deposed President Mohamed Morsi was a disaster for Egypt as
well as for the West. Had Morsi and his party been left in place to
continue their drive to impose their Islamist vision on the world’s most
populous Arab country it might have been impossible to depose them,
thus locking Egypt into the same nightmare scenario of theocratic
tyranny that we have seen unfold in Iran in the last generation.
The even better news is that the Egyptian Army didn’t listen to the
Obama administration when it asked them not to launch what is, for all
intents and purposes, a military coup that toppled a democratically
elected government. The embrace of Morsi and the Brotherhood by
President Obama and his foreign policy over the last year has further
poisoned Egyptian public opinion against the United States as well as
strengthened the confidence of Islamists that America will not oppose
their efforts to transform the region. After having been intimidated by
U.S. pressure aimed at ensuring that the military would not prevent
Morsi’s election, the military ran the risk that this time Obama meant
what he said about using the billions in aid Egypt gets from the United
States to prevent them from stopping the Brotherhood’s push for power.
The willingness of the Egyptian army to step in and stop the
confrontation in the streets not only avoided clashes that might have
produced unimaginable casualties but also kept open the possibility that
a new government could emerge in Cairo without having to fight a civil
war in order to survive.
However, the bad news is twofold. First, the series of events leading
up to the ouster illustrates the utter bankruptcy of American foreign
policy under Barack Obama. The second is that there should be no blind
confidence that what will follow will make Egypt more stable or
prosperous, let alone free. The United States should oppose the rise of
Islamists, but none of the possible outcomes of the conflict playing out
between them and the military and secular Egyptians is likely to
produce a liberal democracy or a nation that is likely to be a force for
peace in the region.
It should be specified that events in Egypt could never be controlled
from Washington. But the Obama administration bears a heavy share of
the blame for a chain of decisions that first undermined an
authoritarian ally in Mubarak and then paved the way for the rise of an
equally authoritarian and far more hostile government led by Morsi and
the Brotherhood. The identification of the United States with the
Brotherhood over the last year was an unforced error on the part of
Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her successor John
Kerry. The willingness of the administration to buy into the myth that
regimes like that of the Brotherhood and their increasingly despotic
Islamic allies in Turkey are good allies made a mockery of American
values as well as hindering its ability to protect U.S. interests.
Let’s also dispense with the crocodile tears being shed for Egyptian
democracy by some Brotherhood apologists today. What has happened in
Egypt the past two years has, despite the hopes of many there and in the
West, had little to do with democracy. The fall of the Mubarak regime
and its replacement by an Islamist movement determined to consolidate
power may have involved elections, but democracy requires more than a
trip to the ballot box in which a highly organized movement that is
actually opposed to freedom wins a vote. While the debate in the United
States about the advisability of Americans advocating democracy abroad
will continue, the power struggle in Cairo merely illustrates the fact
that this cause cannot triumph in a country where the debate is largely
conducted between Islamists and secular authoritarians. While we should
encourage (as President Bush tried to do) liberal Egyptians to build
democratic institutions, in the absence of any national consensus in
favor of democracy (as exists in countries like the United States,
Israel and the West), freedom doesn’t really have a chance.
It may be that what will happen now in Egypt will be a prolonged
struggle involving the Brotherhood that will turn a country that is
already a basket case into a place that is an even bigger mess. Nor is
there any assurance that the new government backed by the military or
the one that will be elected in new elections will be able to govern
effectively. While Morsi did not abandon the peace treaty with Israel
and the military has no interest in conflict with the Jewish state,
there is no telling whether the chaos in the Sinai will grow or whether
Hamas, the Brotherhood’s ideological godchild, will seek to heat up the
border or make mischief inside Egypt.
Finally, in the last two years Egypt has been an outstanding example
of how U.S. foreign aid is not always dispensed in a manner that
furthers American interests. The decision of the Obama administration to
threaten the military with an aid cutoff if it opposed the Brotherhood
before it took power was absurd. But if President Obama doesn’t see his
way to continuing the aid now that the military has ignored his advice
about not toppling Morsi, then what he will be doing is to completely
alienate the Egyptian people for a generation. Congress, which has
rightly been skeptical about allowing billions to flow to an Islamist
government, should step back now and not further hamstring Obama and
Kerry’s efforts to undo the damage they have done in the last 12 months.
Whether any policy reversal on the part of the U.S. that will back the
military against the Brotherhood can retrieve America’s tattered
reputation remains to be seen. But it is to be hoped that even at this
late date, Obama will realize just how wrong he has been about the
Brotherhood and start trying to repair the damage.
UPDATE:
Late Wednesday afternoon, the silence from the White House about events in Egypt finally ended. In a statement, President
Obama claimed that he is neutral on the question of who controls Egypt
but wishes to uphold certain principles. The text contains anodyne
proclamations about democracy and the participation of all groups in the
government of Egypt that are unexceptionable. But it also clearly
states that the president is “deeply concerned” about the ouster of
Morsi and the suspension of the Egyptian constitution that brought him
to power, calls upon the military not to arrest the deposed leader or
other Muslim Brotherhood officials and then pointedly says that he has
“directed the relevant departments and agencies to review the
implications under U.S. law for our assistance to the Government of
Egypt.”
In other words, you don’t have to read too closely between the lines
to understand that Obama is angrier about regime change in Cairo than he
ever was about the Islamist attempt to remake Egypt in their own image.
President Obama stood by passively for a year as Morsi and the
Brotherhood began to seize total power, repress critics and pave the way
for a complete transformation of Egypt into an Islamist state without
threatening a cutoff of U.S. aid. Now Obama has finally found the guts
to use America’s leverage over the country but only to register his
protest against the downfall of the Brotherhood.
This will do nothing to help Morsi and the rest of his authoritarian
crew that had already topped the excesses of the Mubarak regime in only a
year. The Egyptian military knows despite the attempt of the
Brotherhood to sell the West on the myth that a fascist-style movement
like theses Islamists is democratic in nature, the only way to prevent
it from fomenting violence is to use the same tactics it wanted to
employ against Morsi’s critics.
But by doing so in this manner, the president has made it clear again
to the Egyptian people that his sympathies are not with those who want a
government that doesn’t wish to impose Islamism on the country or the
minority that actually want democracy but with Morsi and the
Brotherhood. Rather than repair the damage he has done in the last three
years, it looks like the president sounds as if he is determined to
double down on his mistakes.
Three Cheers for the Bush Doctrine
[Note: this website does not espouse any particular political stance.
The following is reproduced for thought/reflection. Rowland].
Monday, Mar. 07, 2005
History has begun to speak, and it says that America made the right decision to invade Iraq
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Jon Stewart, the sage of Comedy Central, is one of the few to be
honest about it. “What if Bush … has been right about this all along? I
feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may … implode.”
Daniel Schorr, another critic of the Bush foreign policy, ventured, a
bit more grudgingly, that Bush “may have had it right.”
Right on what? That America, using power harnessed to democratic
ideals, could begin a transformation of the Arab world from endless
tyranny and intolerance to decent governance and democratization. Two
years ago, shortly before the invasion of Iraq, I argued in these pages
that forcefully deposing Saddam Hussein was, more than anything, about
America “coming ashore” to effect a “pan-Arab reformation”–a dangerous,
“risky and, yes, arrogant” but necessary attempt to change the very
culture of the Middle East, to open its doors to democracy and
modernity.
The Administration went ahead with this great project knowing it
would be hostage to history. History has begun to speak. Elections in
Afghanistan, a historic first. Elections in Iraq, a historic first. Free
Palestinian elections producing a moderate leadership, two historic
firsts. Municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, men only, but still a
first. In Egypt, demonstrations for democracy–unheard of in
decades–prompting the dictator to announce free contested presidential
elections, a historic first.
And now, of course, the most romantic flowering of the spirit America
went into the region to foster: the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, in
which unarmed civilians, Christian and Muslim alike, brought down the
puppet government installed by Syria. There is even the beginning of a
breeze in Damascus. More than 140 Syrian intellectuals have signed a
public statement defying their government by opposing its occupation of
Lebanon.
To what do we attribute this Arab spring? While American (and European)
liberal and “realist” critics are seeking some explanation, those a
bit closer to the scene don’t flinch from the obvious. “It is strange
for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the
American invasion of Iraq,” Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt
explained to David Ignatius of the Washington Post. “I was cynical about
Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million
of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the
Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has
fallen. We can see it.”
When Ronald Reagan declared that the unfreedom imposed by communism
was simply unsustainable and that it should be not appeased or
accommodated, but instead forced–by the power and will of free
peoples–into the ash heap of history, he was ridiculed and patronized as
a simpleton. Clark Clifford famously called him an amiable dunce. The
amiable dunce went on to win the cold war.
Two decades later, another patronized President. Our intellectuals
and Middle East “experts” have been telling us that Bush’s grand project
to democratize the region is the fantasy of a historical illiterate.
Faced with the stunning Iraqi election, they went to great lengths to
attribute this inconvenient yet undeniable success to the courage of the
Iraqi people.
This is all very nice. But this courage was rather dormant before the
American invasion. It was America’s overthrow of Saddam’s republic of
fear that gave to the Iraqi people space and air and the very
possibility of expressing courage.
Those now waxing rhapsodic about the courage of the natives and the
beauty of people power need to ask themselves the obvious question: Why
now? It is easy to get sentimental about people power. But people power
does not always prevail. Indeed, it rarely prevails. It was crushed in
Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Tiananmen Square 1989–and Iraq 1991.
Matched against tyranny at its point of maximum cruelty, people power is
useless.
In the 1991 uprising, tens of thousands of Shi’ites and Kurds were
killed by the raw power of Saddam’s helicopters and tanks and secret
police. What was different this time? No Saddam. The American army had
come ashore to disarm and depose him. After the sword, it provided the
shield to allow 8 million Iraqis to revel in their first exercise of
democratic self-governance.
Why now? Because until now the forces of decency in the region were
alone and naked, cynically ignored by an outside world content to deal
with their oppressors. Then comes America, not just proclaiming
democratic liberation as its overriding foreign policy principle but
sacrificing blood and treasure in the service of precisely that
principle.
It was not people power that set this in motion. It was American
power. People power followed. Which is why the critics of the Bush
doctrine take refuge in a second Bush-free explanation. They locate the
reason for this astonishing Arab spring, if not in people power from
below, then in rot from above. These superannuated dictatorships, we are
now told, were fossilized and frail, already wobbly and ready to fall,
just waiting to be undone by the slightest challenge.
Interesting. If the rot was always there, why is it that these
critics never said so before? They never suggested that we challenge
these wobbly despots? In fact, they bitterly denounced the Bush doctrine
for presuming to destabilize the region in pursuit of some democratic
chimera? They opposed the Bush doctrine precisely because they preferred
stability. They warned us darkly that the alternative to the status quo
was the seething Arab street–an unruly mob, anarchic, anti-American,
pan-Arabist or perhaps Islamist, ignorant of all liberal traditions and
ready to rise up against America should it disturb the perfect order of
things by “imposing democracy.”
Turns out, the critics, liberal and “realist,” got the Arab street
wrong. In Iraq and Lebanon, the Arab street finally got to speak, and
mirabile dictu, it speaks of freedom and dignity. It does not bay for
American blood. On the contrary, its leaders now openly point to the
American example and American intervention as having provided the
opening for this first tentative venture in freedom.
What really changed in the Middle East? The Iraqi elections
vindicated the two central propositions of the Bush doctrine. First,
that the will to freedom is indeed universal and not the private
preserve of Westerners. And second, that American intentions were
sincere. Contrary to the cynics, Arab and European and American, the
U.S. did not go into Iraq for oil or hegemony, after all, but for
liberation–a truth that on Jan. 31 even al-Jazeera had to televise.
This was the critical event because Arabs have had good reason to
doubt American sincerity: six decades of U.S. support for Arab
dictators, a cynical “realism” that began with F.D.R.’s deal with Ibn
Saud and reached its apogee with the 1991 betrayal of the anti-Saddam
uprising that Bush 41 had encouraged in Iraq. Today, however, they see a
different Bush and a different doctrine. What changed the climate in
the Middle East was not just the U.S. invasion and show of arms. It was
U.S. determination and staying power, and the refusal of its people last
November to turn out a President who rejected an “exit strategy” but
pledged instead to remain until Iraqi self-governance was secure.
It took this marriage of power, will and principle to produce the
astonishing developments in the Middle East today. This is not to say
that this spring cannot be extinguished. Of course it can. The dictators
can still strike back, and we may flinch in defense of those they
strike. History has yet to yield a verdict on the final outcome. But it
has yielded one unmistakable verdict thus far: the idea that Arabs are
not fit for or inclined toward freedom–the underlying assumption of
those who denounced, ridiculed and otherwise opposed the democracy
project–is wrong. Embarrassingly, scandalously, blessedly wrong.
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/printout/0,8816,1035052,00.htmlSen. Menendez: US-Israeli Bond Stronger than Turbulent Mideast
Israel
could not ask for a friendlier Foreign Relations panel chairman than NJ
Sen. Menendez. He used the left-wing Haaretz to state the US needs to
intervene in Syria. Faint hopes for ”peace process.”
Published: May 27th, 2013
Sen. Robert Menendez is visiting Israel for the first time as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/sen-menendez-us-israeli-bond-stronger-than-turbulent-mideast/2013/05/27/
The United States cannot stop at jawboning Iran and turning a blind
eye to Syria but instead needs to take the offensive to “stand up for
American’s interests” as well as those of Israel, said Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Sen. Robert Menendez during his first official visit
to Israel.
A strong and passionate support of Israel, he chose to write in the left-wing Haaretz
newspaper Monday, “I arrive in a thriving Israel, but there is trouble
in the neighborhood. From Egypt to Syria and beyond, the Arab
revolutions have been a mixed bag for Israel.”
He wrote that instead of standing on the sidelines, the Obama
administration “cannot allow the Iranians to continue to stall through
talks while simultaneously bringing hundreds of new centrifuges online.”
He also stated that the United States must actively intervene in
Syria, regardless of the emergence of Islamic terrorist groups among
rebels fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“The United States must play a role in tipping the scales toward
moderate opposition groups and work to build a free and stable Syria,:”
he wrote. “I know that there are real concerns about providing arms to
the opposition, and I understand those concerns. But the choice is not
between arming and not arming. The choice is between responsibly
stepping in and leaving it to others who will simply arm the
extremists.”
The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons sharply criticized Menendez and
the Foreign Relations Committee, warning that the senator does not
understand that the “heart-breaking situation in Syria is…not nearly as
vital to American national interests as” he claims.
“The al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra front is one of the few Syrian
opposition operations currently making headway against Assad,” according
to Clemons. “When it comes to al-Nusra in Syria, the enemy of our enemy
remains our enemy — but Senator Menendez does not seem to include this
group in his fantasy vision of what the Syrian resistance is comprised
of.”
New Documents Show Bush Administration Planned War in Iraq Well Before 9/11/2001
All of us knew it but couldn't prove it. Now we can prove it.
Newly declassified documents published at the National Security Archive
prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the Bush administration planned
to topple Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq as early as January, 2001, and were making strategic plans and resource allocations as early as November, 2001.
January 30, 2001 – Bush administration principals (agency heads) meet for the
first time and discuss the Middle East, including Bush’s intention to disengage from the Israel-Palestine peace process and “How Iraq is destabilizing the region.” Bush directs Rumsfeld and JCS chairman Hugh Shelton to examine military options for Iraq; CIA director George Tenet is directed to improve intelligence on the country. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke are both struck by the emphasis on confronting Iraq, an aim consistent with Rumsfeld’s hiring of Wolfowitz and later Feith, well known for their bellicosity on the issue, for high-level Pentagon
positions. (Source: EBB/Franks Timeline (PDF))
When did we invade Afghanistan? Oh, that's right...it was October 7, 2001.
Walking through these documents makes it clear that the Bush
Administration -- from Day One -- intended to invade Iraq at some point
in their reign of terror. Here is a memo (PDF) dated January 23, 2001
outlining the "Origins of the Iraq Regime Change Policy".
This was requested by Vice President-elect Dick Cheney before taking
office, presumably as a way to justify policy formation around
aggressive US efforts for "regime change" in Iraq.
This memo (PDF) written on November 27, 2001
should send cold chills up and down your spine. It is a list of talking
points from Rumsfeld to Franks about how to handle a run-up to a
full-scale Iraq invasion. November 27th, 51 days after Afghanistan was
invaded. And check this talking point:
Afghanistan was never, ever a priority for the Bush Administration.
It was always about Iraq. To line up support for the plan, they were
marshalling the Catholics and anyone else they could get to start
forming arguments for "just wars". An internal memo from Robert Andrews, Dep. Assistant Secretary of Defense on December 17, 2001 touted this:
A prominent Catholic theologian outlines the moral justification for a pre-emptive strike against Iraq.
[...a list of reasons why it was so important follows]
- Introduces the concept of "regime factor,"
- illustrates the concept using the Iraq situation
- demonstrates how pre-emptive action against Iraq fits into the just-war tradition
That memo made its way to Douglas Feith, neocon extraordinaire, who left his approval in the margin:
George is a brilliant guy and a gentleman. Thanks for sending this along. DJF
Speaking strictly for me, the idea of Catholic aides to the Pope
pushing wars as "just" to our government smacks of intervention not of
the divine kind. The article itself pushes along the lie about WMD,
too, reinforcing what we now know was nothing more than fantasy in the
black hearts of Cheney and his neocon brigade. But it added to the
political cover the Bush administration needed to push the Iraq effort
forward.
Iraq, for Cheney, Bush and the crew, was a way to increase prestige
and power. Nothing speaks to that louder than the oft-repeated words in this memo from Donald Rumsfeld on July 27, 2001 where he says this at least twice:
If Saddam's regime were ousted, we would have a much-improved position in the region and elsewhere.
The first time he mentions this, it's with some regret that we're not
better friends with Iran. The second time he mentions it, it's in his
closing argument for why toppling Saddam Hussein will strengthen US
Arab-Israeli policy. It's like a talisman for Rumsfeld, this idea of
improving our "US credibility and influence throughout the region".
Here's the punchline, courtesy of the National Security Archive summary:
At this point, the weight of evidence supports an observation made in April 2002 by members of the covert Iraq Operations Group – Iraq “regime change” was already on Bush’s agenda when he took office in January 2001. (Note 33) September 11 was not the motivation for the U.S. invasion of Iraq – it was a distraction from it.
Now, at least, our instinct about Iraq being the one true goal is confirmed. For whatever that's worth, anyway.
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