Popular Uprisings All Over the Middle East a Death Knell for U.S. Credibility

US has lost all credibility, as well as the opportunity to be relevant, in the region.

Popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan have been the main topic of news media of late, and while the democratic yearnings of the populace should, in theory, be supported by the U.S., a change in the status quo is the last thing our government wants.

Since the days of Eisenhower, our government has striven to make democracy our #1 export, in the perhaps mistaken belief that any democratic country would be our ally. Israel was the first country in the Middle East to get the American stamp of approval and, since its inception, this tiny state the size of New Jersey has received a total of $140 billion of aid (source), $53 billion of which was military aid (source). This is a symbol of America’s “special relationship” with Israel.

But what about our special relationships with the dictatorships of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, and the monarchies of Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia? Are we “supporting” them to the tune of billions of dollars annually in the innocent hopes that they will voluntarily enact democracy in their countries? Since 1987 (the year Tunisia’s Ben-Ali took power), the U.S. has sold $349 million worth of weaponry to Tunisia (source). US military aid to Egypt totals over $1.3 billion annually (source). We gave Jordan $666 million worth of military aid in 2007 alone, spending $80 million of that on an anti-terrorism training center (source). All these countries either have rigged elections or no elections at all and we have propped up their governments with billions of dollars worth of military aid for decades. We even provided the gas with which Saddam Hussein committed an act of genocide against his own citizens (source), an act we apparently didn’t consider reprehensible until 20 years later.

In fact, during the Iran-Iraq war, we provided weapons not only to Iraq, but Iran as well, and even sent the proceeds of that arrangement to the Nicaraguan Resistance, which resulted in a little scandal called Iran-Contra. And now we lambaste Iran for providing funding and weapons to the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah. We call Hezbollah Iran’s proxy and say “no fair”, and meanwhile we have dozens of our own proxies that we fund and equip on a fantastically larger scale.

And now the citizens of all these countries call us hypocrites (like here), and we have the gall to build anti-terrorism training centers that are supposed to shield us from the results of our own actions.

Once upon a time, the U.S. had a chance to be truly relevant in the Middle East by brokering a lasting peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. We said we wanted peace, we sent our ambassadors and negotiators jaunting back and forth between Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and elsewhere. But, more than ever, it seems like that was play acting, what many political analysts refer to as “stagecraft” rather than statecraft. And now, with the Palestinian Authority seeking recognition from UN countries directly, without America’s support, it is even clearer that we are no longer needed.

The Palestinian cause is the poster child of injustice in the region. Everybody from Morocco to Qatar knows that the Palestinians are increasingly subjugated and abused in myriad ways by the U.S., who continues to fund the Israeli military machine at the rate of $8 million a day while expecting the citizens of our ally countries to believe that we are doing so because Israel is under threat (source). If Israel were to be attacked, the chances are staggering that it would be bombed with our missiles, dropped from our planes, by soldiers whose salaries are paid by our tax dollars.

We are financing war because it is more profitable than peace, and the Middle East, at least, is tired of the status quo.

We have lost our chance to be relevant. If we want a chance to survive at all, with any moral dignity, we need a drastic change of plans.

Bibi Makes Headway

The AP announced today that Avigdor Lieberman, the far-right leader of Israel's Yisrael Beitanu party, has joined the Likud coalition, headed by former Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu. This virtually guarantees that Netanyahu will become the next Prime Minister, which is as much a victory for Israel's right as Obama's was for America's left.

Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist Kadima party and PM hopeful, was also asked to join the coalition, but her response was in the negative:

"Today the foundations were laid for an extremist right-wing government under the leadership of Netanyahu," Livni's office quoted her as telling a meeting of Kadima members. "That is not our way and there is nothing for us in such a government ... We must be an alternative of hope and go into opposition."

The victory of these far right parties means more delays for peace talks, since Netanyahu does not value peace efforts in their current form. He prefers to use force as leverage to get the Palestinians to agree to his terms. This may put him at odds with President Obama, who has vowed to push for peace in the region on more liberal terms.

The Idiot's Guide to Israeli Elections

Israel's much-awaited national elections happened yesterday, and while I must admit pleasant surprise that Kadima was so successful, when I looked at the breakdown of voting records, I was not at all surprised.

The two major contenders for ruling coalition/Prime Minister status were Kadima and Likud. Kadima is headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has made mouth noises about evacuating some West Bank settlements in a "land for peace" deal with the Palestinians. She is basically considered moderate, but the only visible leader willing to make concessions for peace. Likud is a right wing party headed by former Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, who makes no pretenses at all about his unwillingness to make concessions for peace. He believes in force and "Greater Israel," meaning the West Bank should belong to Israel, not Palestine.

Other major players in this year's elections were the Labor party and Yisrael Beitanu, which is a hardcore right wing party led by Avigdor Lieberman, who openly advocates that Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent should have their citizenship revoked. His party has also discussed forced expulsions.

(On a side note, Lieberman is right to be panicky about Israel's Arabs- studies show that they will outnumber Jewish citizens within the next 10 to 20 years.)

The minor players this year were the various religious parties, the Arab parties, and the peacenik parties. But they played a very important role: the Israeli blogosphere was abuzz this past week with religious voters saying they planned not to vote for religious parties because that would only give Kadima more power. A comparable situation in the U.S. would be a lefty activist suggesting that a vote for the Green Party is the same as a vote for the Republicans.

This Ha'aretz article breaks down voting by city, party, ethnic group, whatever you like. What it revealed was this-

• Residents of settlements in the West Bank voted mostly for Likud (perhaps because of the analogy I just explained) but also for Yisrael Beitanu.
  
• Residents of Southern Israeli towns, who have been bombarded with Gaza's missiles for several years, voted mostly the same as the settlements, but with quite a few votes for Kadima.
  
• Residents of major city centers like Haifa and Tel Aviv voted mostly for Kadima and Labor.
  
• Jerusalem voted about equally for Likud and the religious parties.
  
• Wealthy areas around Tel Aviv voted about equally for Likud and Kadima
  

In addition to the by-city breakdown, the Ha'aretz data also shows that Kibbutzim voted mostly for Kadima, Labor, and Meretz (which one could call a socialist and/or peacenik party) and that Bedouin communities voted overwhelmingly (and when I say overwhelmingly, I mean 80%) for the Arab parties.

As it stands now, Kadima has 28 seats in parliament to Likud's 27, which makes Tzipi Livni the Prime Minister by default, provided she can set up a ruling coalition. However, preliminary results show that Likud has had more success with that. And let's not forget that Livni was given the chance to put together a coalition last summer, thereby avoiding the election alltogether, but she was unable to do it then.

We shall soon find out.

The Telltale Inky Finger

Once again, several years after the fact, I've seen an interesting documentary about "current" events. My Country, My Country by Laura Poitras is part biopic about Dr. Riyadh, an Iraqi doctor turned political candidate, and part silent condemnation of American and UN policies.

The film follows Doctor Riyadh (a Sunni) and others over the course of the eight months during which the 2005 Iraqi elections were organized. I was at first struck by the obvious fact that there were no Iraqis present at these planning meetings or involved in the distribution of the ballots. This seemed to be a concern for the Americans, French, and Australians in charge of the process as their planning revolved around making the elections seem credible.

This is what people had to say about it:

“We are an occupied country with a puppet government. What do you expect?”

“This is a sham. The war has been over since last May.”

“George Bush can say what he likes, but he cannot control the situation.”

“The question is, the constitution will be drafted by this so-called democratically elected government. But what if this constitution opposes America's interests by, let’s say, 60%. What will America do?”

“They want the elections to look as Iraqi as possible.”

This last quote was in reference to the fact that mercenaries were used to secure the polling places as it was not seen as wise to have American uniforms visible in news broadcasts about the event.

Another major theme in the film was the condescension dripping from the tongues of leaders in uniform. One such professional was training a group of men for the Iraqi police force and his speech included the words, "“Your country is filled with history, and I want you to remember that.” Another officer briefed a room full of interpretor soldiers with a slide show that included a shot of the words "Fake you, USA" graffitied on a wall. He seemed to feel that what was most important to emphasize about this was that they had spelled it wrong, that they had meant to write "Fuck you, USA." However, in the same speech he cried over two of his interpretors that had been killed while on duty and I realized he was just as ill-equipped to deal with the situation as those he had just been mocking.

The voting method used was to dip the voter's finger into a cup of ink, after which they would mark the ballot with it. This resulted in voters being physically tagged for several days as having voted. 44 people were killed at polling sites. Dr. Riyadh's wife and children feared doubly as being the family of a Sunni candidate and for having voted. His wife said after returning home from the polling place, “I hid my finger on the way back. I was afraid people would know I voted.”

The immediate result of the election was that over 7 million Iraqis voted, 58% of the elligible voters. Dr. Riyadh's party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, received 21,000 votes. Only 2% of elligible Sunni's voted. You can read about the long-term results here.

Other aspects of the film are Kurdish feelings about Arabs, Sunni feelings about Shias, moderate's feelings about extremists and eveyone's feelings about the occupation.