Saturday, April 6, 2013

Brief Notes: Can we finally admit that the "Arab Spring" was no such thing?

Mike L.

This late in the game will the people - such as Barack Obama - who heralded the "Arab Spring" as the great upwelling of Arab democracy finally admit that they were mistaken?  The Muslim Middle East is in flames.  Egypt is perhaps the most important Arab country throughout the region and was long considered a stabilizing presence.  Now it is on the verge of economic collapse, as Morsi's Islamist government violently contends with their more liberal rivals.  In Syria there are 70,000 dead since the outbreak of hostilities which, by the way, represents at least ten thousand more dead than in the entire Arab-Israel conflict since 1948.

Just to keep things in perspective.

By all accounts Turkey is moving in the direction of political Islam.  Tunisia is Islamist.  Libya is Islamist.  And most of the rest of the region is teetering on the edge.

This being the case can we finally agree that those who thought that the "Arab Spring" was about democracy were wrong and those of us who suspected that it was about the rise of political Islam were correct?  Because, in truth, I have yet to see any progressive cheer-leader for the "Arab Spring" admit this.  There must be some significant left opinionator out there who has, but I'll be damned if I know who it is.  If you guys can point me to someone I would very much appreciate it.

Even Barack Obama, who explicitly claimed to support the "Arab Spring," has not given us even the slightest indication that he acknowledges that he was mistaken to do so.  You really can't blame the White House for that, however.  No American president is going to own up to a major devastating screw-up unless the press or the people force him to do so and that is not about to happen anytime soon in this case.

I do not honestly expect all those flouncy progressive-left cheer-leaders to come forward with their heads held in shame, squirting tears.

I do hope that in their quiet time they may have reconsidered, however.

Better late than never.


  1. Several dozen sites belonging to Israeli NGOs have been damaged, the web vandals claimed, including that of Larger than Life, and NGO for children with cancer.

    "The website of Larger than Life has been under attack from pro-Palestinian hackers for a week," Larger than Life wrote on its Facebook page Thursday, "and every day they take down our site and plant different content – flags, a skull, symbols and all sorts of hate-related things."


    Asshole Pro-Palestinian hackers.

  2. I'm not sure who coined the phrase Arab Spring in the first place. I doubt more than 1 out of 500 people on the planet today know about the Hungarian Spring of 1956 which was crushed by the Soviets or the Prague Spring of 1968 which was crushed by the Soviets which lead to the summer of 1968 and the massive resurgence of Communist parties and pro Soviet sympathies in the west. And in fact by linking their own brutal repressions with the anti war movements they were able to foster both a powerful flowering of Communist parties in Western Europe AND a strong and ultimately successful anti Vietnam War movement in the US.

    But whomever coined the term Arab Spring must have had both of those things in mind - from the perspective of the far left, the communists and company who used to push for everything that was exactly opposite of what the claimed to be. So it's obvious to me at least that the voices who endlessly championed the Arab Spring were in fact pushing for everything that's happened so far - violence, anarchy, brutality, fascism, religious war, chaos and importantly, a retreat by the US across the region.

    Is it any wonder why the Obama administration has never supported any of the 'color' revolutions in the region? The Carnation Revolution in Lebanon or the Green Revolution in Iran? Compared with earlier US efforts to support the Cedar Revolution (Lebanon), the Orange Revolution (Ukraine), the Purple, Pink and Blue revolutions of 2003-5 across Central Asia and the Caucuses, Obama has done nothing to actually foster the orderly transfer of power from autocracies to something else. Instead, Obama has adopted a policy of plausible dependability of 'lead from behind' and only after full scale civil wars are in progress. The end result of which has been the installation of Islamic fascist dictatorships or something quite close to that. Or, it's an ongoing affair consisting of dirty wars and drone strikes which appears to accomplish little but a static condition of war.