As soon as talk of NATO-US
intervention began a heavy, covert CIA presence was evident on the ground and
the Libyan Transitional National Government was greatly assisted. To cite just
one example, 30-year U.S. resident Ali Tarhouni, a Libyan economics professor
at Washington University, miraculously returned to assist the rebel regime
equipped not only with comprehensive plans for a private central bank but while
simultaneously negotiating an immediate deal with Qatar to take rebel oil to
market. He and other former U.S. and
European residents now play a predominant role in their U.S.-backed secular
party which recently won a majority in Libya's new parliament. This represents
the only real secular alternative to Islamists in the aftermath of the Arab
Spring and was to be the model for counterrevolution.
Developing the oil-rich nation's
new government was to provide a counterbalance to Islamist regimes rising in
Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. In reality, post-Gaddafi Libya was to be the
Democrat's version of the "social engineering project" initiated
unsuccessfully under Bush's plan for democratization at the barrel of a
gun. The actual objective of
liberalizing economies, civilizing populaces, and imposing regimes loyal to U.S.
interests' remains however, but this time liberals must skillfully craft a
democratic Islam that preserves western dominance.
The situation should remind
serious onlookers not of an actual embrace of democracy but rather as similar
to the transition from direct to indirect rule that marked European colonialism
and then the U.S.'s own support for decolonial authoritarianism throughout the
Cold War. Today, by necessity, western powers have been forced to embrace a
role for an Islamism they helped suppress for decades and must be careful to
portray accepting support for the choice that accompanies democracy while
intervening to make sure that choices inside Islamic democracy produce outcomes
that sustain the present international order. That social engineering project
has been only partially successful and, if decoded, the massive protests that
raged across the Muslim world may prove precursors for what is to come.
The Economic Dimension
Dominant coverage of the protests
may have assisted in dwarfing a seemingly unrelated story that may cause mush
more turmoil in the months ahead. On Friday
September 14, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman
This third round of quantitative
easing may prove particularly damaging for it comes on the back of
international global droughts that already pushed the price of food up 10% in
July. Add that reality to QE3's inflationary pressure, which may prove
particularly turbulent if speculative investment flows into the Middle East,
and the conditions for a food crisis followed by massive future protests are
set for the future as well. Attach that awareness to a widely reported study
showing that Americans throw away 40% of their food each year and it becomes
quite evident that yet another round of Arab rage lingers on the horizon. If
that occurs, publics will blame not only America but the moderate Islamists
they claim to support as a preference to ultraconservatives.
The ramifications are potentially
dangerous for America's economy as well and not just because its central bank
is running out of ways to stimulate the domestic economy. The Obama
administration has continued to emphasize that, "the tide of war is
receding" in the Middle East specifically because they hope that economic
investment and growth there can help prevent a return to global recession. That
is why after promising 16 months ago to relieve Egypt of $1 billion of its 3$
billion U.S. debt, the U.S. and Egypt recently neared a deal that will make
debt forgiveness contingent on a $4.8 billion dollar loan from the IMF. U.S.
representatives have sought to modify the billion in flat debt forgiveness into
"debt swaps" - where debt would roll over and go to training and
infrastructure projects to help liberalize the Egyptian economy.
President Moursi has been
supportive so far. His recent meeting with representatives from the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce and leaders of 50 U.S. multinationals was classified by the
New York Times as, "one of the largest trade delegations ever." His
party originally rejected IMF loans on the grounds that they were essentially a
violation of the country's sovereignty but he has acquiesced under
deteriorating economic conditions. Adopting such measures will probably not
prove popular with Arab publics. The liberal activists that played a
predominant role in the Arab Spring protested earlier efforts to sign World
Bank- IMF loans and the working class population has already lived through
neoliberal reforms induced under Mubarak.
These reforms sent massive profits to
the elite, further suppressed worker's rights and wages and even empowered many
wealthy members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Many forget massive Tunisian protests that followed IMF structural
adjustment in 1983. These protests eventually spread to Algeria and Morocco.
The non-resource rich Tunisian government is seeking assistance with advanced
liberalization as well. However, the economic background suggests future
turmoil that could advance animosities and thereby extremism in both the West
and Muslim world.
An Ultra-Right Wing Reaction
And so, with the Obama Doctrine
endangered, right wing commentary filled the void with tough talk and a
heightened sense of extremism. The mainstream media's coverage led many
Americans to question
In the days that followed his
initial criticisms, the Romney camp lessened their attacks on Obama's response
but continued to reveal a neoconservative perspective that would mark their
candidate's presidency. "A strong America is essential to shape
events," he said while his foreign policy director explained that Romney
believes in, "peace through strength" - a slogan that uncannily
resembles the Orwellian euphemism that 'peace is war.'
The Obama campaign would not be
outdone in an election season. "No act of terrorism will go
unpunished," he remarked on the campaign stop in Colorado, obviously not
noticing that he was essentially returning to the rhetoric of his predecessor
who waged an unsuccessful global war on terror that Obama worked so hard to
rebrand as a war only on Islamic extremism. It is important here to mention
that for years America has been waging world war on an abstract tactic while
refusing to identify a specific definition for the term under international law
for fear that a consensus definition may label U.S. foreign policy as the
largest terror network in the world. Irrationality certainly dominates the day.
Publics in the Muslim world will
certainly be made all too aware of these contradictions in the coming period,
when Salafi jihadi propaganda skillfully selects from a fresh array of new
imperialist and Islamophobic quotations. For example, Ayan Hirsi Ali, vehement
anti-Muslim bigot, was granted Newsweek's front page for her story,
"Muslim Rage - How I Survived it - How we can end it." The title was
emblazoned on top images of irate Muslim protesters. Yet her solution pulls
more so from the pages of right wing fascism than the libertarianism she claims
to uphold. It is the antithesis to the
liberal's indirect neocolonialism. Her
solution? Rather than accept Islamist regimes and democracy the West should
simply orchestrate the entire region's failure, or as ancient anti-Arabism
Bernard Lewis put it to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, "let the region lapse into
insignificance."
For Ayan Hirsi Ali and the
millions of Americans and Europeans that sympathize with her, the new Islamist
regimes, "will begin to fail as soon as they set about implementing their
philosophy: strip women of their rights, murder homosexuals, constrain the
freedom of conscience and religion of non-Muslims, hunt down dissidents,
persecute religious minorities, pick fights with foreign powers, even powers
such as the U.S. that offered them friendship." Instead this widely
popular perspective argues that Muslims should be made to suffer through
economic hardship. "After the
disillusion and bitterness will come a painful lesson," she writes.
"In one or two or three decades we will see the masses in these countries
take to the streets - and perhaps call for American help to liberate them from
the governments they elected."
The sad thing isn't so much that
this argument ignores that Islamist regimes have thus far rejected any
ultraconservatism but that her position is an absolute rejection of the
principles that underlie support for freedom and the democratic process. She
and those like her fail to recognize that in an interconnected world of
globalization, failure in the lands of the Arab Spring could cause failure in
all nations. Hers is a position not unlike the bigoted, ultraconservative one
that preceded previous world wars. She concludes, "If we take the long
view, America and other western countries can help make this happen in the same
way we helped bring about the demise of the Soviet Union."
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