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Why the "Obama Doctrine" won't help the Shia majority in Bahrain

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  What Janet explained to the rapt reporters was that Israeli commanders and their   right wing Phalangist collaborators, with Sharon's, if not Begins approval, were making plenty of fast cash selling truckloads of water to trapped West Beirutis and the business soon expanded to Bekaa hashish. By late July some of the Israeli checkpoints along the green line between East and West Beirut were manned by stoned Israelis such that the PLO was able to bring in truckloads of needed relief supplies including ammunition and weapons even after the power and water were eventually restored. The late Lebanese Patriot, George Hawri, head of the Lebanese Communist Party, worked to maintain this lifeline with the help of friends from the Bekaa and years later relished each retelling of the story. The Israeli troop's blurry condition may have contributed to several routs they experienced by PLO forces and the loss of more than 25 tanks and APC's near the Beirut racecourse just east of the green line. 1982 was not the last time Israeli troops eagerly traded weapons and intelligence for drugs in Lebanon.

What Khalidi remains critical of, like many observers, is what he sees as the Obama administration's claimed "American values imperative" being made a mockery of whenever American "interests" are brought up to justify cherry picking which brutal despots get the "moderate' or "reformer' label while others are no-fly zoned and targeted for elimination for being "genocidal."

The Obama administration hypocrisy toward the unarmed civilians being killed in Bahrain is flagrant and runs deeply counter to American values.

  Speaking on 4/13/11 at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, a gathering sponsored by Qatar and the Brookings Institution, Secretary of State Clinton assured the World that "America's core interests and values have not changed, including our commitment to promote human rights equally in every country."

  Clinton's remarks prompted some groans from the audience and one Georgetown University student impolitely blurted out "Tell that to the people of Bahrain and prove it lady!"

What the exasperated student, and others in the audience apparently found outrageous was Clinton's comment that, "We know that a one-size-fits-all approach to American values doesn't make sense in such a diverse region at such a fluid time" as she hailed Bahrain for what she called a "decades-long friendship which we expect to continue long into the future."   Referring to the government crackdown, she added that "violence is not and cannot be the answer."

Clinton explained that the Obama administration will neither recall its ambassador to Manama nor threaten sanctions -- a striking disparity that is fueling -anti-U.S. sentiment among Bahraini opposition groups. The Obama Doctrine words are all about freedom and democracy and change, but in Bahrain, the reality is that the Obama Doctrine amounts to a protection for the dictatorship.

By contrast, Obama has repeatedly justified military attacks in Libya, saying: "Innocent people were targeted for killing. Hospitals and ambulances were attacked. Journalists were arrested. These acts are against core American values."    But while the same human rights abuses noted by Obama are happening in Bahrain, the Obama Doctrine is not on the Presidents teleprompter.

  It appears that core American values aren't so important when the regime being reformed houses the Fifth Fleet and has Saudi neighbors, themselves afraid of potential protests, according to the Wall Street Journal.

What the rude Georgetown student at Clinton's speech this week understood, is that as Joe Stork, Deputy Middle East Director at Human Rights Watch noted a couple of days ago concerning yet another brutal Khalifa government killing of unarmed civilians, "Four detainee deaths in nine days is a crime, not a coincidence. The government tells families of detainees nothing about their whereabouts or well-being while they are alive or about the circumstances of their deaths. "Emergency laws should not be used as a cover for brutality," Stork reminded the Obama administration that torture and killing of the peaceful protesters in Bahrain at the hands of both the Bahrani armed forces and the additional forces provided by Saudi Arabia are not supported by the American public.

Obama administration officials, like most of the US media, have been playing a game of criminal silence about the situation in Bahrain. Political institutions have been trying to stoke the fire of Shi'a-Sunni sectarianism instead of trying to resolve the real issues -- the barbaric actions and unfair political and economic policies of the ruling family in Bahrain, a state of forceful repression.

More than 70% of native Bahrainis are Shi'ites, while the ruling family and most elites are Sunnis. This state of affairs has led to an apartheid mentality among the ruling family. Shi'ites are not allowed to work in the army, the intelligence service, or the police force, nor are they fairly represented in top-level governmental positions.   In addition to jailing activists and banning Shiite-led opposition parties, Bahraini authorities fired civil servants and even professional athletes who participated in demonstrations.   The country's only independent newspaper was taken over last week and its editor forced to resign. On 4/14/11 the Sunni government moved to ban Bahrain's largest political party, the Shiite-dominated al-Wefaq, along with a smaller Shiite party.

When they apply for jobs the Shia in Bahrain experience in some ways what the Palestinian refugees suffer in Lebanon.   They may be offered a job but it is quickly withdrawn when the prospective employer learns that the applicant is Shia.   As Nicholas Kristof wrote of the Khalifa's attitude toward Shi'ites in his New York Times Blog : "the language of the ruling party sounds a lot to me like the language of white South Africans -- or even like the language of white southerners in Jim Crow America, or the language of militant Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There's a fear of the rabble, a distrust of full democracy, a sense of entitlement."

The "American humanitarian values" based "Obama Doctrine" offers no protection for the majority Shia population of Bahrain.   They're vulnerable.   They are expendable.   The Fifth fleet is not.   Nor are Saudi interests for they represent for Washington's neocons a strategically important bulwark against Iranian power in the region.

The "Obama Doctrine" offers no police, security or judicial system to protect them.   In the past few days the Khalifa regime has intensified their attacks on this community -- harassment on the streets, housing and job discrimination, and systematic attacks in the media.

The Obama administration appears to be trying to use the Iran issue in a way similar to how the Arab regimes use Israel in order to deny justice to their people and prevent them from participating in the government.

At the same time the "Obama Doctrine" ignores recent polls showing that nearly 60% of Americans support the uprising in Bahrain and the region even if the uprisings lead to regimes more likely to oppose US policies in the region including US support for Israel.

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Since 2013, Professor Franklin P. Lamb has traveled extensively throughout Syria. His primary focus has been to document, photograph, research and hopefully help preserve the vast and irreplaceable archaeological sites and artifacts in (more...)
 

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