I just read Nick Turse's article, "Making Repression Our Business, The Pentagon's Secret Training Missions in the Middle East", Tom Dispatch.com that illuminates how the Pentagon has been working with the autocratic leaders in the Arab world, namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, the UAR, Oman et al to train their security forces to put down "Arab Spring" type protests and demonstrations within these countries.
Of course this type of security training was also done in Tunisia and Egypt before those countries dictators and their regimes were overthrown in their people's popular uprisings last winter.
This militarized training is also being done in many countries in sub-Sahara Africa (all autocracies) as well as many of the newly independent states in Asia that arose after the breakup of the Soviet Union, namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan (some of the harshest regimes in the world).
What is particularly galling is not only the veil of secrecy in which this "training" is done by our military but that our president Barack Obama has seemingly extolled the virtues of the Arab Spring and the rise of the people to resist and break free from their oppressors rule while at the same time authorizing his military to train the autocrats security forces to brutally put down the peoples' rising aspirations.
This reeks of sheer and utter hypocrisy.
To be sure this isn't something unique under Barack Obama as he isn't the first president to authorize the American military to train security forces in autocratic countries. We're all well aware of our training forces that became death squads under Pinochet in Chile, Samoza in Nicaragua and Duarte in El Salvador, many of which received security training at bases in the U.S. during the Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr. administration's.
It just seems particularly audacious coming from the lips of Mr. "Change you can believe in".
The truth is nothing has essentially changed under Obama. It's just the rhetoric is more articulate and cerebral, but the duplicity is no different than his immediate predecessors.
