September 21, 2012

Phyllis Bennis: "The Middle East in Turmoil Once Again: And It's Not All About Us"

This "Talking Points" contribution offers excellent analysis on the current situation in the Middle East, in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Palestine, with links for more.

"When are we going to learn that it's not all about us?

Certainly a lot of the current turmoil in the Middle East has something to do with the consequences of U.S. policy there. But still. The front page article in Sunday’s New York Times led with concern that the current turmoil will test “President Obama’s ability to shape the forces of change in the Middle East.” Yikes. This is a disaster in the making. 

Trying to renew U.S. control of a region finally claiming its 21st century independence from mainly U.S.-backed governments, is completely wrong-headed. After two or three generations of U.S. support for brutal military dictatorships and absolute monarchies because they were willing to toe the line on Israel, oil, and military bases, do we really want to put Washington back in charge of "shaping" the change that people across the region are fighting for?

The whole range of changes in the Middle East, who's "shaping" those changes, what's the fight over Iran red lines between the United States and Israel and between Obama and Romney, what about U.S. military aid to Israel, were all on the agenda of Saturday's "Up With Chris Hayes" show on MSNBC. I was part of the panel, with a mostly interesting and diverse set of progressive voices...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking of the killings of the U.S. officials in Benghazi, asked "how could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?" The answer that will probably never occur to her is that not everyone in Libya, not even everyone in Benghazi, saw the U.S./NATO air war as liberation — even some of those who celebrated the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime didn't want it to come via foreign air forces.

Let's all take a deep breath and remember that it's not always about us. The U.S./NATO air war against Libya did overthrow a dictatorship — but it led to rising sectarianism and division, a country awash in weapons, uncontrolled militias arresting and torturing dark-skinned Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans, imposing their will on terrified people without any accountability to the elected government, and so on. And all those consequences were happening way before the tragic killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, the death of the other U.S. diplomat and two U.S. security contractors in Benghazi.

Somehow it took the deaths of U.S. officials to get people in this country to pay attention again to Libya. I was part of a panel discussing exactly that on National Public Radio's KQED "Forum" program in San Francisco.

The protests that have spread across the Middle East and the broader Muslim world (which includes places like London these days) were sparked by the offensive Islamophobic film clip produced by a shadowy group in California and endorsed and promoted by Quran-burning preacher Terry Jones in Florida. But as Bob Wright wrote in The Atlantic, "as the Muslim protests subside, more and more people have come to realize that what seems to have sparked them – one of the worst YouTube videos ever, which is saying something – isn't what they were mainly about. But what were they about? …Part of the answer is that the video itself did offend people. But, as when a single offensive remark from someone you've long disliked can make you go ballistic, the explanation for this explosion goes deeper than the precipitating event. What are the sources of simmering hostility toward America that helped fuel these protests?"...

Read the full posting here,
September 21, 2012 · By Phyllis Bennis

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Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (http://www.ips-dc.org) and Director of their New Internationalism project.