ASIA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Submittedf by: Donald Hank with Comment

Taipan Daily: The Middle East Will Erupt in a Giant Fireball
by Justice Litle, Editorial Director, Taipan Publishing Group

It's going to go very badly in the Middle East. Things are going to get worse and worse until, more or less, the entire region erupts in a giant fireball.

There is no pleasure in saying this. The consequences will be awful, and widespread. But honestly it is hard to see, now, how the situation could play out any other way.

In Libya, Gadhafi's forces are winning. Rebels are being systematically flushed out and executed as the West dithers.

As of this writing, the West seems to be playing the situation in the worst manner conceivable: Getting involved vocally and logistically just enough to make Gadhafi furious, without doing enough to stop his victory.

How does that old saying go? "You do not wound a king." If you are going to attack a king, you kill him, lest he remember who wounded him after remarshaling his forces. If you do not intend to kill, you do not attack in the first place.

The buzz inside the Beltway is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is ready to quit in disgust over the White House's indecision. As The Daily reports,

At the tail end of her mission to bolster the Libyan opposition, which has suffered days of losses to Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces, Clinton announced that she's done with Obama after 2012 -- even if he wins again.

"Obviously, she's not happy with dealing with a president who can't decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can't make his mind up," a Clinton insider told The Daily. "She's exhausted, tired."

First we supported the rebels. Then we didn't. We sounded and acted as if forceful intervention was imminent. Then it wasn't. Now it's back on again -- maybe? -- even as most Middle East watchers say "too little, too late."

Iraq... Afghanistan... Vietnam... Somalia... Libya. What do these little adventures have in common? A marked tendency for America to start something it can't (or won't) finish.

Of course, we haven't sent troops into Libya yet (at least as of this writing). But we have backed the rebels with aggressive words, not least from the mouth of the president himself.

And what do such words accomplish?

They merely remind the Libyan rebels, and all those fighting against oppressive regimes everywhere, that the talk of Western leaders doesn't mean squat... that promises and pronouncements of the West are not worth listening to, and are probably dangerous to boot.

But it's not just Libya that invites the "fireball" prediction. It's Bahrain too... and Egypt.

Bahrain, as you may be aware, is heating up as a massive proxy battleground between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shia Muslim Iran.

But let's talk about Egypt for a moment -- a country that has faded off the hot-spot radar screen. Egypt is interesting precisely because it seems quiet... and appears a success. A win for the "good guys."

What happened in Egypt was a good thing, right? A victory for democracy and free peoples?

Perhaps... but another likely step toward "fireball" nonetheless.

The rub is this: Democracy is about giving the people what they want. But the people do not always want to join hands and sing kumbayah. And so the problem with a naïve embrace of democracy as a solution to Middle Eastern ills is this: What happens when the people democratically decide they want a caliphate?

If a newly empowered citizenry gets together and says "We have decided, via ballot box, to reinstitute Sharia law and death by stoning for transgressions of Islam -- and by the way, we hope to attack Israel post-haste," is that a good result?

Ah, but that's too cynical, many of you say. It's not fair to paint humanity with such low and base instincts.

For the sake of charity, we'll give humanity a pass. But how about opportunistic leaders of emotion-fueled political movements? Are they above exploiting low and base instincts? Cultivating them, feeding them, stoking them when the time is right?

And how about political leaders specifically looking to exploit a rising tide of resentment in a bitter and angry prosperity vacuum?

The trouble with the triumphant youth of Egypt is that they don't know how to fix the country's severe problems. Egypt suffers from a crippling lack of jobs. It suffers even more acutely from a lack of affordable foodstuffs.

And so, getting rid of the brutal 30-year dictator is great, but what happens after he is gone? What happens when the euphoria of revolution has worn off? Still no jobs. And still not enough food. Not to mention that Egypt has lost the bulk of its tourism dollars -- previously a major source of revenue.

And with the dictator gone, who to be angry with? Who to blame?

Installing ballot boxes is all well and good. But on what platforms will new leaders get elected? Real solutions to the "no jobs and no food" problems are scarce at hand.

But proposed solutions to other, more emotional "problems" -- like the need to avenge the blood of martyrs and so on -- can be most useful when the economy is in a dire state.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a wish to have back the toppled tyrants of Egypt or Tunisia, or to take back the revolutionary gains of Middle Eastern youth throwing off their chains.

Instead it is a grim commentary on what is likely to happen next...

Sometimes, when you solve a little problem without thinking about the next step, you inadvertently create an even bigger problem. The biblical version of this is casting out one demon, only to see him come back with a large group of friends.

In the Middle East, the West has been a bad actor for decades. We have long propped up ugly regimes and excused their horrors... supported revolutions only when convenient to us... and then left other freedom fighters dying in the dirt.

Then, to top things off, we decided to ride in on a white knight of championed freedom and democracy ideals -- only to do a half-assed job and withdraw just when those encouraged by our support needed it most.

The net result is the awful situation as it now stands. A current ally (Saudi Arabia) shoots protesters and implements brutal crackdown in Bahrain, even as a former ally (Iran) seeks to stir up trouble. A dictator we supported (Mubarak) goes down, leaving a power vacuum to be filled with who-knows-what in his place, even as another dictator we do not support (Gadhafi) roars back to power because we will not back our words.

And democracy, that highly esteemed Western ideal, merely turns into a vehicle for blood-soaked demagoguery in a region of the world where youth tempers are volatile, jobs are thin on the ground, and food is expensive and scarce.

Yup. Hate to say it, but it's going to go very, very badly. One word summation: "Fireball." Given the explosive nature of the oil equation, the ramifications will be global. And as unprincipled enablers of all the above, the West will reap what it sows.

Donald Hank Comments: The article above is about 99% on target. My only criticism is this:

While the author shows that Western meddling in Egypt and elsewhere will lead to chaos and instability of the markets and political scene, andhints that such could also be the case in Libya if the insurgents win, he nonetheless criticizes Obama for telling Khadaffi to leave but not following through.

Obama's error is NOT in failing to follow through and helping the insurgents win. His error is in getting involved at all.

True, Khadaffi is not a democratic leader and has used brutality.

But it is clear to anyone who knows the Middle East that any popular group that overthrows him and takes the reins of power will be many times worse and will throw the country into a tailspin.

How about this?: Don't burn your old bridges until your new ones are in place.

We don't have any new bridges in the Middle East, just a bunch of new Islamic radical thugs to replace the old pragmatic, secularist and less radical thugs who, despite their faults, have kept peace and stability.

Say goodbye to stability. Say hello to higher oil prices, even as Obama refuses to let us drill or build refineries.

Don Hank