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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Feb 09 2011 - 00:07:19 EST
It's not radical Islam that worries the US – it's independence by Noam
Chomsky
*February 8, 2011*
*The nature of any regime the USA backs in the Arab world is secondary to
control. Subjects are ignored until they break their chains.*
'The Arab world is on fire," *al-Jazeera* reported last week, while
throughout the region, western allies "are quickly losing their influence".
The shock wave was set in motion by the dramatic uprising in Tunisia that
drove out a western-backed dictator, with reverberations especially in
Egypt, where demonstrators overwhelmed a dictator's brutal police.
Observers compared it to the toppling of Russian domains in 1989, but there
are important differences. Crucially, no Mikhail Gorbachev exists among the
great powers that support the Arab dictators. Rather, Washington and its
allies keep to the well-established principle that democracy is acceptable
only insofar as it conforms to strategic and economic objectives: fine in
enemy territory (up to a point), but not in our backyard, please, unless
properly tamed.
One 1989 comparison has some validity: Romania, where Washington maintained
its support for Nicolae Ceausescu, the most vicious of the east European
dictators, until the allegiance became untenable. Then Washington hailed his
overthrow while the past was erased. That is a standard pattern: Ferdinand
Marcos, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Chun Doo-hwan, Suharto and many other useful
gangsters. It may be under way in the case of Hosni Mubarak, along with
routine efforts to try to ensure a successor regime will not veer far from
the approved path. The current hope appears to be Mubarak loyalist General
Omar Suleiman, just named Egypt's vice-president. Suleiman, the longtime
head of the intelligence services, is despised by the rebelling public
almost as much as the dictator himself.
A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires
(reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without
some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always
been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical
Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.
A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam
(and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most
brutal of Pakistan's dictators and President Reagan's favorite, who carried
out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding).
"The traditional argument put forward in and out of the Arab world is that
there is nothing wrong, everything is under control," says Marwan Muasher, a
former Jordanian official and now director of Middle East research for the
Carnegie Endowment. "With this line of thinking, entrenched forces argue
that opponents and outsiders calling for reform are exaggerating the
conditions on the ground."
Therefore the public can be dismissed. The doctrine traces far back and
generalises worldwide, to US home territory as well. In the event of unrest,
tactical shifts may be necessary, but always with an eye to reasserting
control.
The vibrant democracy movement in Tunisia was directed against "a police
state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human
rights problems", ruled by a dictator whose family was hated for their
venality. So said US ambassador Robert Godec in a July 2009 cable released
by WikiLeaks.
Therefore to some observers the WikiLeaks "documents should create a
comforting feeling among the American public that officials aren't asleep at
the switch" – indeed, that the cables are so supportive of US policies that
it is almost as if Obama is leaking them himself (or so Jacob Heilbrunn
writes in The National Interest.)
"America should give Assange a medal," says a headline in the *Financial
Times*, where Gideon Rachman writes: "America's foreign policy comes across
as principled, intelligent and pragmatic … the public position taken by the
US on any given issue is usually the private position as well."
In this view, *WikiLeaks* undermines "conspiracy theorists" who question the
noble motives Washington proclaims.
Godec's cable supports these judgments – at least if we look no further. If
we do,, as foreign policy analyst Stephen Zunes reports in* Foreign Policy
in Focus*, we find that, with Godec's information in hand, Washington
provided $12m in military aid to Tunisia. As it happens, Tunisia was one of
only five foreign beneficiaries: Israel (routinely); the two Middle East
dictatorships Egypt and Jordan; and Colombia, which has long had the worst
human-rights record and the most US military aid in the hemisphere.
Heilbrunn's exhibit A is Arab support for US policies targeting Iran,
revealed by leaked cables. Rachman too seizes on this example, as did the
media generally, hailing these encouraging revelations. The reactions
illustrate how profound is the contempt for democracy in the educated
culture.
Unmentioned is what the population thinks – easily discovered. According to
polls released by the Brookings Institution in August, some Arabs agree with
Washington and western commentators that Iran is a threat: 10%. In contrast,
they regard the US and Israel as the major threats (77%; 88%).
Arab opinion is so hostile to Washington's policies that a majority (57%)
think regional security would be enhanced if Iran had nuclear weapons.
Still, "there is nothing wrong, everything is under control" (as Muasher
describes the prevailing fantasy). The dictators support us. Their subjects
can be ignored – unless they break their chains, and then policy must be
adjusted.
Other leaks also appear to lend support to the enthusiastic judgments about
Washington's nobility. In July 2009, Hugo Llorens, U.S. ambassador to
Honduras, informed Washington of an embassy investigation of "legal and
constitutional issues surrounding the 28 June forced removal of President
Manuel 'Mel' Zelaya."
The embassy concluded that "there is no doubt that the military, supreme
court and national congress conspired on 28 June in what constituted an
illegal and unconstitutional coup against the executive branch". Very
admirable, except that President Obama proceeded to break with almost all of
Latin America and Europe by supporting the coup regime and dismissing
subsequent atrocities.
Perhaps the most remarkable WikiLeaks revelations have to do with Pakistan,
reviewed by foreign policy analyst Fred Branfman in Truthdig.
The cables reveal that the US embassy is well aware that Washington's war in
Afghanistan and Pakistan not only intensifies rampant anti-Americanism but
also "risks destabilising the Pakistani state" and even raises a threat of
the ultimate nightmare: that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of
Islamic terrorists.
Again, the revelations "should create a comforting feeling … that officials
are not asleep at the switch" (Heilbrunn's words) – while Washington marches
stalwartly toward disaster.
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