This whole fiasco surrounding the Innocence of Muslims movie is really strange. If the guy who is responsible is basically a giant crook who is actually Egyptian, then the whole thing is nothing more than a bunch of Muslims yelling at Americans because we allow people to post YouTubes. Guess what? In America, we can post YouTubes. You want us to change that? Don’t you want to be able to post YouTubes, too?
I understand that the material is highly offensive. But the Prophet Mohammed can take it. His honor and reputation aren’t going to be harmed by a crappy YouTube. His honor and reputation are being harmed right now by people who are killing and threatening innocent people who had and have nothing to do with the crappy YouTube.
I know that my opinion of Islam is not enhanced when my countrymen are killed because somebody posted a crappy YouTube. We have Nazis and Klansmen in this country who say and do things that are deeply hurtful to some of our most vulnerable and scarred citizens. We allow them to do it because we can take it.
If you kill my countrymen and trample and burn my flag and destroy my country’s property just because my government won’t police YouTube, I am going to start getting angry myself.
And that’s not good. Because I’m way far on the tolerant side of American public opinion. When my fellow Americans get angry and scared, they generally don’t act very nice. Ask Saddam Hussein about misguided vengeance.
We have a level-headed president at the moment, who is even familiar with Islamic culture, thanks to spending some formative years in Indonesia. That’s good, because he can think clearly and he knows where you’re coming from. But he ain’t gonna change our laws so that no one can ever say a bad word about the Prophet. We don’t do that for Jesus Christ. Respect how we roll.
Your link is the Kennedy-Nixon debate!
Figures. Post a bad link and then go make dinner so it stays up for like an hour. Brilliant!
Two things.
Shit, Brits don’t understand the concept. I mean, I have many British friends who do, and support it. However, I know a lot of leftist Brits over there who supported that internet censorship thing after the riots, or others who believe in suppressing hate speech, etc etc.
Look at the speech laws in Germany and other continental European countries – the ones banning display of Nazi symbols.
You’d think it was 1947, and the SS was going to start smashing shop windows at the first open-hand salute.
Those laws have been around since the end of WW2. They are extensive. One element that surprises most people is that Germany has a list of allowed baby names – but grants exemptions for people of non-German descent to use off-list names. One name that was removed from the list of allowed baby name is “Adolph”.
I, for one, think those laws are a good thing. In Germany you can express the same ideas as the Nazis, but not use their symbols or terminology (up to and including the infamous Sieg Heil – Hail Victory – salute). When I first arrived in West Germany in 1987 I asked why I was seeing so many documentaries on WW2 on the TV. The answer everyone gave was that there is a constant undercurrent in Germany to try to “clean up” the memory of Hitler and the Nazis – “he wasn’t so bad, he built the autobahns” kind of thing. And that as a consequence the leaders of West Germany decided to continual remind people of the reality of that time period.
At the time I might have been sympathetic to the view that West Germany had gone to far, but then the wall fell. East Germany had taken the opposite tack – they had chosen to whitewash that part of Germany history, arguing that the DDR had been founded in 1949 and shared no responsibility for events before that time. We quickly found that as much as 20% of East Germany had positive views of the Nazis and their policies. To this day East Germany is the stronghold of the far right movement in Germany.
And so, I agree with Germany’s banning of the symbols of Nazism as a valid exception to the principle of free speech.
Except that those symbols were banned in East Germnay, too.
I don’t. I was living in Eastern Europe at the end of the Communist period, and drunken skinheads were all over Poland and Czechslovakia too. It was not just a German thing. Precisely because neo-Nazi sentiment had been harshly, but inconsistently, suppressed under Communism, those who were known to have flirted with it had an entirely undeserved semi-heroic status with some.
Exactly! I pointed this out to an American, who had no idea that basically, American freedom of speech is unique in the world. In the UK you can be arrested (and many are) for a tweet. European “freedom of speech” with its limitations is familiar to many in the Middle East so consequently even well educated Muslims cannot fathom that the US allows hate speech on this level.
On your first point, why am I supposed to care if they have a hard time understanding the concept of freedom of expression? Even if I can understand why they might think our government approves of a crappy YouTube because they haven’t stopped its publication, they’re completely wrong. When you kill Americans and burn our flag and destroy our property and you don’t even have a legitimate fucking point, you are asking for some rather harsh blowback.
Yeah, but we can’t actually mete out harsh blowback in a meaningful way. Doing something just makes them hate us more, doing nothing just makes them see us as weak.
I do think the Libyans might turn over who it is, those guys hated the Libyan freedom movement too, but Libya is a special case.
BooMan, congrats on your realistic and honest streak.
How many of these protesters have regular access to the internet? Egyptian TV aired portions of the trailer on Sep 9. That probably reached a lot of people who had never even heard of YouTube.
Besides the modern social media, what do you think of the friday sermons in the mosque? Many protests and riots start there, look at most Arab nations.
Seemed to me to be the “dog that didn’t bark” in this round of outrage protests and riots. Don’t know if that means anything or not.
No, Islamist Salafites and their protests are strange. There a multitude of reasons for why we suck, and they get out in the streets over fucking cartoons and movies about Muhammad.
They don’t care about social injustices, poverty, or the Israeli occupation, but they can never, ever, tolerate internet insults against the prophet.
What would Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed and the rest of those grifters do if someone in the Islamic world portrayed Jesus as a pedo? I don’t think they’d take too kindly to it.
Yeah, they’d probably send a sternly-worded op-ed and make a vituperative blog post with an ask for money.
No, sorry, no false equivalences here. I get called out a lot for being “too soft” on Islam all the time because I frequently defend it; I also call out people like Sam Harris for his bigotry. And I will continue to defend it when I don’t think it’s being portrayed fairly. But there is no level playing field here. There is a problem with radicalism in Islam in this present moment in history, and it needs to be dealt with by that community in some way. The institutions surrounding it, funded and backed by our government, is a big aspect of that problem, and continues to be a part of that problem. You didn’t see half of this shit under Nasser’s Egypt.
That’s because Nasser supressed the Islamists. As did Sadat and Mubarak after him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX4RK8bj2W0
Amusing clip. Subtitled for non-MSA speakers.
And unlike Sadat and Mubarak, Nasser was and is still loved by the Egyptian public.
For the record, Nasser is not speaking MSA here, he is speaking Egyptian dialect. And the irony is that today in Egypt nearly every woman does wear some form of hijab (or higab in Egyptian), although I must say that the younger women often really push the envelope not only apparel-wise, but behavior-wise.
I often wonder how it is that a Danish cartoon can lead to such outrage while afaik Jesus and Mo haven’t. Maybe bc one appeared in a newspaper, and the other one is only found online.
But still, did you ever see the one where they go to the swimming pool? That should have made a lot of muslim fundie heads explode.
Heh, this one?
That’s the one.
I’m not suggesting there is an exact equivalence or that the anti-US rioters are doing anything other than pick on the “crappy youtube” as an opportunity/excuse to do some anti-US rioting for a host of other reasons.
However how would US bible-belters react if “Muslims” or others started insulting Jesus and burning bibles in the middle of bible belt country? The free speech of anti-segregationalists wasn’t treated all that respectfully either if I recall.
There is a long history of religious bigotry and intolerance, and it isn’t limited to one religion, time or place. As a general rule free speech is granted only to the powerful – everyone else had better know when to get out of town – and fast…
Yeah, but you made it worse. You said “in the middle of bible-belt country.” It’s more like burning Bibles in Cairo and then making the video available on youtube. People would be pissed but I doubt the Egyptian embassy would be the scene of riots.
Difficult to construct an analogy. In part because this country hasn’t been subjected to decades of economic/political interference by a foreign power. Much less a foreign power with a different dominant religion that’s had a long history of attacks on our dominant religions.
Latin America has been subject to much of this, and there is some hostility to America, but they don’t attack embassies every time someone insults Latino culture.
Both religions have fought each other too many times for me to really say either way on that one.
Oh, come on. South Park did an episode ridiculing Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. The put the prophet in a bear suit to avoid depicting him. This occurred in the US and was on TV all over the Bible Belt. Did the Christians or Buddhists even protest? The Muslims threatened to bomb the network and got the second episode pulled.
It’s all very well to point out that Islam has no monopoly on intolerance. Fair enough. And one can certainly find comparable behavior from Christians and others in history, and among small fringe groups now. Whether Islam is more intolerant than other religions or cultures now, however, is a question that should be addressed empirically, not with an a priori commitment to the view that it must not be so. And I don’t see any way to look at the actual evidence and avoid the conclusion that, on average, it is.
OK, if you want to get empirical about it, please show me another example of a country which had three thousand of it’s citizens killed in a terrorist atrocity and responded by invading another country and occupying it my military force for 11 years and went on to invade another country which had nothing to do with the original atrocity and caused the deaths of up to a Million people in both countries depending on what sources you rely on. And all justified by a leader who thought he was fighting a crusade and sought to persuade his allies to join in by invoking biblical references to Gog and Magog and the global fight of good over evil. Which is the most warlike religion/nation?
I didn’t say warlike, I said intolerant. Intolerance, according to dictionary.com: “unwillingness or refusal to tolerate or respect contrary opinions or beliefs”. If you want to respond to my argument, you have to respond to what I said, and what it clearly meant in context, no some other argument that you think you can win. South Park is an excellent test because they attacked three major religions equally and members of only one threatened violence. Christianity is ridiculed in America all the time. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have been mocking Catholics for decades. Piss Christ got government funding. There is grumbling, but there are also counter-arguments from within the Christian community. Threats of violence are rare. Actual violence rarer still – mostly directed at abortion clinics where they are at least attacking deeds, not just speech.
I don’t recall Bush invoking Gog and Magog. Got a source on that? He did use the word “crusade”, and possibly that was a dog whistle, but possibly it was not. The word is commonly used in a non-religious sense, as when LBJ launched a “crusade” against poverty, also referred to metaphorically as a “war”. In any case, if you’re really into the revelations stuff, and you’re not a Satanist, the last thing you want to do is go overthrow “The Whore of Babylon”. The figure in Revelations who does that is The Beast.
Really? “The Muslims” threatened to bomb the network? And who are “the Muslims”? Was it every Muslim in the world? Or was it some Muslim Pope who represents and can speak for all Muslims? Was it a some Muslim Ecumenical Council that decides these matters for all Muslims?
Of course it was not “the Muslims” who threatened anything, it was a very tiny percentage of the more than 2 billion Muslims who populate this earth who made such a silly fuss, and in that case why are you referring to a tiny minority as “The Muslims” as if all 2-billion-plus Muslims, or at least their official representatives had made these threats when in fact the vast majority of Muslims were not even aware of this American cartoon TV show, and would be able to keep it in reasonable perspective if they were?
An excellent point.
One you would do well to keep in mind when you feel like holding forth on Americans.
As I said in my first comment in this thread:
“I realize that the bulk of the populations of these countries are not participating in the violence. But are they condemning it? Is anyone within the Islamic world arguing that free speech means people have the right to insult the prophet, distasteful though it may be? “
This is the problem. Are there prominent Muslim voices within Muslim countries who are willing not just to declare the violence excessive, but to recognize that is a free democratic society, people have a right to insult their religion? And certainly, that people in other parts of the world have such a right? Sure, they have the right to peacefully protest such – that, too, is free speech – but I’m not seeing evidence that the notion of tolerating views you may find abhorrent has gotten traction, and it is difficult to see how democracy is supposed to work if it does not, or even how integrated co-existence is supposed to work, as the general consensus seems to be that no one anywhere in the world should offend Islam.
Only a small percentage of White Southerners belonged to the Klan. Of those, only a small percentage actually engaged in violence. Nonetheless, the Klan informs our judgment of Jim Crow society because so few were willing to oppose it, even rhetorically.
Let me acknowledge that I do realize that strong freedom of speech is not universal among the world’s governments that are considered “democratic”. In the Internet age this will have to change. The whole world should not let Germany ban Nazi expression everywhere, nor the Muslim world ban insults of the prophet. OTOH, the US is more plutocratic than Europe is, or at least than Europe was until recently, so each has different failings on the democracy score.
What rock do you live under? They burn Bibles and worse all the time all over the Middle East, especially where that “Arab Spring” bullshit has been most successful. They burn churches with the Christians in them. Anti-Christian hate and violence are the absolute norm in the Muslim world.
This story continues to get stranger. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula that some seem to think was the director/producer “Sam Bacile” would seem not to have what it takes to run his own scams. Smoking gun reporting that his bank fraud conviction was for being a participant in Eiad Salameh’s bank fraud operation. And Nakoula turned state’s evidence.
Federal authorities are still looking for Eiad Salameh. A shame he didn’t show up for the movie screening and let Steve Klein nab him.
Some more …
Eiad Salameh Shu’aybat my first cousin (Salameh’s son) is wanted by the United States for major fraud most likely linked to financial terrorism. He was involved in a passport fraud operation (provided to me by Farid my brother), Enfamil milk scam, and holds an illegal Israeli passport that was fraudulently obtained to smuggle himself in and out of Israel proper. His United States citizenship was also obtained by fraudulently by claiming to be a Mexican farm worker. In fact a litany of stories on embezzlement and fraud can be tracked on Eiad.
Saw that but the source is questionable. Plus the name isn’t unique.
I have called bs often on the misplaced confidence Al-Qaeda and its elements were defeated. I have illustrated this by calling out the nations in Africa where the scourge of Islam extremists targets the Christian communities and churches. The failure to make any headway in a peace settlement for the Palestinian people since the last serious attempt by Bill Clinton in 2000. The Palestinians wear the scourge of Israeli occupation since the 1967 war. How different the Middle-East would have fared if a Palestinian independent nation would have been given a chance. The moderate states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt would have gotten a tremendous boost, now they are downtrodden. The likes of Gadhafi, Mubarak, Assad and Saddam Hussein were needed to suppress the Muslim masses and establish secular states in the Middle-East. Saudi Arabia and Mubarak warned Bush before the Iraq invasion, you let the genie out of the bottle. Many Muslim states are living in a medieval culture and are illiterate. You can be angry, that won’t change a lot by people believing in martyrdom for their religion.
Asked about the view of some U.S. conservatives that a stable democracy in Iraq would act as a lighthouse for the whole region,
Mubarak said: “Probably not much more will come out of that than the light of the Moon.”
Be sure what the Muslim Brotherhood is saying in English is very different from their Arabic messages and speeches. But we knew, it’s the Arab culture. Just ask the Israelis. Both sides do excellent work in promoting hatred.
Netanyahu has Adelson and the Glick gang in Israel pushing the buttons, but not in this film fraud.
Excellent insight in the protests by Informed Comment of Juan Cole – Romney Poses, as Militants Burn Benghazi Consulate, killing Ambassador, 3 staffers, & Demonstrate in Cairo, over Islamophobic Film.
Before you pass too harsh a judgement about how strange it is, consider what would happen in the Bible Belt today if someone that had an identifiable symbol like an embassy close to a lot of communities, was associated with a film that portrayed Jesus as an lesbian who had an abortion and consorted with prostitutes.
Remember the outcry in 1988 over the movie “The Last Temptation of Christ”? That was before Rush and Ruby Ridge and “right to bear arms” and… Imagine that movie on steroids being associated with, say, McDonalds or Walmart and what the reaction would be.
yes, I can imagine. It would be roughly the same as watching the Bill O’Reilly show, only the outrage would be real.
Besides, we aren’t associated with this film. It could have been posted from anywhere in the world. The actors didn’t even know how it was going to be edited. The guy is a crook with multiple identities who’s made pornography and is from Egypt.
We need to take off our cowboy hats, put down the foam USA cheer toys, and start dealing with some reality in the world.
And the political constraints are that President Obama cannot make a real major change in policy without arousing charges of treason from the right-wing (hell, they do that anyway). So he’s wound up doubling down on a lot of Bush policies. And Romney’s pre-poutrage about apologizing put a major constraint on Obama’s ability to respond to the offense of this film.
Yes, a millions problems that all tie back to non-Muslims having control of formerly Muslim territory or dictating to corrupt Muslim leaders. Or, the legacy of imperialism.
This combined with certain traits in Arab and Islamic culture that clash with traits in Western and judeo/Christian culture.
All very exciting, whether taken in real-time or with a centuries-long focus.
However, about the crappy YouTube…
US election stunt that got out of hand.
In Yemen, the US has supported the government against an Arab Spring movement,
That’s not actually true. The U.S. helped the Arab Spring movement depose President Saleh.
The U.S. sided with the government in fighting the third Yemeni faction, al Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula and their associated tribes. But so did the Arab Spring rebels for a while, team up with their government opponents against AQAP forces.
It is easy to understand how that level of complication can, as you say, confuse already conflicting alliances.
Saleh is gone. The Saleh regime remains. The current guy in charge might as well be the Yemeni equivalent of Bashir Assad to Saleh’s role as Yemen’s Hafez Assad. There are multiple Yemeni factions, not all geographically or tribally related. And Yemen at the moment is essentially a Saudi protectorate. Just like Bahrain.
The fact is that the students who were the backbone of the Arab Spring movement beginning January 2011 kept waiting for the US to do more than equivocate. When the repression got to the point that lots of adults were involved, it brought forth factions. It is unclear the extent to which AQAP is really an internal political actor or just a presence in an area with conflicting jurisdictional authorities. And it is highly likely that both Yemen and the US overstated the significance of AQAP.
“Equivocate” is a much better description of the U.S. stance between the Saleh government and the Arab Spring movement than the claim that we sided with the government against the uprising.
It is unclear the extent to which AQAP is really an internal political actor or just a presence in an area with conflicting jurisdictional authorities.
It’s certainly true that there are both domestic and foreign elements in AQAP. The Cole bombing was carried out in Yemen by Yemeni al Qaeda members, remember, so there has long been an AQ presence there. At the same time, Awlaki was an American, and a third-country (I’m blanking right now) AQ muckety muck who had come from their Pakistani hiding place was killed alongside him. Awlaki apparently recruited and set off Abdulmuttallab, who was a Nigerian, so it’s clear there is an important foreign element as well.
Even educated Egyptians assumed that this “movie” was shown in cinemas like major films and that most Americans had seen it and not objected.
So there was righteous indignation from people who could be considered thought leaders, which filtered down to those who truly are ignorant.(Education in general in Egypt is pretty poor–anyone who can afford it sends their kids to private schools, and many of those are bad too.)
Despite its prominence in film and culture, America really isn’t that well known to the rest of the world. Even Brits make silly assumptions about Americans quite often.
I don’t recall anyone being killed because of the Last temptation of Christ.
The Muslims are simply being bullies. Homicidal bullies. They need to be stood up to, not apologized to.
My understanding that the US stands up to Muslims 24/7. And has been doing so for eleven years now. In an “eye for an eye” world, what you label Muslim “homicidal bullies” have a lot of eyes to poke out before reaching parity with the US “homicidal bullies.”
Marie2, not just the US, but the western world in general have been “standing up to” Muslims for centuries in the manner you suggest.
My analogy was with what would happen in today’s hyper-political environment of accusing the President of being Muslim and the martyrdom complex that Chritianity is under attack in America — plus the prevalence of firearms in the Bible Belt.
1988 was a relatively mellow time but there was serious intimidation of theater managers who were showing the movie for their corporations by groups of protesters and local businesses. And Sunday sermons encouraged this response.
The difference is that Nikos Kazantzakis was respectful of Christianity–his attack was on the bourgeois corruption of modern Christianity into empty sentimental piety. Those who reacted most strongly were the folks Kazantzakis had in mind.
The Innocence of Moslems was not intended as to be a critical call back to the faith of Islam but to be an insulting screed against Islam. That intensified the reaction, even to the rumor.
But yes, the video is being exploited. Pepe Escobar has the best analysis of the motives behind the Muslim protests.
Meanwhile — at the Values Voter Summit in DC today, the crowd fell hook line and sinker for repentant Islamic terrorist huckster.
as a main speaker today.
I hope his Janesville constituency ARE helping to get rid of his ass this fall. He can run for veep and still run for his seat in Congress. He needs a shutout from both rungs of power.
Neat Google Map of where there has been reaction.
Middle East mobs freaking the hell out over YouTube video
Gawker outs the director of the movie:
Confirmed: The Director of Innocence of Muslims Is a Schlocky Softcore Porn Director Named Alan Roberts
I hate the whole story. I am already exhausted. Stupid and stupider. They guy who made the video. The people who are offended it. The GOP candidate pandering about it.
Meanwhile people are actually dying. And the President and SoS are acting like adults. But that is not the most “compelling” and most reported part of the story.
How can you say that they are “strange,” Booman.
You do know how forest fires start, right?
Lots of fuel ready to burn and one little match. Nothing strange about that, right?
We have given the fire next time in the Middle East 50+ years of “fuel.” Almost 100 years if you count WW I.’s economic imperialist efforts. These protests aren’t just about “one crappy little YouTube.” If the film had been made in say Holland or Bulgaria, how severe do you think the reaction would have been? Not very, I’m betting. But with all the fuel of our shared history? The anger grows and grows and grows and grows. Then some ass…or some intelligence asset, who knows…drops a match into the dry brush and what happens?
Guess.
You don’t like it?
Change America’s foreign policy act.
Until then?
Get used to it.
AG
I actually agree with this post.
And the forest fire analogy is apt.
But, that doesn’t change the fact that we’re witnessing the equivalent of blaming everyone in Los Angeles for the guy who threw a cigarette butt out the window of his car into the dry brush of the Palisades and caused a massive conflagration.
It has its reasons, but it’s still stupid.
“It has its reasons, but it’s still stupid,” eh?
Tell that to generations of the poor, kept that way by U.S.-installed and supported dictators. Poverty makes some people smart, but not most peple. After a while exhaustion sets in. As Vince Lombardi said “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Yup. It makes fools of us all, too.
Bet on it.
Dumb?
What’s dumber, people who act out in anger against perceived injustices or people who bury their head in the sand and continue to vote for one or another party both of which are owned by the same corporate interests? Interests whose main interest is in enslaving those self-same people to feed their own fortunes.
Stupid?
Where are the jails full of war criminals and financial thieves?
Where?
Show me.
Where are those war criminals and thieves if they are not in jail??
With the exception of a few people whose guilt is so plain that they cannot be presented to the public for fear of mass revulsion, they are still functioning members of the PermaGov.
Stupid?
I got yer “stupid.”
Right here!!!
Right here.
AG
As you know, while we share a broadly overlapping view of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War Two, our views of the role of the United States in that history have wide divergences.
But let’s look at one slice of history I think you will enjoy and can probably use creatively in the furtherance of your points.
Remember when FDR met the King of Saudi Arabia?
Isn’t that a pregnant moment. FDR, on the verge of conquering the world in the defense of basic human decency, is dealing with a man who insists on slaughtering a goat on the deck of a U.S. warship so he can have some dinner. There are no lights in Riyadh. Commerce in Saudi Arabia is based purely on tourism and caravan trade. No modern medicine. No universities outside of the Holy Cities. But their leader knows one thing. Arabs will never tolerate an expansion of Jewish settlements in Palestine. And FDR doesn’t understand what that means.
Fast forward seventy-seven years and Saudi Arabia is one of the richest places on Earth, although the wealth isn’t distributed equitably, so most people remain very poor. Western science and investment has transformed Saudi Arabia completely.
So, who do we blame for what became of it all? Has America sapped Saudi Arabia of its resources or has it helped turn Saudi Arabia into a relatively modern place? We didn’t misappropriate their resources. We didn’t tell them to maintain a really conservative brand of Islam. On the other hand, we didn’t heed the goat-slaughtering king’s warning. So we signed off on the powder keg that is Israel.
But, what about Israel? What did the West owe the Jews after the Holocaust? And what were the leaders able to deliver under the existing political constraints?
I see the whole thing as tragic and complicated, and I do not see the U.S. as a negative force. Not on balance, anyway. Not in the context of Soviet competition in a nuclear age.
And here’s the thing. We got in bed with the Shah and the Sauds and Sadat and Mubarak and King Hussein and his son, and we worked that angle and it had some serious downsides for both us and for the people who lived under those rulers. But Obama has been trying to unwind that thread as carefully and responsibly as he can, which is all we can really ask from him.
We’ve seen the existing alternative. Romney is promising to revert to that form.
So, yeah.
FOUR MORE YEARS!!!
No Booman, I do not “remember” that. And neither do you. You apparently think that you remember it, but in reality you have simply read about it. Maybe you have read about it quite widely and deeply, or maybe you have only read that boilerplate popular history-style article to which you linked. You did not witness it nor did you witness the events of the next…oh, say 10 or 12 or 20 years. I’m guessing that you are in your mid-to-early 40s, so let’s say that you came to some form of political and social consciousness somewhere in the ’70s. Everything that happened on this good green earth before that time is nothing more than a rumor to you. A series of better or worse opinions written by a series of better or worse so-called historians, journalists, critics and other assorted hustlers, each with his or her own set of beliefs and agendas. Even at the present moment, I cannot be sure to get an accurate “history” of a fender bender outside of my house let alone something that happened between two powerful men in 1945. I personally disbelieve all history, and believe only what I have heard, seen, tasted, smelled, felt and observed. That which I really “remember.”
The teacher of attempts at higher consciousness George Gurdjieff used the phrase “Rememeber yourself” to describe what he taught. Why? Short answer? Because that’s all you’ve got.
Ok. Back to the subject. (If I ever really left it.)
I have been observing a little longer than have you. I was ushered into a certain kind of socio-political consciousness at a fairly early age…say 5 or 6…by the real Arthur Gilroy, my grandfather. We watched the Kefauver hearings and the whole McCarthy debacle on our little black and white TV, and by the time I was in my early teens I had lost all reflexive trust in what i was being told by the media, by my teachers and by my Irish Catholic church. All I trust that I know is what I have observed, and among other things I have observed a steadily accelerating slide downward in the real quality of life for most Americans. Sure, things got “better” for minorities to some degree, but only in terms of the utter degradation in which they had been forced to live for several centuries.
“Quality of life.”
Not just economically.
Socially.
Culturally.
Educationally.
And politically as well.
I have no idea how far FDR’s mind had slid into a disease and pharmaceutical drug-induced weakness by 1945. He had been a master politician…domestically and in foreign affairs…for 30 years or so by 1945 and he was dying of polio.
i have no idea how “primitive” the Saudi king was either. Maybe he was just another master hustler running his game on his own level when he did that little goat trick. Maybe he went back to his palace, popped open a split of champagne and laughed his ass off at the gullible westerners and their floating metal toys. Maybe he was a primitive, goat killing fool. Or any other set of “maybes” that you might like to consider. It makes no difference.
I was in Egypt in 2008. I wrote about it here: We ARE “At War”. My observations after a week in the Middle East.
In the article, I wrote:
And…what did happen?
What is happening?
You know.
The Egyptians…and the rest of the Islamic world…are blaming the U.S. for their current state of relative poverty and powerlessness. They are blaming Israel as well. Are they “right?” “Wrong?” The verdict of history will be the answer that is given in the classrooms of the future if we make it that far without blowing ourselves off of the planet, but the truth of the matter will be somewhere in the middle.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to dig itself further and further into the ditch that it started digging during W.W. I with its reliance upon militarily enforced economic imperialism to get relatively cheap oil. That’s all that is really going on there, Booman. Blood For Oil, Chapter XIII. And all of that “humanitarian” stuff? Bullshit. Blood for oil, brother, nothing more. Somehow magically eliminate the U.S. need for massive amounts of oil?In the blink of an eye the troops would be back home, Israel would be thrown under the bus and the Muslim world would be left to its own devices just as long as it didn’t fuck with us. If it did we’d just blow ’em up real good.
Sorry, man. All of your high-flown ideas about human rights and democracy are just dust, blowing in the wind of the hype machine. The reality that is left after the dust blows away?
Realpolitik.
Deal wid it.
AG
Any insight into how images of the rather nice house on the rather nice street occupied by the Egyptian ex-pat, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, that is alleged to have been involved in the making of “Innocence of Muslim” and who has a US criminal record and no obvious means of support will play in Egypt?
I know next to nothing about Islamic-Coptic relatons in Egypt, but I’ll make a guess. The Copts have more money per capita. Why? How? Cairo has been an “international” city for a century or more. Translation? Lots of Europeans and lots of European money flowing through. Not so many Americans but lots of American money too. Copts are Christians. So are most Europeans and Americans. Like goes to like. Always and everywhere.
Poor people tend to resent richer people, often with good reason. Now that the “the party of the poor, the party of the people” in somewhat in power, the relatively wealthy become easier targets.
This Nakoula guy?
I smell spook business.
U.S. spooks?
Old-line Mubarak spooks?
Another in a long line of of Mossad tricks?
Al Queda spooks?
Who knows.
All spooks smell the same.
Down and dirty.
AG
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-protest-sudanbre88d1hw-20120914,0,3501032.story
Three dead as crowd storms German embassy in Sudan.
You were saying, Arthur?
also
and
Many different and confused motives dancing in the streets.
Exactly.
Arthur’s claim that these mobs just happen to be driven by a critique of American foreign policy that – hey, look at that! – just happens to precisely mirror his own is the most pointless sort of internet wankery.
Obviously, these angry crowds are driven by their concerns about climate change, and their desire for more public transit spending and New Urbanist zoning reform. Sheesh, Arthur, stop projecting your own beliefs onto people on the other side of the world!
You forget the Danish Muhammad cartoons and how that set off riots and violence. It wasn’t that long ago.
It’s not hard for certain Imams to whip people up into a frenzy over something as grave to them as insulting Muhammad.
The deadly attack in Benghazi, which was the only situation in which our countrymen were killed, was carried out by an al Qaeda-related cell. It’s not the same as the mob scenes in Cairo or Tunisia, which didn’t kill anyone.
Think of the Block Bloc groups and their parasitic exploitation of Occupy protests. Same thing.
Now, defacing embassies and whatnot over a stupid YouTube video is still awful and offensive, but there are degrees of these things.
Why do you keep calling that video “a youtube?” Did you get possessed by the ghost of Ted Stevens?
because it wasn’t really a movie. It was more like a trailer posted to YouTube.
Seems to me this is a good case of what hell assumptions can cause.
The protestors are shaking their fists at the US because they Assume the youtube was sanctioned by the US govt. And btw, they’re re-angered because our govt has been too slow to decry the youtube.
Crazywoman/Representative Michelle Bachmann Assumed last year that her email pedia was accurate when it told her Secretary Clinton rigged the Egyptian elections so she helped explode the myth onto the streets of Egypt.
Romney Assumed that he could make some political hay. And what if the situation, we all ask, had been where he was Pres and he Assumed that facts could wait cause he had a nuke strike to set into play?
Booman, I can’t differentiate your scolding of Muslims for the acts of their extremist political operatives from the scolding of all Americans for the acts of our extremist political operatives. We have a democratically elected pro-US regime in Libya; we enjoy 60% support amongst the people of eastern Libya; we have a democratically elected government in Egypt which, after some delay and some subtle threats from President Obama, finally come down strongly against the violence there.
What we have here is two groups of extremists, over here and over there, in cahoots to bamboozle everybody else into hating each other. Please don’t accept any part of their nonsense. That’s precisely the point of their mission.
The first discerning comment I’ve read on this thread. — thank you!
Booman, there’s no point arguing against the logic of the riots as a reaction to the film. The true logic is that of fanatics on both sides looking for or creating excuses for violence. The film was made specifically as a provocation — and the radicals that responded in the intended manner by inciting riots. Truly, the US government in this case is a more than convenient target.
I see no reason to think that the Libyans that were helped by the US had anything to do with this. But there were a lot of Qadafi supporters that greatly resented the help given to the rebels, and opportunists like Al Qaeda looking to gain influence everywhere they can.
Christianoid radicals vs. Muslimoid radicals. It’s almost as if these bitterest of enemies are working together. They are, in the sense that each provides the other with exactly the evil caricature needed.
All Americans can be deeply thankful that we have the strongest protections for freedom of speech of any country in the world, but one byproduct of this is a kind of folklore that sees free speech as absolutely unlimited and believes that nothing done in the name of free speech can ever be worse than any limitation of it. Suffice it to say that this is not what even our own laws say. Look up Chaplinsky v. New Hampsjire (1942) and Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). Incitement to violence is not constitutionally protected.
Very well said.
In any case, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the attack on the embassy in Libya was planned well in advance and intended to be connected to the date on which it took place, and not a “hair trigger response” to the anti-Islam video, which apparently had been on YouTube for a while without causing any major stir.
In any case, considering the incessant attacks on Muslims and Islam since well before 9/11, if Muslims became overwrought and violent every time Muslims, Islam, Muhammad, or any of the other revered prophets, such as Jesus, were insulted they would have burnt the entire world down by now.
“If you kill my countrymen and trample and burn my flag and destroy my country’s property just because my government won’t police YouTube…”
You don’t really think thats what’s going on there do you? So some of the poor bastards who live in squalor in the middle east are angry enough with the US to riot from time to time. And you find this surprising? Our own poor bastards who also live in squalor do the same thing now and then. Really it’s surprising that it doesn’t happen more often.
You don’t really expect the middle eastern 99% to be grateful to us for their new “freedoms” do you? They’re poor, they have little or no hope, and the US is, or recently was, doing a lot of bad stuff, from their point of view at least. So yeah, they’re going to riot from time to time. And they will continue to do so until their lives improve.
I see AG made much the same point in the posts above…
Thank you!
And by the way, it is not only those who live in poverty and squalor who dislike the United States. The U.S. has given Arabs and Muslims at all levels of society plenty of excellent reasons to have very negative opinions and emotions. What is surprising is not that now and then a handful occasionally strike back violently, but that the overwhelming majority never do.
This is why I think Romney’s attacks may well start working for him. A lot of Americans, myself included, were trying to hope (in my case, contrary to my first instinct) that the Arab Spring would bring forth better from the Islamic world, but have lost patience with this kind of shit. I realize that the bulk of the populations of these countries are not participating in the violence. But are they condemning it? Is anyone within the Islamic world arguing that free speech means people have the right to insult the prophet, distasteful though it may be? Many are now arguing that their ways of thinking do not allow for the idea that expression like this could be permitted but not supported by the government. If that idea is beyond them, why did we ever think they were ready for liberal democracy?
About another week of this and Americans will be back to Iran Hostage Crisis type rage. “Ashtray the Middle East” is coming back to the discourse. In that environment, the unthinking reaction of Americans is always “we have have been too weak; we have been too nice”, This is not generally true, of course, but if we do not see a pro-democracy backlash, it will speak very ill of the optimism that accompanied the Arab Spring.
I agree that Rmoney’s attempt to add fuel to this fire may benefit him. Yes,indeed, let’s do all we can to re-energize American rage at all muslims everywhere, very helpful and productive to these new democracies and our ME diplomacy.
Surprise, new forms of representative government didn’t re-make the region in a month (or year). But it is incontestible that there is significant pro-American feeling in Libya at the very least. Libya is, after all, a new democracy, which Cheney’s neocons assured us was the real reason behind the Iraq invasion—“spreadin’ democracy” as a “beacon of freedom”, etc, etc. Now Willard wants to make sure that he operates to foment American rage even at new pro-American Arab democracies.
The most vile hypocritical opportunism imaginable. He and his people are real monsters.
Saying this is about Americans posting something on YouTube is just another way of saying “they hate us for our freedoms”. This is not about Muslims being unable to understand freedom of expression. It’s not really about some stupid YouTube video.
Try thinking outside your (plural) America-centric box now and then, if you are able.
The Muslims themselves are saying it is about the film. Believing their own account of their motives is not seeing things from a Western lens nor is it condescending. OTOH, assuming that their ztated motives are not their actual motives is assuming you know their minds better or express them more honmestly than they do. That is condescending and must express an outsider viewpoint, since that is not what the insiders are saying.
Isn’t there always a cognitive reason or excuse and a different and older emotional reason? Gulf War — response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait or curing the Vietnam Syndrome? Impeachment of Clinton — because he had an extramarital sexual dalliance, and/or lied about it when caught or payback for the impeachment of Nixon? How many Americans thought the invasion of Iraq was payback for 9/11 — that psychic wound to our national ego (or Id) of exceptionalism and all powerful that both political parties continue to exploit.
Maria, those examples are all calculated dishonesty on the part of political manipulators. We’re dealing here, save in Libya, with the spontaneous actions of a mob. I think insincerity highly unlikely. Deeper motives are also likely, but not a basis for dismissing the stated motivations. To dismiss the stated motivations is to assume you know these people’s minds better than they do, or else that they are lying. I don’t see what basis there would be for either claim.
“We’re dealing here, save in Libya, with the spontaneous actions of a mob“
That’s your assumption because that’s what you’ve been told by your media, and your goernment. The reality, as usual, is somewhat different than that.
“The Muslims” are saying no such thing. A tiny minority of Muslims on the extreme fringe are using this video as an excuse.
And are you really, really unacquainted with the very, very common psychological/behavioral phenomenon of displacement?
Yes, your displacement of your critique of American policy onto these mobs is quite easy to understand.
I think it was perfectly obvious that “the Muslims” in this context means “the Muslims who are engaging in the demonstrations”. Since I was saying this was the account they were giving of their own motives, and this could only be so for those Muslims who were protesting, this was the only thing I could have meant, so you are being either obtuse or rhetorically dishonest. As for projection, this is where you run into problems with democracy. If you believe the opinions of others are not their true opinions, and that you know those true opinions better than they do – that their views are inspired by Satan, or masked class ideology, or projection – then you have no reason to respect their views. The first step in admitting someone to democratic respect is to accept their own account of their position, at least if you believe it is honestly stated (lying is, of course, common, and is another problem, but to deny the truth of another’s sincere account of himself is to deny him the most fundamental level of agency).
It was not perfectly obvious to me.
What IS perfectly obvious is that the carefully planned, and well-coordinated assault on the embassy in Libya on September 11 was about the date on which it took place and not some YouTube video. I am just as certain that they don’t “hate us for our freedoms, I am equally certain that they did not attack because they are incapable of understanding freedom of speech. On the contrary I find that most Americans have no idea of what freedom of speech really is and what it is now.
Americans need to learn to look beyond what they hear from their government and the media that serve it to find the real story.
A handful of hired security guards with AK47s were no match for 125 or more heavily armed militants (RPG’s and machineguns) who overran the U.S. consulate which had only “lock-and-key” security. (Video)
See my latest diary – American Citizens Ordered Out of Tunisia and Sudan; Benghazi Security Questioned.
“I know that my opinion of Islam is not enhanced when my countrymen are killed because somebody posted a crappy YouTube.“
Are you serious?! So, do those who kill people for performing abortions negatively affect your opinion of Christianity? Does the fact that Haredim throw rocks at women who try to pray at the Western Wall, or who do not dress “appropriately” negatively affect your opinion of Judaism? No? Then what on earth do the actions of a few Muslims have to do with Islam?
Actually, those actions do give me a negative impression of Christianity and Judaism. It’s why people usually say I’m too soft on Islam, considering I usually focus on exactly those things by stupid Christians and Jews. Why the focus there? Because the Muslims who come here aren’t a large segment of the population, they’re overwhelmingly liberal (well, the ones I’m in contact with), and they don’t have any political power even if they were like these asshole Salafites.
I have to thank them to a degree, though. Their anti-woman, anti-gay message is what made me question the entire Christian dogma with which I was raised in the first place.
Seabe, it is not the religions that are the problem, it is human beings. To blame Islam or Christianity or Judaism makes no sense. To thing less of a perfectly decent, if irrational, ideology because some people manage to distort it and use it for ill purposes is not logical.
Maybe so; we’re all irrational about some things. But let’s just say that when someone tells me they’re a Christian, I definitely think less of them for it. Can’t help it; blame my upbringing with my fanatical Christian parents. FTR, I never held their beliefs myself despite belonging to their church, mostly because it was one of the few things we might have in common (given that I was an anti-capitalist, heathen liberal in every other aspect). When I say “question” it made me realize I didn’t want to be part of it in any way, and the fanatics gave me the strength I needed to break away completely.
There’s a reason my generation views religion in a negative light:
Christianity’s anti-gay stance backfires
Same thing with Israel, actually. I used to be sympathetic to the “both sides!” argument in that debate, and I was actually, shall I say, a supporter of Israel even if I believed they should back down and allow a Palestinian state to happen. I basically sincerely believed what our government pretends to believe.
But the recent actions of not only the “conservative” government, but the “moderate/liberal” Kadima party, and just reviewing their entire history? Yeah, no more of that bs in my first paragraph.
Seabe, political Zionism never had its basis in religion. It was a secular nationalist movement, not a religious one, and in fact the original Zionists were secular European Jews, many if not most of whom were atheists. Israel was most definitely NOT founded as a religious state, but as a secular nationalist state.
And yes, the more clearly one understands the history of Zionism, and of Israel the less one is able to support it.
The comparison wasn’t made on the basis of religion, but the fact that a lot of people shroud Israel in the defense of, “But it’s only this fanatical, extreme government! If we had the liberals to deal with, it’d be much more peaceful.”
That’s what I mean with my comparison. And I view it as the same as religious moderates shrouding the extremists, or the Pope protecting the pedophiles in his church. “Don’t blame my religion! It’s just a few choice extremists (pedophiles) within it!” No, there’s a systemic problem here, and by saying this, you’re actively ignoring the problem.
Only a small percentage of men rape; yet the patriarchy and the rape culture is encompassing and actively denied by men who do not rape as they refuse to acknowledge their own privilege in how we deal with this bullshit. The atheist movement — something I consider myself a part of — has a huge problem with women, and it’s something we need to deal with. I could say, “OH it’s only a few choice extremists…the vast majority of us aren’t asshole misogynists so we can just ignore it.” It’s bullshit.
It’s not the religious dogma itself that is necessarily the problem, either. It’s the institutions and the culture that goes along with it. So sue me for clumping them all together.
Catholic beliefs won’t make you a pedophile, but the Catholic Church as an institution has a systemic problem with raping children, and it needs to be handled.
The atheist movement won’t make you a douchebag sexist — although atheism is more a lack of belief than a belief itself — but there is a systemic problem of sexism throughout the movement, and it needs to be handled. And when many of us try to handle it in some way (Atheism Plus, you get a huge backlash from many in the community (this comic spells it out nicely):
http://ataraxiatheatre.com/comics/2012-09-12-meanwhile-in-the-blogosphere.png
Plainly, yes.
When Christians, Jews, or Muslims murder people for religious reasons, or act with depraved indifference to the shared humanity of all people, I think less of the religions themselves.
In my mind, if a religion is doing its job, it is making people more peaceful, more concerned with the poor, more empathetic, less self-centered, less materialistic, broader-minded. If the religion is not only failing to do these things for significant numbers of people, but actually doing the opposite, then I don’t think much of the religion.
“if a religion is doing its job…“
What an incredibly odd idea. A religion “doing its job”?! Religion “has a job to do”?! I don’t even know where to begin with a notion this bizarrely out of touch with human reality.
So, in your mind in order for you to “think much of it” a religion, which is an irrational, illogical human construct to begin with, has to be perfectly conceived, understood, and practiced by every single person who professes to believe in it. No room for human error, no allowances for any misuse, intentional or otherwise, no respect for the fact that those abusing a religion constitute a tiny minority of its practitioners?
It’s amazing that someone who is as capable as you are of sophisticated thinking can come up with something so off the wall.
Apparently BooMan thinks what liberals want religion to do is somehow inherently its job.
Nothing like this has ever been Islam’s job, that’s for damned sure.
Religions have a job to do, just like the fire department. Especially in societies where one religion is very dominant, as in a theocratic state, for example.
The situation we have in the modern West where religion is as optional as a gym membership, is not the norm, and the religion we practice out of pure choice has little relationship to why religions developed.
Wherever you find a priestly caste, you find people with jobs to perform. There isn’t one single job, but usually many, from regulating family relations to consoling the bereaved to educating the populace to giving them moral instruction to redistributing wealth and providing a social safety net.
A religion that edifies the people, makes them compassionate and social-minded, preserves peace, arbitrates disputes etc., is doing its job well.
A religion that breeds intolerance and hatred and leads to violence is not doing its job very well.
A huge part of the disagreement between the left and the right in this country derives from the left’s belief that that state should take care of many, if not all, of the things previously provided by religious organizations. The right generally disagrees and would like to see less government and more charity, less public education and more religious education, etc.
But, even if I would like to remove most of the work from religious organizations and put it in the government’s hands, that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that we’re splitting up a workload.
In the specific case of Islam, it does all of these things, too, and usually quite adequately. But we do keep running into the recurring problem that Muslims do not believe that their religion can be criticized and many Muslims can be easily mobilized to commit violence in the name of protecting the honor of the Prophet or the religion. That’s a failure of self-confidence and a failure of moral instruction, in my opinion. And, in any case, it is totally incompatible with the secular values of the West.
BooMan, this is one of the goofiest notions I have heard from you. Religions are not entities that “do jobs”, they are ideologies; constructs; ideologies; concepts, and irrational ones at that. Men (and it is almost always men) may use these irrational ideologies for good or for ill or for neither, but the notion that an ideology has a job to do is beyond absurd.
Do you really believe that the Spanish Inquisition, or the witch hunts, or the mass murders of Muslims, Jews, and Christians by the Crusaders, or the murders of abortion providers by Christian fundamentalists are a failure of Christianity to do its job?!
As for Muslims not believing their religion can be criticized, thanks for the broad generalization. As for anything at all being “incompatible with the secular values of the west”, what is this need you seem to have to impose your values on everyone else in the world?
I don’t know why this idea strikes you as so strange.
If you go back far enough in time, into prehistory, and you think about how these priestly castes arose and how they codified moral norms and standards, even down to what you should and shouldn’t eat, and how you should pray and what offerings are acceptable to which gods, you can see that the genesis of religion in early society was the identification of work that needed to be done to keep the peace, to keep things orderly, to create the basis for a legal system, etc.
Even today, if you look at someone like Ayatollah Sistani in Najaf, you can easily see that he and his extensive staff perform all of these jobs. They educate people. They do marriages and marriage counseling, and divorce. They arbitrate disputes so that they don’t become violent. They operate an extensive social welfare system which they fund with alms from the faithful. And the Ayatollahs have a very strong resemblance to the Bishops of the early Christian church, before the consolidation of power in Rome and Constantinople.
Even Mohammed had a job. He was disturbed by the plethora of gods that were being worshipped in Mecca, and by all of the flimflammery associated with that. He railed against polytheism so vehemently because polytheism was so entrenched in that society. His armies were raised to stamp out that polytheism, which is a job. And once Islam had prevailed, the priestly caste of that new religion had to assume the duties of the displaced priests, which was more work.
The easiest way to see this is in the social work that churches do today in America, operating soup kitchens and drug rehabs and so on. Before we had a sophisticated bureaucracy, the churches had a lot more work to do caring for the sick and elderly and providing food assistance. Now they have much less work.
Now we have a robust court system than makes it less necessary for priests to arbitrate disputes.
If you think societies developed these mechanisms of control for the benefit of anyone’s everlasting soul, you’re mistaken. They were government before government. Now they are a supplement to government, or government is a supplement to them, depending on where you live.
What an incredibly odd idea. A religion “doing its job”?! Religion “has a job to do”?! I don’t even know where to begin with a notion this bizarrely out of touch with human reality.
This is the most bizarre of the many pointless tantrums I’ve seen you throw.
You don’t understand that religion has a purpose? And you’re so baffled and angry by the idea as to write something like this?
Yaaaaaaawwwwwwwwn. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Wow. Pamela Geller is writing posts using Booman’s name. An intentional provocation!
LOL! Sure does sound like it!
To Hurria and others who are hellbent on blaming all this tinderbox ablaze on US government, tell me, what is the current US government supposed to do?
Pres. Obama tried so hard to unwind the thread carefully, being mindful of the politics at home. The Arab Spring happened and for the first time the US did NOT stand in the way of popular desires in the Arab street. Now he is to blame?
Well then you’ll love your regularly scheduled dictator-coddling America under Romney. Good luck.
Pres Obama will gladly retire to a less stressful family life and possibly writing career or some other worthy cause.
Meanwhile welcome to a Romney-outsourced-to-Bibi-driven war in Iran and wherever else he chooses in the Middle East/North Africa, and full scale American right wing Islamophobia orgies. Then perhaps Hurria et al will be happy in exercising righteous indignation.
Funny, but I don’t recall engaging in such simplistic thinking as to blame it all on the American government.
Yes, not on Libya. The Obama administration leveraged their ties to the Egyptian military and rebuked the people’s choice of MB candidate Morsi. Handling the NGO issue and threatening to withhold the $1bn donation [to the military establishment]. Completely wrong policy to overthrow the Assad regime and thereby giving foreign jihadists the opening to intervene. Bad coordination with so-called allies Turkey, Libya, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Just part of the Sunni-Shia divide and Israel’s provocation towards the Ayatollahs of Iran. The Bush regime opened the floodgates by its pre-empted policy to overthrow Saddan Hussein and the 8 year war and occupation. The policy towards Iran is mainly to correct the dividend handed to Ahmadinejad by overthrowing Saddam.
Obama and Clinton should have made a deal with the Saudi’s that the US will accept the suppression of Shia in Bahrain and the GCC countries accept the Assad regime and slow improvement of human rights. The crisis was one that had been publicised early on. In Northern Africa it will get worse before it gets any better: Algeria, Niger, Mali, Chad, Sudan, etc.