BuzzFeed News published a troubling article today about an American company named Spear Operations Group that is run by Abraham Golan, “a charismatic Hungarian Israeli security contractor who lives outside of Pittsburgh.” Mr. Golan openly admits that he ran a targeted assassination program in Yemen on behalf of the government of the United Arab Emirates:
“There was a targeted assassination program in Yemen,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I was running it. We did it. It was sanctioned by the UAE within the coalition.”
The article begins with an operation that went haywire back in 2015, while President Obama was our commander in chief. Mr. Golan’s mission was to kill a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that is a whole lot more socially and politically complex than is commonly understood in the United States. To the Saudi regime and their Gulf allies, the Brotherhood is a terrorist organization. Yet, in 2012, Egypt elected Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Brotherhood, as their president.
There is no simple way to explain the development and role of the Brotherhood, and that can be demonstrated by looking at their professed beliefs. On the one hand, it would be accurate to say that they’re religious fundamentalists who believe the Quran should be the central organizing basis of political society. On the other hand, they’ve become fairly consistent in fighting (at least when out of power) for many key and core American principles.
According to a spokesman on its English-language website, the Muslim Brotherhood believes in reform, democracy, freedom of assembly, press, etc.
“We believe that the political reform is the true and natural gateway for all other kinds of reform. We have announced our acceptance of democracy that acknowledges political pluralism, the peaceful rotation of power and the fact that the nation is the source of all powers. As we see it, political reform includes the termination of the state of emergency, restoring public freedoms, including the right to establish political parties, whatever their tendencies may be, and the freedom of the press, freedom of criticism and thought, freedom of peaceful demonstrations, freedom of assembly, etc. It also includes the dismantling of all exceptional courts and the annulment of all exceptional laws, establishing the independence of the judiciary, enabling the judiciary to fully and truly supervise general elections so as to ensure that they authentically express people’s will, removing all obstacles that restrict the functioning of civil society organizations, etc.”
As a political opposition party in a region where basic freedoms are lacking, suppressed or indefinitely suspended, the Brotherhood has learned the language of civil and human rights, and their political critiques can sound like they’re coming from Amnesty International or the ACLU. That may be more expedient than sincere in some respects, but it’s not the language of terrorism. That’s not to say that the Brotherhood has not ever been responsible for terrorism and violence, but that’s mostly far in their past and was directed at toppling or undermining regimes like Anwar Sadat’s government that were hardly beacons of political legitimacy.
Americans may not have a whole lot in common with the Brotherhood but we should recognize a shared loathing of monarchs and dictators. If the kings, princes, and emirs of the Arabian peninsula don’t like anti-monarchial organizations, that’s to be expected and it doesn’t make them credible when they term all of their political opponents as “terrorists.”
Of course, American interests in the Middle East are complicated and it’s not possible to consistently hold true to the purest version of our principles when we’re seeking to make military alliances, secure the global energy supply, and engage in commerce with a grouping of despots. In some cases, the enemies of our allies are still enemies even if they have a damn good point about the inadequacies, corruption and cruelty of their leaders.
Yet, even if we acknowledge this, it’s still quite possible to be a geopolitical realist and at the same time consider it completely wrong for American companies to form mercenary units for the purpose of wiping out the political opposition of kleptocratic royal families.
To the extent that President Obama was aware of this arrangement and may have signed off on it, I think he’s subject to legitimate criticism. In truth, I don’t know what his knowledge or involvement might have been, but this program did start on his watch.
If you go to the National Review, however, you’ll see Jim Geraghty explaining that there are only two probable reactions to learning about the targeted assassination program. If you’re a Democrat, you probably hate it but are conflicted because you don’t want to tarnish Obama’s reputation. If you’re a Republican, you obviously think it’s “awesome.”
You probably have one of two reactions to a story like this.
One: “This is awesome. I want every anti-American extremist in the world looking over his shoulder and hiding in fear, and if this is the sort of thing that gets a person afraid to join an Islamist group, or that will cut down the next Osama bin Laden early in his career instead of late in it, God bless them.”
Two: “Dear God, this is horrifying. This is an assassination program that is staffed by Americans, targeting and executing foreign political leaders without any charges or trial, and our government is, if not explicitly endorsing these actions, giving these actions a tacit blessing.”
One complicating wrinkle for those who have the second reaction: The BuzzFeed story begins by describing an attempted assassination on December 29, 2015, and discusses the campaign of covert strikes in Yemen progressing throughout 2016. In other words, this isn’t some horrific, brutal Trump-administration policy that enables these actions; all of this started on the Obama administration’s watch.
What’s telling is that Geraghty says that “those who who have the second reaction” of horror are necessarily supporters of Barack Obama. Those who did not support Barack Obama are uniformly in the other camp, assuming that every member of the Muslim Brotherhood or similar Islamist group is anti-American, and a potential future terrorist mastermind who should of course be slaughtered by American mercenaries on the say so of Arab monarchs.
Unfortunately, Gerhaghty’s stereotypes of American reaction are probably more accurate than we might wish. But I don’t see how that speaks well of the right.
It’s not a good thing to be incapable of complex or nuanced thought. If you can’t tell the difference between ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, that’s not a point in your favor. It’s not a good thing to take the side of cruel and corrupt monarchs against people who are advocating for free elections and common sense political reforms. It’s not a good thing to advocate the killing of anyone who makes you the tiniest bit uncomfortable, let alone to cheerlead when your countrymen do the killing for money.
I do not intend to portray the Muslim Brotherhood as some uncomplicated and laudable organization, but it’s a sad statement about where the Republican Party stands today that you can’t find more than a tiny handful of people with the knowledge and sophistication and moral compass to have any other reaction to this program than “it’s awesome.”
So yesterday in an article about voter suppression in Georgia I saw Mother Jones describe it as a “sly” political move; today I see a guy who ran a mercenary assassination program described as “charismatic.” I truly do give up on American journalism.
The Muslim Brotherhood won a fair election then proceeded to move the country in the direction of an Islamic theocracy. They can sound like what ever they want but there is nothing worse than religious coups whether done by the Brothers or the GOP. Fuck them with an ICBM.
How was it a religious “coup”? What if the people who elected them want an Islamic theocracy? Now I agree, fuck Islamic theocracy and any variant of it. I don’t want to live in one, I don’t want to subject others to live in one either.
I also don’t want to live under fascist military juntas, yet that’s what Egypt is, and it provides ZERO political life and ability to organize against it. And when political life is suffocated, extremists only get stronger.
○ Developments Arab Spring Egypt’s Revolt Explained
Nasser threw out the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s – hanged some of the leaders for assassination attempts. The MB found refuge in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar. The MB is banned in the KSA and UAE. Erdogan’s Turkey is aligned with the MB, Qatar, Egypt’s Morsi and Hamas in Gaza. Hillary Clinton aligned herself with the MB factions and was never able to reach a common goal in Syria for a political solution in Geneva. Of course Egypt’s president Sadat was indeed assassinated by leaders of the MB – think Ayman Al Zawahiri. The MB closed ranks with Saudi rebel Osama bin-Laden and formed Al Qaeda during the Clinton presidency.
We’ve gone very far down the rabbit hole by now.
The chickens have all come home to roost, and nothing was learned. This Yemen War, and the further destabilization of the region is just the latest phase of the continuing horror that has been U.S. Middle East policy for more than a generation now.
Noam Chomsky outlined the essential dynamics back in 1983. His Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians” is now available on pdf and there’s no better summary of the history of the region.
“The most extreme Islamic fundamentalist state in the world is the loyal U.S. ally Saudi Arabia – or to be precise, the “Arab facade” behind which the US effectively controls the Arabian peninsula” and its immense oil reserves that constitute one of the most concentrated sources of wealth and power on the planet.
The greatest threat to the control over these resources has been secular Arab nationalism, which is why the US has effectively undermined and blocked all such attempts – ever since the overthrow of the Mossadegh regime of Iran in 1953.
Support for the extremist Saudi regime has served our purpose in controlling the overwhelming portion of the world’s oil reserves for 65 years now and preventing the people of the region from taking an independent development path. Sometimes, they embarrass us – by realizing in the Age of Trump that there are no adults left in charge.
So, they can wage a brutal proxy war in Yemen with our tacit blessing and support, hardly different than various vicious campaigns of brutal oppression that have been conducted with strong US support all over the region, (the suppression of the Kurds, the invasion of Iraq, the previous “tilt” towards Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, the support for the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, etc, etc. the list is endless).
Normally, the US President understands the power relationships and exercises a restraining hand, so that our client powers don’t go “rogue” and invade other countries without our consent. When they do (Example Saddam Hussein invasion of Kuwait in 1990), we intervene.
But, of course Trump understands nothing and therefore all the players do whatever they want, endangering the power structure we’ve built up since WWII. That’s what we are witnessing now.