Dominating the news cycle this week, the people of Egypt rising up and taking to the streets demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak has been backed by the U.S. for the entirety of his 30 years in office and this country has embraced him as a moderate force in the Arab world.
The United States has a disturbing history of supporting rulers like Mubarak. There is always the suspicion that the U.S. will back anybody who can help its business interests but the relationship with Mubarak is much more about his moderate stance on Israel. We still get oil from countries we hate like Iran and Venezuela, but, if you have anything bad to say about Israel, diplomatic relations with your country will be terse at best. More on that later.
Mubarak has coasted through "elections" that the U.S. recognizes as being legitimate in order to keep the status quo in Egypt. He recently has begun the process of grooming his son, Gamal, to become vice-president, and, thus, heir apparent to the presidency. Not your normal democracy. Kinda like the Bushes and George's 2000 win despite the popular vote. Well, not really like that, just wanted to say it out loud.
So the people of Egypt, the poor ones mostly who are basically unrepresented in the government, have had enough and now, well, we'll see what happens. Sometimes these things just run out of steam. But this sort of thing happened last week in Algeria as the ruling family was ousted. It happened last year in Iran but on a much smaller scale as anti-government sentiment there is mostly fueled by outside forces. What's going on in the Arab world right now is home-grown and volatile. Yemen is steaming. There are rumors of potential unrest in Jordan.
Certainly, if he isn't actually forced to step down, Mubarak's future has changed. What will supplant him is a mystery. There is a pro-democracy movement being propelled by Nobel Peace Prize winner and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. He has a degree in international law from New York University so I would assume American interests are at work getting behind him right now due to fears of the Islamic Brotherhood gaining more political influence in the coming vacuum.
At any rate, that's not really what this whole blog is about. I really wanted to address the question of why so many people in the Arab world seem to hate the U.S.
The conservative viewpoint is basically that Arabs are a bunch of player haters. They're jealous of the U.S. because of our freedoms, our Levis, our Hollywood stars, our burger joints. I think the actual answer is a little less stupid.
Egyptian crowds protesting in the streets of Cairo have been dispersed by tear gas. It's been noted that the tear gas canisters you can find littering the streets are manufactured by a Pennsylvania-based company called Combined Systems International. Here's a link from their online catalog: http://combinedsystems.com/less-lethal/Chemical-Munitions/Chemical-Munitions-Grenade-92-Series-Jet-Lite.aspx
So, here's the deal. The U.S. provides $1.3 billion a year in military aid to Egypt. Apparently some of this aid comes back to the U.S. each year in the form of the purchase of crowd suppression materials like tear gas made by Combined Systems. It bears mentioning that these same empty tear gas canisters are found in Palestine and other places around the world where people try to take to the streets to employ, as Barak Obama says, their natural right to free speech. Obama also said, "All governments must maintain power through consent, not coercion." Oh, and at the same time, our government is supplying the Egyptian government with the tools to coerce.
I'm not going to try to do a bunch of investigative reporting to figure out how Combined Systems gets their contracts. I'll just assume that there are lobbyists and that Combined Systems gives some nice political contributions to the right people in their district and to people who serve on the appropriate subcommittees overseeing military aid levels to places like Israel and Egypt and Saudi Arabia. But, basically, it's a win-win for American business. Their tax dollars, well, your tax dollars, go to Egypt and that money comes back to America where American tear gas craftsmen are rewarded for their skills and hard work.
So, if you're an Egyptian trying to express your freedom of speech but can't do much speaking because of the tear gas, what's not to like about America?
Now, here's where I get in trouble. Before I'm accused of being anti-Semitic, just let me say that I'm actually anti-Zionistic. If Judaism leads to nepotism I'm also against that. But, I'm not anti-Semitic. I don't believe that anybody has the right to a homeland based on race or religion or ethnic group. I don't believe Jews have the right to a homeland in the Middle East in the same way that I don't think that white separatists have the right to a homeland in Idaho.
Here's a scenario I like to imagine. Let's say it's 50 years in the future. America has declined to the point where it's no longer a global power. The U.N. has moved from the former capital of the world, New York City, to its new capital, Beijing. A bunch of Chinese philosophers bring to the U.N. the plight of the Native American. The Native American, slaughtered en masse and removed from their ancestral homelands, let's say the Cherokee. The U.N., despite the complaints of the U.S. delegation who used to sit on the Security Council, decides that the Cherokee deserve a homeland of their own in their former homeland of the state of Georgia. U.N. troops under the direction of the Chinese come into America and begin deporting the citizens of Georgia and moving in Cherokee from Oklahoma. Temporary camps are set up in Alabama to house those being displaced and the Cherokee in their new nation set up security at the borders.
This is something like how Israel came to be. The English came in after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and ruled what became Trans-Jordan like they have historically ruled all of their colonies. They decided they had the right to carve out a chunk of Palestinian land, move the people out, and move in Jews from all over the world to live on the land that had belonged to somebody else for a thousand years.
You'll forgive me if I don't buy the claim on a piece of land based on a book I don't even believe in. After all, it's not like the people of Israel just sprung out of thin air and began populating Palestine. They took it by force when they left Babylon in what is now Iraq. That conquest is documented in Genesis. I do actually believe in that part of the Bible just not the claims that the direction came from a God who preferred one group of people over another. The conquering of Palestine was the Israeli version of our Manifest Destiny in which we took all the land from the Native Americans and slaughtered them or displaced them.
This is why people in the Arab world hate us. Well, I'm sure they also hate the fact that we make TV shows like 16 and Pregnant and artists like Lil' Wayne and Lady Gaga, but, well, another blog there. That's the same reason why people used to hate the French. They were known for shipping their loose morals around the world.
Ultimately, if we want to be liked and respected on the Arab street, we'll need to decide whether we want to keep supporting repressive regimes. Saudi Arabia is one of our most respected allies and is also one of the most repressive regimes in the world. Somehow that doesn't get the play in the media that repression in North Korea gets. Maybe it would do us some good politically if Hillary Clinton had to go to Saudi Arabia, undercover in a burka, and find out what it was really like to be a Saudi woman. Maybe it would do some good if Sarah Palin, in a burka, was forced to live in East Jerusalem for a while.
I'm just getting sick of America talking all this democracy nonsense while supporting so many anti-democratic institutions around the globe. The hypocrisy isn't well-known to the average American but the average Arab on the street gets it rubbed in their face constantly. Oh, let me restate that. I don't believe that democracy is nonsense. Just saying that deeds need to match words and that's not what's happening right now.
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