Another Hot Anti-Trump Story Gets Walked Back

MSgt said:

Very true. But the way I see it, countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are having to face the product they created. Much has been stated about how America created this problem because of its support for dictators. Often enough scholars, mostly journalists (like Stephen Kinzer), not historians, will use the CIA-led 1953 coup as a source. But this is an error because such blame removes responsibility from the region and those who are intimately responsible. The U.S. merely exacerbated a developing local problem.

- Islamic Modernists: Philosophers and academic scholars developed a theory that it was the weakened condition of Islam that had made the Muslim world so vulnerable and easily subjugated by the late nineteenth century. Instead of blaming the foreign powers, Islamic modernists from India, Iran, and Egypt agreed that the traditional ulema (religious scholars) was to blame because they, for centuries, had refused Sharia (Sacred Law) to grow as time advanced. They believed that since foreign colonial systems of economy and law were alien, Islam was necessary to unite Muslims against the Europeans. BUT, by reinterpreting the original sources to meet the demands of present day, they argued that Islam and Sharia was adaptable to democracy.

Doesn't sound so bad, right? They blamed themselves? They sought to harmonize Islam (as was done during the Golden Age) to today's systems of economy and governance? However, time continued. Europeans dug in deeper. Not only did they create a World War, in which countless Muslims died too, but Europeans actually carved up the Middle East in 1922 to try to comply with promises to local Muslim allies, thus creating Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Arabia.

- Islamists: With Rida (before WWI), but largely with al-Banna (after WWI), Islamists began to see that the "enlightened" Europeans were not so enlightened and their systems led to the deaths of almost 40 million people. And now they slashed borders across Middle East deserts? Islamists began to argue that only they could save themselves and that this meant only Islamic government. They agreed with the Modernists that some reinterpretation was necessary in order to embrace technology, philosophy, and education. But foreign systems only led to a World War. Between Rida and Qutb, all Islamist philosophers agreed that one of the purposes of creating an Islamic state was to counter the twentieth-century’s exponentially growing immorality. SO, Islamists began to argue that only Muhammad's fabled Islamic state could lead them out of subjugation and better the world.

Sound familiar? Europeans dug in deeper. Then came another, more devastating, World War. The people liked them for their social and educational programs that compensated for the local government's failures. Then came the creation of Israel. Along the way, Islamists were imprisoned, tortured, and executed for their political views and stresses upon local governments. This is why it is properly argued that Islamism was born in the Egyptian prisons. Then came the U.S. during the Cold War, which supported the strongman who would deny the Soviets. Then came an angry Qutb in 1964, who lashed out in his prison manifesto and used the U.S.' culture and dominance over the globe as an assault on Muslim society.

AND today we see the Arab Spring versus the so-called Islamic State. One pushed for socioeconomic justice, dignity, and democracy in a region-wide attempt to topple dictators. One pushed to punish Muslims in a bitter and violent display of Islamic perversion just so they could replace autocratic tyranny with religious tyranny. This represents that Islamic Modernist philosophy against the Islamist philosophy. If we are going to see this mess to the other side, we have to wake up and see this for what it is. Our foreign policy has to acknowledge what is actually going on countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Egypt have to own the mess they created. But like the U.S., they are merely reacting.




This is because we largely lack a Foreign Policy. All of this "America First" junk and purposefully removing ourselves from world leadership just to thumb our noses at "Libruls" has pushed allies to seek other allies.

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Dirt Sands said:

Amazing analysis, no ****. As you pointed out, they don't particularly like each other. We always side with the Sunni statehoods, but ISIS, Alqueada, and others are Sunni also. The massive weaponry we just sold to Saudi Arabia, really says what side we take. Sometimes, we have to choose dictators who are less evil than those that oppose us. Something tells me were ****ing up.

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MSgt said:

There is hope though. Somehow we are stumbling and fumbling our way through the correct path.

- The Iraqi invasion has its critics, many of whom are former Bush supporters at any cost. But the dictators have to go. It is that simple. The Arab Spring proved it. Bush made a poor argument, was supported by one of America's worst SECDEFs in history, and made the Iraqi experience harder than it needed to be.

- The Arab Spring, for all its street rhetoric, was still not enough to move Obama off the fence until dictators began to fall in North Africa. This was the result of intellectual and Foreign Policy habit. I, along with other historians and political scientists (ugh), helped interview former Libyan Prime Minister, Mahmoud Jibril, in 2016. I asked him, "with America's aerial support in the past, what can America continue to do to help the situation in Libya?" He stated that America has to start recognizing that the real power is with the tribal leaders who constantly defend against Islamism while the governments above play games with international leaders to fill coffers. This is region wide and we should have learned this lesson with Iran. For example:

- The United States committed $128 billion in today’s dollars during the four years of the Marshall Plan in post-World War II Western Europe.

- In the first year and a half after the Arab Spring uprisings, the United States proposed only $2.2 billion in new aid to affected countries in the MENA.

Despite understanding from our own Western histories that true and positive power comes from the people who are governed, we still chose the dictators. We can clearly see here that the U.S. gave far more economic and moral support to ensure the stability of dictators during the Cold War than it did to support actual democracies during and after the Arab Spring. In other words, the U.S. (Obama) gave Muslim dictators far much more of a chance to survive than it gave these new Muslim democracies. And what again is the United States of America supposed to stand for? Muslims in the Middle East, whether Islamist or not, understand this too.

The struggle between Islamic modernists and Islamists will go on until the natural course of the Modernists prevails (I believe). The so-called Islamic State and the Arab Spring has proven the Islamist philosophy as bankrupt. But because we can't seem to see through the fog that we place around our heads, the journey is going to be far worse than it has to be.

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MSgt said:

Alright, but this avoids the pesky details, implies half truths, and the processes currently taking place...

Tunisia: Success, it toppled a dictator and wrote a democratic/liberal constitution.
Libya: Success, it toppled a dictator and wrote a democratic/liberal constitution.
Egypt: Success, because it toppled a dictator and wrote democratic/liberal amendments to the existing constitution.
Yemen: Success, because it toppled a dictator, held a presidential election.

Jordan: Success, the King gave concessions by dissolving Parliament and appointed a member of the Prague Society for International Cooperation as the new Prime Minister.
Oman: Success, the Sultan dismissed minsters, offered economic concessions, and granted lawmaking powers to the elected legislature.
Bahrain: Success, the king offered economic concessions, negotiated with the Shia and release of political prisoners (not terrorists).
Kuwait: Success, parliament was dissolved.
Morocco: Success, the king offered sociopolitical concessions and held a referendum on constitutional reform.
Saudi Arabia: Success, the king offered economic concessions, held municipal elections (2011), and approved the female vote and to run for election (2015).
.... truncated due to limits.

e see where the foreign hand has been heavily involved in local governments for a couple hundred years. We see Islamic Revivalism develop in the late-nineteenth century as a philosophical attempt to bring the people together under Islam in order to oppose those foreign tyrants and to gain independence. Long after the Cold War, the U.S. continued its support even as Islamism grew within the population as that desperate answer.

But unlike what the U.S. experienced, we also see the local dictators in the MENA who have been agents of that foreign string pulling. Where we kicked the British hand out, Muslims have had to deal with foreign supported and powerful strongmen who maintained the "stability" we demanded as a price. Still we saw a wide sweeping movement at revolution where some tyrants were toppled and others made concessions to kick the can. But in none, did Islamism rise and create little Irans across the region as critics began to argue. This is their process.

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But in none, did Islamism rise and create little Irans across the region as critics began to argue.

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ReverendHellh0und said:

You have to be kidding?
Come on.
Tunisia's chief export is terrorism. It's government is in shambles. civil rights are not in better shape but worse.
Lybia is a failed state that is literally selling black slaves now. Civil rights are not in better shape and it went from the richest, and one of the most stable regiemes in the area to the worst.
Egypt is still very corrupt and they literally will rape women in the streets. The "arab spring" simply transfered powere from one of the "narrow elite" to another.
Yemen got ****t. it's pretty much an anarchist failed state as well with warring factions fighting for thier own oppressive government.
...
You view sucess in the fact that "change" happened". but not one of these countries, other than saudi arabia which was not part of the arab spring, has seen improvement. each and everyone is as bad or worse than it was prior to the arab spring.
And to compare the war of independence, is insanity, there is no comparison.
but the most mind boggling comment you have here is
The only way that that is true, is because we left failed states in our wake, or in case where we were not involved, various fundamentalist islamic groups are fighting for power, et al.
You are seriously of the opinion that the average citizen in any of these countries are better off, freerer than they were prior to the "arab spring"?
...

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bubbabgone said:

I don't think you were supposed to know all that.

Regarding Libya ... Hillary Clinton on Muammar Gaddafi 'We came, we saw, he died' . [Sarcasm]That worked out well [/Sarcasm]

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ReverendHellh0und said:

It boggles the mind that people think the arab spring was a success.

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