January 24, 2012, 2:42 PM
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A year ago this week, on January 25, 2011, the ground began to crumble under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's feet. One year later, Mubarak and his sons are in prison, and standing trial.
This week, the final vote tally from Egypt's parliamentary elections was published. The Islamist parties have won 72 percent of the seats in the lower house.
The photogenic, Western-looking youth from Tahrir Square the Western media were thrilled to dub the Facebook revolutionaries were disgraced at the polls and exposed as an insignificant social and political force.
As for the military junta, it has made its peace with the Muslim Brotherhood. The generals and the jihadists are negotiating a power-sharing agreement. According to details of the agreement that have made their way to the media, the generals will remain the West's go-to guys for foreign affairs. The Muslim Brotherhood (and its fellow jihadists in the Salafist al-Nour party) will control Egypt's internal affairs.
This is bad news for women and for non-Muslims. Egypt's Coptic Christians have been under continuous attack by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist supporters since Mubarak was deposed. Their churches, homes and businesses have been burned, looted and destroyed. Their wives and daughters have been raped. The military massacred them when they dared to protest their persecution.
As for women, their main claim to fame since Mubarak's overthrow has been their sexual victimization at the hands of soldiers who stripped female protesters and performed "virginity tests" on them. Out of nearly five hundred seats in parliament, only 10 will be filled by women.
The Western media are centering their attention on what the next Egyptian constitution will look like and whether it will guarantee rights for women and minorities. What they fail to recognize is that the Islamic fundamentalists now in charge of Egypt don't need a constitution to implement their tyranny. All they require is what they already have - a public awareness of their political power and their partnership with the military.
The same literalist approach that has prevented Western observers from reading the writing on the walls in terms of the Islamists' domestic empowerment has blinded them to the impact of Egypt's political transformation on the country's foreign policy posture. US officials forcefully proclaim that they will not abide by an Egyptian move to formally abrogate its peace treaty with Israel. What they fail to recognize is that whether or not the treaty is formally abrogated is irrelevant. The situation on the ground in which the new regime allows Sinai to be used as a launching ground for attacks against Israel, and as a highway for weapons and terror personnel to flow freely into Gaza, are clear signs that the peace with Israel is already dead - treaty or no treaty.
EGYPT'S TRANSFORMATION is not an isolated event. The disgraced former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in the US this week. Yemen is supposed to elect his successor next month. The deteriorating security situation in that strategically vital land which borders the Arabian and Red Seas has decreased the likelihood that the election will take place as planned.
Yemen is falling apart at the seams. Al-Qaida forces have been advancing in the south. Last spring they took over Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province. In recent weeks they captured Radda, a city 160 km. south of the capital of Sana.
Radda's capture underscored American fears that the political upheaval in Yemen will provide al- Qaida with a foothold near shipping routes through the Red Sea and so enable the group to spread its influence to neighboring Saudi Arabia.
Al-Qaida forces were also prominent in the NATO-backed Libyan opposition forces that with NATO's help overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in October. Although the situation on the ground is far from clear, it appears that radical Islamic political forces are intimidating their way into power in post-Gaddafi Libya.
Take for instance last weekend's riots in Benghazi. On Saturday protesters laid siege to the National Transitional Council offices in the city while Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the NTC, hid inside. In an attempt to quell the protesters' anger, Jalil fired six secular members of the NTC. He then appointed a council of religious leaders to investigate corruption charges and identify people with links to the Gaddafi regime.
In Bahrain, the Iranian-supported Shi'ite majority continues to mount political protests against the Sunni monarchy. Security forces killed two young Shi'ite protesters over the past week and a half, and opened fired at Shi'ites who sought to hold a protest march after attending the funeral of one of them.
As supporters of Bahrain's Shi'ites have maintained since the unrest spread to the kingdom last year, Bahrain's Shi'ites are not Iranian proxies. But then, until the US pulled its troops out of Iraq last month, neither were Iraq's Shi'ites. What happened immediately after the US pullout is another story completely.
Extolling Iraq's swift deterioration into an Iranian satrapy, last Wednesday, Brig.-Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps Jerusalem Brigade, bragged, "In reality, in south Lebanon and Iraq, the people are under the effect of the Islamic Republic's way of practice and thinking."
While Suleimani probably exaggerated the situation, there is no doubt that Iran's increased influence in Iraq is being felt around the region. Iraq has come to the aid of Iran's Syrian client Bashar Assad who is now embroiled in a civil war. The rise of Iran in Iraq holds dire implications for the Hashemite regime in Jordan which is currently hanging on by a thread, challenged from within and without by the rising force of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Much has been written since the fall of Mubarak about the impact on Israel of the misnamed Arab Spring. Events like September's mob assault on Israel's embassy in Cairo and the murderous cross-border attack on motorists traveling on the road to Eilat by terrorists operating out of Sinai give force to the assessment that Israel is more imperiled than ever by the revolutionary events engulfing the region.
But the truth is that while on balance Israel's regional posture has taken a hit, particularly from the overthrow of Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt, Israel is not the primary loser in the so-called Arab Spring.
Israel never had many assets in the Arab world to begin with. The Western-aligned autocracies were not Israel's allies. To the extent the likes of Mubarak and others have cooperated with Israel on various issues over the years, their cooperation was due not to any sense of comity with Jewish state. They worked with Israel because they believed it served their interests to do so. And at the same time Mubarak reined in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas because they threatened him, he waged political war against Israel on every international stage and allowed anti-Semitic poison to be broadcast daily on his regime-controlled television stations.
Since Israel's stake in the Arab power game has always been limited, its losses as a consequence of the fall of anti-Israel secular dictatorships and their replacement by anti-Israel Islamist regimes have been marginal. The US, on the other hand, has seen its interests massively harmed. Indeed, the US is the greatest loser of the pan-Arab revolutions.
TO UNDERSTAND the depth and breadth of America's losses, consider that on January 25, 2011, most Arab states were US allies to a greater or lesser degree. Mubarak was a strategic ally. Saleh was willing to collaborate with the US in combating al- Qaida and other jihadist forces in his country.
Gaddafi was a neutered former enemy who had posed no threat to the US since 2004. Iraq was a protectorate. Jordan and Morocco were stable US clients.
One year later, the elements of the US's alliance structure have either been destroyed or seriously weakened. US allies like Saudi Arabia, which have yet to be seriously threatened by the revolutionary violence, no longer trust the US. As the recently revealed nuclear cooperation between the Saudis and the Chinese makes clear, the Saudis are looking to other global powers to replace the US as their superpower protector.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect to the US's spectacular loss of influence and power in the Arab world is that most of its strategic collapse has been due to its own actions. In Egypt and Libya the US intervened prominently to bring down a US ally and a dictator who constituted no threat to its interests. Indeed, it went to war to bring Gaddafi down.
Moreover, the US acted to bring about their fall at the same time it knew that they would be replaced by forces inimical to American national security interests. In Egypt, it was clear that the Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the strongest political force in the country. In Libya, it was clear at the outset of the NATO campaign against Gaddafi that al-Qaida was prominently represented in the anti-regime coalition. And just as the Islamists won the Egyptian election, shortly after Gaddafi was overthrown, al-Qaida forces raised their flag over Benghazi's courthouse.
US actions from Yemen to Bahrain and beyond have followed a similar pattern.
In sharp contrast to his active interventionism against US-allied regimes, President Barack Obama has prominently refused to intervene in Syria, where the fate of a US foe hangs in the balance.
Obama has sat back as Turkey has fashioned a Syrian opposition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League has intervened in a manner that increases the prospect that Syria will descend into chaos in the event that the Assad regime is overthrown.
Obama continues to speak grandly about his vision for the Middle East and his dedication to America's regional allies. And his supporters in the media continue to applaud his great success in foreign policy. But outside of their echo chamber, he and the country he leads are looked upon with increasing contempt and disgust throughout the Arab world.
Obama's behavior since last January 25 has made clear to US friend and foe alike that under Obama, the US is more likely to attack you if you display weakness towards it than if you adopt a confrontational posture against it. As Assad survives to kill another day; as Iran expands its spheres of influence and gallops towards the nuclear bomb; as al- Qaida and its allies rise from the Gulf of Aden to the Suez Canal; and as Mubarak continues to be wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher, the US's rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
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Since Israel gave up the Sinai under President Carter it has looked to the US as a kind of god to bring peace and stability to the region.
The end result has been the exact opposite especially in Iran and Afghanistan where 'occupation' forces have been deployed the longest.
Total failures as every war the US has fought since WW II and Israel continues to trust the US with it's security and survival.
This meltdown has been in progress for a long time.
You left out the 8 years of President Bush's policy of restraint against Israel that weakened her and brought about Hamastan, Gaza and kept Israel from defeating Hezbollah and later Hamas under his counterfeit peace nightmare,2 state final solution.
Israel is awakening from her many decades of misplaced faith in her big daddy pimp only to realize she was just one of many cheap prostitutes to be used up and discarded.
The old Yiddish saying 'Man plans ,God laughs' is perfect to describe Israel's misplaced faith in this defunct superpower.
Israel can't ignore God,chase after lying idols and expect a good outcome.
Dear Caroline,
I think the western news media knows the failures of Obama, the abuse of women, the lack of freedom for all, under Islamic regimes. But to the west conservatives, Christians, and Jews are the people that are a danger to any society. The western news media put the above on a pedestal and proclaim them the worst of all, so Islam or anyone else for that matter, can never be looked at, to be as bad as we are. No matter the atrocity's the Islamic people commit. The western media has their bad guys, and they proclaim they have no room for anyone else in their top spots. The western media's villains are set in concrete, nothing will ever change that. Israel needs to take care of itself, and not worry about being liked. It won't be in the western media ever. God bless, keep up the good work. Ivan
Perhaps openly hostile neighbors will be better. If Egypt and Syria launch another war and the Palestinians participate which they no doubt will. Hopefully Israeli leadership will be smart enough to annex territories permanently like Sinai, Gaza and Judea/Samaria and take over the temple mount this time. They should expel all Palestinians openly hostile to Israel and just be done with it. Surely Israelis must no by now that no matter how much good will they show it gets them nothing in return from Europe and the US. Better to have the world respect you than waste your time trying to win their love.
Fantastic article! I have been waiting for someone to articulate all of these pieces into one global overview. GREAT JOB!!! I will for forwarding thid to all of my friends, including the blind liberals who think this Arab Spring is wonderful news and all we have to do is extend a hand to talk to them. Bullies only respect force, and thrive on weakness. It's always been that way. Why is it so hard for some people to understand that?
Cower to the bullies and watch them grow. That has been Arab history for thousands of years.
Thanks, OBummer.
Wow!
Scathing and absolutely accurate. It's amazing the difference one election makes, especially when you elect someone who the media would have labeled a traitor in other times. But then they have an agenda and truth and facts are not convenient to it.
You can be sure that when the negative ramifications present themselves, all of the left's fingers will point in directions other than their's. The lies and misdirection will continue until they achieve their goals.
Nowhere was Obama's state of delusion more evident than in his State of the Union address last night. To hear him tell it, the US is the "go to guy" for all that ails the world. To consider that one man with the help of his "friends" has managed to all but destroy the reputation of the strongest country in the world is criminal. To know that if Obama is reelected he has promised more "hope and change" is truly frightening. Now, more than ever, Israel cannot depend on the US. Caroline, thanks once again for putting facts in their proper perspectives.
I disagree with some important things here.
Israel did not defend Mubarak unconditionally against the Jihad/Obama/Cameron/Sarkozy
Nor Ben Ali
Nor Gaghbo
nor Salah (Yemen)
Nor and above all Muammar Gadhafi, crucified by the Jihad/Obama
Now Israel and Caroline is/are not defending Assad unconditionally against the same islamic Jihad/Empire
Also I disagree with you. Israel has lost more than anybody because of this Arab Nightmare.
For the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists, a public awareness of their political power and a partnership with the military, is not an end run around the problem that Egypt has no economy. Not even to supply so much as bread. Egypt's military will be a very limited resource as a go-to-guy, when that military is shunned by the west, for underpinning Islamist tyranny.
It is pretty obvious that Israel will have to reacquire the Sinai peninsula, with the advantage that there will be no one to negotiate with, for its return as the price for Egypt's support for US foreign policy in the region. Furthermore, this is now an opportunity for the US and Europe to rid themselves of a nuisance, that can be expelled to the newly liberated, Arab world.
Israel's real problem is for Israelis to decide just how much territory is Israel, beyond its current territorial scope. A problem simplified by the transpatriation opportunity, for the Palestinians of the west bank, that would arise from the demise of the Hashemite regime.
Nonsense. Here is Wikipedia's entry on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak
Here are a few excerpts.
Hosni Mubarak was born in 1928. That makes him 86 years old. He is pretty reliably reported to be in poor health since 2011:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak#Health
What was to come after Mubarak's dictatorship?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak#Presidential_succession
The ground began to crumble under Mubarak's feet a long time before 2011. He is old and mortal and was bound step out of office sometime soon. And there was no concrete plan for his replacement. Mubarak himself created a vacuum in which the Muslim Brotherhood rapidly filled. There was no other possible outcome. There was nothing that US foreign policy could do about it and constantly blaming US foreign policy without presenting what the alternatives were supposed to be is highly suspicious. I don't think you are to be trusted on the subject any more.
Great article Ms. Glick. Obama's actions demonstrate that he is fanatically anti-Christian, but then as Ivan above alluded to, that's the main thrust of Democrat party in the US.
Mark my words though, unless a conservative Republican wins the primary, giving us someone better to vote for, Obama has 4 more years to continue destroying the US. Conservatives like me did not vote for mad man John McCain, and we will not vote for liberals like Romney and Gingrich. There is no point in electing someone as bad as Obama from within the Republican party. Where would conservatives turn if we did? Most of the conservatives have dropped out of the race, and only Rick Santorum apparently is left. Sadly the leftists within the Republican party, who seek and hold power just as they do in any organizational structure will probably convince themselves that conservatives will have to vote for their guys Romney or Gingrich because conservatives have no where else to turn. They think that every time and every time they lose. Republicans cannot win without the conservative base, and frankly the liberals should just join the Democrat party if they can't understand that.
the plan is right on schedule as far as "GOD" is concerned !!!! mankind's role for himself and this planet is about over and "GODS" plan for mankind is about to commence !!!!!!!!!!!!!!