Before I hit the hay:
Posts Tagged ‘Middle East’
A Few Quick Libyan Updates
Monday, February 21st, 2011Both NRO and DailyKos Call for a No Fly Zone Over Libya
Monday, February 21st, 2011No, really. Daniel Foster at National Review Online and “azizhp” at DailyKos both call for the U.S. military to impose a No Fly Zone over Libya to prevent the slaughter of civilians.
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood…
So What the Hell is Going on in Libya?
Monday, February 21st, 2011As a much more closed society, news is harder to come by, but depending on who you believe, there are conflicting reports that:
As usual, the BBC has live updates.
A popular uprising that toppled Ghaddafi would be great news, but I’m not sure I’m willing to believe he would be that easy to topple. Ghaddafi seems like the sort of dictator who would happily slaughter tens of thousands of his citizens if he thought he needed to to stay in power.
Of course, one big difference was between Egypt and Libya is that Egypt’s military is (by Arab standards) professional and pretty competent, and even though they lost the Yom Kipur war, Egyptian troops in Sinai bloodied the Israelis enough that Egyptians felt they had sufficiently restored the nation’s honor that Anwar Sadat was able to sign to Camp David accords. (The previous three Arab-Israeli wars had resulted in Israel delivering a complete ass-kicking to all the Arab armies, so only receiving a partial ass-kicking was indeed a vast improvement.)
By contrast, Libya’s army seems pretty incompetent: they got their asses kicked by Chad in the Toyota War, in which Chadian forces armed with Toyota-pickup-mounted anti-tank guns left a billion dollars worth of Soviet equipment burning in the Aouzou Strip. It would not surprise me at all to find that the Libyan army is too poorly trained to suppress a real popular uprising.
Whether they want to or not, it looks like people all across the Middle East are fated to live in interesting times…
More Live Egypt Updates
Saturday, January 29th, 2011Not a lot of news coming out. The longer it takes things to happen, the more likely Mubarak is to hold onto power. Yesterday brought scattered reports that the army may be wavering in support of Mubarak. Today? Not so much. There are sporadic reports of gunfire, and lots of reports that citizens groups are banding together to prevent looting.
The old links down the page stopped updating at the end of the day. The new links are:
As for what an actual popular Egyptian government might look like, Michael Totten reminds us that the answer might be pretty ugly:
In Egypt, 82 percent want stoning for those who commit adultery; 77 percent would like to see whippings and hands cut off for robbery; and 84 percent favor the death penalty for any Muslim who changes his religion.
Asked if they supported “modernizers” or “Islamists” only 27 percent said modernizers while 59 percent said Islamists.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, there are reports of unrest in Yemen. Conversely, yesterday’s reports that Syria had also taken down nationwide Internet access appear to have been false.
There Is No Internet, Only Zuul
Thursday, January 27th, 2011That’s probably a really, really bad sign…
Fascinating Michael Totten Piece on the Druze of the Golan Heights
Monday, October 4th, 2010Michael Totten’s pieces are always worth reading, and this piece on the Druze of the Golan Heights is no exception.
I especially liked this bit on the religious beliefs of the Druze:
They’re monotheists who emerged from Islam a thousand years ago, but their religion changed so drastically it became something else. They don’t proselytize or wage wars of conversion or conquest. No one is even allowed to convert. That door closed in the year 1043. You’re either born a Druze, or you aren’t a Druze. And if you die a Druze, they say you’ll be reincarnated as one. Their religious texts are kept secret, not only from non-Druze, but from most Druze, as well. The “uninitiated” majority aren’t required to observe any rituals. They aren’t even allowed to know much about the religion.
Why is it that this one reader-funded world traveler always seems to bring back more interesting and detailed stories than all the Middle East bureaus of The New York Times combined?
As always with Totten’s work, read the whole thing and hit the tip jar if you feel so inclined.
Israel’s Possible Strike on Iran: Reactions
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010There have been a lot of reactions to the Jeffrey Goldberg piece on the coming Israel attack against Iran’s nuclear weapons program I talked about here.
The issue is discussed with the ever-irrepressible Christopher Hitchens. Conclusion? If Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons, “I see no reason not to take out the regime.”
As usual, Ezra Klein and Juan Cole are clueless.
JournoList-founder Klein believes a strike would “make the Arab world in general, and Iran and various terrorist organizations, hate Israel even more.” The problems with this statement:
- Only for organizations already committed to Israel’s destruction and/or Iranian-backed groups (Hezbollah and Hamas), who will mainly be angry that Israel deprived them of far more potent weapons. A temporary increase in activity from the people who already want to see you dead seems like a good tradeoff for preventing a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Probably not for the majority of Sunni Arabs, most of whom regard Persian Shias with at best indifference and at worst racist xenophobia and contempt. Sure, they hate Jews worse, but beyond certain Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, there is very little in the way “Pan-Islamic Unity” in the Middle East.
- Ditto for for the Turks. Erdogan’s Islamist- and Iranian-leaning government would no doubt make a great deal of noise, but do very little in the way of concrete actions that they weren’t already pursuing against Israel, and the average Sunni Turk is likely to lose little sleep over an attack against Shia Persians.
- The leaders of most Arab countries seem to want the Iranians stopped as well. That would suggest that there will be very little response from those states beyond pro forma disapproval.
- Given that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already called for Israel to be wiped off the map, how much more could they hate Israel?
For his part, Juan Cole (after the usual conservative-bashing and name-calling) says:
Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is for all his bluster far too personally indecisive to take such a major step (and certainly not without an American green light; Bibi thinks Clinton had him undermined and moved out of office for obstructing the Oslo accords, and does not want to risk the same fate for causing trouble for Obama in Iraq and Afghanistan)
This ignores the fact that the Dovish wing of Israeli politics has all but disappeared since the Oslo accords, in the wake of Arafat’s intransigence, Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, the war against Hezbollah, etc. Kadima, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu are the three largest parties in Israel, and none are going to bring down the Netanyahu government should he order a strike on Iran. Even Kadima, the leftmost of those three, considers Iran’s nuclear program an existential threat. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni sounds only slightly less firm than Netanyahu, stating that “the free world cannot afford Iran with a nuclear weapon.”
Also, he ignores the fact that if it did come down to losing his job, or failing to prevent a nuclear holocaust against his nation, Netanyahu’s choice will still be pretty easy to make.
Finally, former UN Ambassador John Bolton says Israel needs to strike within eight days.