On October 23, an additional 42,000 Tunisian security forces patrolled the country to maintain order and peace. Prior to Mohamed Bouazizi’s heroic act of self-immolation that triggered the Tunisian revolution, said “order and peace” may have been more reminiscent of government-mandated oppression that left Tunisians silent for decades. Though nine months after its conception, the rebellious spirit of Bouazizi’s act gave birth to the first free elections the country had seen in over 20 years. What’s more, forces did not congregate to scare citizens away from voting; they were there to ensure that they could. And the Tunisians did: millions of registered voters cast their ballots in this historic election and seminal step toward democracy. As today’s Americans are known to cloak themselves in voter apathy yet simultaneously tout their belief in spreading democracy to the world, there is much for the United States to admire in the small North African nation.

A Formidable Feat

The fiercely secular dictatorship of Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali trampled its citizens for 23 years before it was finally overthrown by those formerly trampled on. Despite steady GDP growth and slashing the poverty rate from 7.4% in 1990 to 3.8% in 2005, many Tunisians still suffered from high rates of unemployment and a staggering amount of censorship. The proverbial cards were stacked high against them: even their constitution stated that “liberties of opinion, expression, the press, publication, assembly, and association are […] defined by the law.”

Yet the movement came directly from the people who suffered the most: the stakes were high, the future was uncertain, yet it was the Tunisians’ firm resolve that led them to the recently held free elections. They moved quickly, independently, and relatively peacefully, all of which help to explain why their transitions and successes lack the media coverage that Tunisia’s neighbors in Egypt and Libya have received. When things go well, no one cares.

In fact, things have gone so well that as soon as an earthquake rocked Turkey, everyone forgot about the stunning sea change that continues to sweep through Tunisia in great numbers. Over 90% of registered voters—men and women—went to their local polling stations to participate in what many saw as a celebration. Mohammed Naceur Ben Abdennebi from Gabes, Tunisia, said the following: “When I entered the voting booth, I realized the full extent of my new citizenship, because in previous years I never really tasted its worth. Thank God for this opportunity made available to me in my life. These are the first signs of the radiant future awaiting Tunisia.”

The Rise of the Tunisian “Renaissance”

Many others echoed Abdennebi’s enthusiasm, and rightfully so. As the day wore on and polls began to close, ballots cast from around the country were sealed and delivered to the Sousse Electoral Observatory as precious cargo. Amid the “mobile” environs that greatly contributed to Tunisia’s successful revolution, the votes were counted by hand, not by machine. While there were the inevitable claims of “vote buying”, international leaders like President Barack Obama and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon declared the election to be remarkably free and fair, the result of which was the moderate Ennahda party’s gain of 90 out of the 217 seats in its Constituent Assembly.

Despite receiving over 41% of the vote, there have been several concerns raised by Ennahda critics in recent days, some of which resulted in more protests. Its critics worry of the resurgence of religious politics that could potentially dismantle the fledgling “democracy,” and many secular Tunisians fear Islam’s integration into social and political spheres that could further stunt the nation’s economic growth (unemployment rates have only risen after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia). Yet the vocal criticism is not something about which to be wary, it is something to be praised: there is little more indication of a political system’s strength than being able to actively engage in unbridled criticism of it. And worry not, the Ennahda party has made no effort to silence it.

While the criticism has been present, its size and spread has been few. Why? The Ennahda party is moderate and has firsthand experience of persecution. Throughout the Ben Ali regime the Ennahda party, or “Renaissance” party, was banned and many of its members were arrested, tortured, and imprisoned by the secular government. They have claimed, obviously, that they do not seek to repeat that. As spokesperson Samin Dilou stated in an interview, the Ennahda party “[does] not want a theocracy. We want a democratic state that is characterized by the idea of liberty. The people are to decide for themselves how to live … we are not an Islamist party, we are an Islamic party.”

The Party has cited Christian democracy in Germany and Italy as well as the Justice and Development party of Turkey in how it wishes to implement the mores of Islam. It pledges to have a multi-party system that rules via consensus, is committed to pluralism, democracy, and gender equality. These are long-term goals, and it is with these goals that a transitional party should concern itself.

As such, the unrealistic promises of thousands of jobs, free healthcare, and new factories did not result in the Popular Manifesto party’s aspirations of assembly majority but rather in the anger of its members. As a consequence, many have taken to the very streets where the revolution began in order to exercise their right to protest:

Though as Tunisian journalist Naziha Rejiba says, “the great risk for Tunisia isn’t Islamist participation in politics but rather a return to repression.” The fact that the Ennahda party is already in talks with other parties seated in the assembly suggests that there is little of that to worry about. And make no mistake: coupled with a staggering percentage of voter turnout and the successful ousting of a 23-year regime in a little over a month, Ennahda party leaders know exactly what their constituents are capable of. The Tunisians are alive, they are empowered, and they are mobile—any political party would be foolish, masochistic, or both to tamper with that.

The Democratic Drift of the United States

In the United States, general apathy toward voting has allowed many politicians to take advantage of the more imperfect aspects of our own infantile system to achieve their own corrupt goals. As a result, much of the manifested unrest throughout the country may be blamed on politicians spooning with corporations but it must also be attributed to the typical American voter’s seemingly vegetative state the past fifty years.

According to the Fair Vote Organization, even at its 1960 zenith, the percent of eligible Americans who proceeded to vote never exceeded 65%. When compared to almost all established democracies, American election participation is down right embarrassing. In Canada, voter turnout is consistently around 70-75%. In the first round of the French presidential election, 86.8% of registered voters cast their vote. In little Luxembourg, 91.7% of registered voters participated in the 2004 in the proportional representation election for its legislature.

It is generally considered that voting is a vital component of a healthy democracy. Thus when turnout is low, so too is the quality of democracy. What does that say about a country that claims to be its greatest success story and implants it in the form of bombs, troops, and acts of economic imperialism throughout the world?

Sure, there are obvious flaws in the United States voting system. The constitution has moved at a snail’s pace in its inclusion of women and African Americans and now it is beginning to exclude the homeless. It tends to disfavor the working class. But ask Amina Jouini about free time. To her, freedom is more important than free time. Voting is a way to be a part of history, and more importantly it is a way to change it. “I rushed early this morning to be on time, at 7 o’clock,” she said. “You could see for yourself the way […] women are shaping history, once again.”

In Tunisia, people died to express themselves and participate directly in history and democracy. In the United States, however, history is not something you make but is something that has passed. Until recently, we have estranged ourselves from national political dialogue and dissent much as we have drifted from democracy in one of its most fundamental properties: voting. Yet throughout these drifts we have remained adamant in imposing our distorted vision of democracy on others. That is yet another area where Tunisia prevails: Tunisian activists do not claim to teach democracy to others, rather they are happy to promote “democratic learning” with Libya and Egypt. The United States has quite a bit to learn about democracy—we should join them.

There are a host of legitimate, substantive reasons to censure the recent Palestinian Authority (PA) application for statehood at the United Nations. Some observers have accused PA President Mahmoud Abbas of using the statehood bid as a cynical ploy to bolster his moribund popularity. Legal experts have asserted that the ramifications of the application could lead to a situation where diaspora Palestinians lose their internationally recognized right of return, codified in United Nations General Assembly resolution 194.

But perhaps the most trenchant criticism is the most simple: so what? Even if the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution, what change would it impact on the ground?

There is reason to laud the PA for this enterprise—without the approval or sanction of the United States—and asserting their own agency in the peace process. Although there are risible claims being regurgitated by the Israel for-right-or-for-wrong crowd that this is a “unilateral” maneuver, this is a very meaningful effort at internationalizing the conflict. In effect, the PA is attempting to move the conflict and the negotiations outside the penumbra of United States and Israeli control. Moreover, even if the Palestinians were to simply receive “observer status” through General Assembly ratification, they would have access to the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. If anything, this could at least begin to bridge the massive differential power dyad between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The diplomatic and media brouhaha over the application demonstrates two points: 1) The two-state solution paradigm is obsolete; and 2) the United States will support nothing but a Israeli controlled and dictated Palestinian state. As I have written previously, Palestinian self-determination, following in the footsteps of their Arab brethren, will only truly be achieved through mass nonviolent civil resistance. Unfortunately, the PA is either unwilling or incapable of coordinating the already manifold efforts of nonviolent resisters. In early September, I heard a panel of PA representatives exhorting the participants of the discussion to accept and promote the statehood bid. When asked “what if it fails? What type of collaborative efforts is the PA engaged in with civil society?”, their answers were couched as though they were talking to US or Israeli officials. “We have informed demonstrators to remain within certain boundaries and not provoke,” they quickly retorted.

PA elites have a vested economic and political interest in the maintenance of both the two-state solution and the negotiations paradigm. Events on the ground, Israeli obduracy, US complicity, and the trajectory of continued Israeli expansion into the West Bank have made it clear; the hackneyed notion of “two states for two people” is neither producible nor feasible. Despite what the Israeli narrative or Western establishment media may report, there has been active nonviolent resistance by Palestinians for decades. Eventually, the call for political rights will become more and more salient with the realization that the Israelis have no intention of giving the Palestinians a state, and the United States will do nothing about it.

The United States, when pushed into a corner, will shamefully and reflexively resort to the Israeli position. Yes, the Obama administration has applied pressure (rather feebly) to Israelis in regards to settlements. However, the Obama administration also clandestinely gave the Israelis bunker buster bombs that not even the Bush administration was willing to sell—likely out of apprehension that the Israelis would actually use the bombs on Iran. President Obama’s recent speech at the UN was obsequious and seemed more like a sycophantic election pandering to the Israel lobby than anything else. As MJ Rosenberg noted, President Obama used over 120 words of his speech to mourn Jewish suffering and was utterly silent on Palestinian suffering. This despite the fact that since 2009 over 1600 Palestinians, including over 400 children, have been killed by Israeli forces. In the same period, only 13 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians. In the sordid world of American politics, do Palestinians not named Mahmoud Abbas, Salaam Fayyad or Ismail Haniyeh even exist?

In a 2007 campaign speech in Iowa, Obama averred, “No one is suffering more than the Palestinian people.” Despite his nihilistic backtracking, there can be no doubt that Obama has a serious understanding of the abject plight, emanating from a draconian and illegal occupation that the Palestinians face. Before he was being advised by the likes of Dennis Ross, Obama had well documented relationships with Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi. To my mind, this makes his perfidy on Palestine all the more despicable.

However, we now know that Obama’s soaring rhetoric and progressive background are all meaningless. This is why once adamant supporter Brother Cornel West called Obama “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” Just as Obama has supinely submitted to the Washington consensus on taxes, (re)distribution of wealth, war, torture, regulating Wall Street—and on and on and on—he has similarly become just another cog in the machine of the peace process industry. Can there be any doubt that Obama is kowtowing to the influence of the Israel Lobby? Even Thomas Friedman, a self-professed Zionist and purveyor of conventional effluvium, is now discussing the pernicious and deleterious effects that pro-Israeli groups are having.

Of course, Obama cannot be held solely responsible for the farcical events at the UN. He is but a politician, concerned first and foremost with the maintenance of his power. If Obama is re-elected, perhaps in 2013 or 2014 we will see some sort of meaningful effort to pressure the Israelis to at the very least not daily and bombastically flout international law. However, I highly doubt it. The UN statehood fiasco should lay to rest any hopes that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had for a two-state solution negotiated by Israeli, Palestinian, and American elites.

In differential calculus, an inflection is a point when a curve changes its direction. The farce that we see still playing out at the UN, as the Security Council considers the statehood bid, should be an inflection point for the Palestinians, particularly their leadership. Nonviolent civil resistance, in the face of seemingly insuperable structural obstacles, will be the only way for the Palestinians to achieve their political, economic, and social freedom. The brave Palestinians who actively resist all across the West Bank and those who do so through existence as resistance are the vanguard. The statehood bid could very likely be the move that pulls the shroud off the heads of those who would believe otherwise.

Adam Gallagher is a PhD student in Political Science at George Mason University, where his research interests include the political economy of the Middle East and Marxian political theory, and a contributor to the academic blog Tropics of Meta.

As the Arab Spring has blossomed into the Arab Summer, there has been an effort among members of the conservative community to align the narrative of the Bush Doctrine and the resulting endeavors in Iraq and Afghanistan with that of the Arab Spring. While promoting his memoir, Cheney claimed that the Bush Administration and its subsequent doctrine that it prescribed in the Middle East are to thank for the eruption of empowerment and action witnessed today:

But make no mistake: neither the Administration nor the President deserve any credit for the remarkable things happening now in Northern Africa and the Middle East. The only thing that the Bush Doctrine — defined by top-down, deregulated and contracted transplantation of one-size-fits-none “democracy” — deserves credit for is the “democratic” decrepitude that is so present in the leaders and institutions of Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Afghanistan’s crooked and corrupt state can largely be attributed to its President, Hamid Karzai. Chosen as interim president in 2002 by the Bush Administration, Karzai’s alleged lure was that despite being a southern Pashtun, he had good relations with the non-Pashtun and Taliban-leaning North, and could hopefully unite the two and begin the transition down an American-guided path. Unsurprisingly, this was a myopic vision on behalf of the Bush regime, as according to Abdullah Abdullah, former Karzai foreign minister and current political opponent, Karzai has only “[distanced] the Afghan government from the Afghan people” and that “the Taliban is taking advantage of this.”

The company Karzai keeps isn’t comforting either. One of the most feared and powerful opium and heroin traders in the Kandahar region happened to be Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali. Oddly enough, Ahmed was elected as a Kandahar province representative until he was killed in July by one of his own bodyguards.

And then there was Gul Agha Sherzai, the man who, according to The Globe and Mail, received millions of dollars from the CIA and US government to get rid of the Taliban, yet after doing so proceeded to allow them to become part of the de facto government. He was also the man who admitted to receiving $1 million a week from his share of import duties and from the opium trade. Keep in mind that most Afghans live on less than a dollar a day.

Ever-so characteristic of a Bush selection, the elections in which Karzai ran were rife with chicanery and general corruption, along with ‘support’ from people like Karim Khalili, current Vice President who has also been accused of war crimes and killing thousands of people. And we thought quail hunting gone awry was bad. After being confronted about the alleged ballot stuffing and intimidation, all Karzai had to say was that “there was fraud in 2004, there is today, there will be tomorrow.”

The leadership, or lack thereof, is well noted among Afghans. In a recent survey conducted with over 1,250 Afghans from 13 provinces, half of them admit to paying for bribes, and 60% think that Karzai’s government is more corrupt than the Taliban, the mujahedeen or Communist regimes. As far as cost is concerned, it ranges from the equivalent of $50 to $300 to vote in a National Assembly election, and $6,000-$8,000 for a court appointment. But don’t worry about any of this messing with the picturesque portrait of progress: Afghanistan doesn’t have conspiracy or racketeering laws that would allow for prosecution. And furthermore, the Karzai government has derailed the few investigations that have been initiated.

Par for the course in American foreign policy, applying a new strategy to one country simply wasn’t enough for its ambitious authors. And so Bush replicated another pathogenic pod of hollow democracy in yet another Middle Eastern country: Iraq. What little Iraq lost in corruption, it gained in toothless, nominal democracy. The reasons for the US government’s entrance and intervention in Iraq were sparse and spurious at best, as was the US government’s actual presence there. Largely turning toward contractors from the beginning of the war, the Bush Administration outsourced Iraqi Army training, logistical and tactical support, translation services, and even the handling of sensitive intelligence operations to unaccountable and lawless private forces like Blackwater. This, as the bipartisan Gansler Commission reported, “essentially created an opportunity to create fraud” in Iraq reconstruction. Yet, as so masterfully decreed by Paul Bremer in 2004, contractors are immune from Iraqi prosecution.

With an equally bleak attitude, Feisal Amin Istrabadi, diplomat, supporter of US-led invasion of Iraq and principal architect of Iraq’s interim constitution, said in an interview that Prime Minister al-Maliki and “this government [has] got to go.” This coming from a man who was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein came to power. Citing the Iraqi government as an “illusion,” Istrabadi cast aspersions toward the US’ insistence in 2005 elections in that they stopped the “[development] of robust democratic institutions to buffer the influence of religious leaders” before they could even begin, thus leading to ‘sectarian doling out of Cabinet ministries.’” This, he said, brought about even more controversy and political gridlock between the Sunnis and Shiites and led nowhere except to “democratic” doldrums. However, Bush still was able to give a good speech wherein he hit the quota of liberty-lovers’ mots cles, as he called the elections a “great triumph in the history of liberty,” and stated that Iraqi sentiments were “growing in optimism and hope.” Or rather, as Istrabadi noted, “chaos and instability.”

To quote the ever relevant classic, “Clueless,” what the Bush Administration saw from across an ocean was nothing more than a Middle Eastern Monet. From far away, it’s OK, but up close, it’s a big old mess. If democracy is to function, let alone flourish, elsewhere, it must grow from the ideals and actions of its own people, not in the form of bombs based on hyperbolic threats nor from handpicked leaders and transplanted institutional structures.

However, the Arab Spring and the primary countries that it entails, namely Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, could be more successful in their own regime changes for that very reason. Not because of President Bush. Not because of President Obama. Not because of anyone at the top, especially from such a distance. True change, as these rebellions have noticed and have acted upon, must start from the bottom up. It must start from city squares. Or, as Tunisian Mohamed Bouazazi realized, it must start from the streets.

Former street vendor Bouazazi is largely attributed for sparking the Tunisian Revolution, and by effect, the many revolutions that followed in neighboring North African and Middle Eastern countries in the months to come. Amid unemployment and corruption woes, Bouazazi lit himself on fire one morning in January after claiming harassment and humiliation from local officials and having suffered years of injustice from the hands of the Ben Ali regime. After his death, a huge amount of protests and riots ensued that gathered support from all walks of life, be it the strikes of 8,000 lawyers, labor unions, or the gathering of 100,000 plus Tunisians to rally against the government. Staggeringly, the 23-year reign of President Ben Ali ended a mere 28 days later after just one man expressed his deep disillusionment by self-immolation.

As many in Egypt suffered similar problems characteristic to crooked regimes in addition to oppression stemming from emergency law, 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz found a different way to incite change from the bottom-up: Facebook. The day after Bouzazi lit himself on fire, Mahfouz asked her fellow Egyptians to “demand their human rights” and voice their disapproval for Hosni Mubarak. A week later, Mahfouz took to Tahrir Square in Cairo. 50,000 others joined her. The next week, Al-Jazeera correspondents estimated that there were at least 250,000 protestors present. There was stiff government repression and a $3,340 fine awaiting Mahfouz, but not even a month after one young woman reached out to her own citizens, the constitution was suspended, parliament was dissolved, and Mubarak, like Ali, was gone.

Libya unfolded on its own trajectory. Rich in oil resources — especially in the eastern region — and after much attention to the very public and brutal military repression in the streets of Tripoli, intervention from the United Nations and NATO came, stemming from the 2005 Canadian-crafted “Responsibility to Protect” policy. While the intervention came from the air rather from the ground, the general concepts and spirit of the Libyan Revolution remain consistent with its predecessors in Tunisia and Egypt. It was not brought to the people; it was created and fought by them. From teachers to oil workers to lawyers, the Libyan people gathered in January to rebel against what they saw as unjust, thereby garnering interior support and funding from the oil-rich Warfalla, Tuareg, and Maghara tribes of the Zuwayya region, as well as the Arabian Gulf Oil group, the second largest state-owned oil company in Libya.

Perhaps learning from the errors of the Bush Administration, US involvement was much more limited, which allowed the changes and fights to grow organically. The fight against that inhuman and insane tyrant is far from over as, like barnacles stuck on boats, it’s usually the oldest, ugliest, and most repulsive ones that are hardest to get rid of. Yet despite the depressing amount of deaths and human rights violations, there have been some positive developments. Many of Gaddafi’s former generals have defected, foreign ministers have fled, and the National Transitional Council has been recognized by the European Union, the United States and the Arab League as the legitimate representation of the Libyan state. Recently, the head of its council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, has stated that women will play a more active role in the new Libya and a “moderate Islam” will be practiced.

While the reason for Vice President Cheney’s recent attachment to the Arab Spring as a personal resume builder may have a great deal to do with feeble revisionist hopes to make his biography in future history books a little more rosy (or, well, lifelike), it may also have something to do with the fact that he continues to be a great proponent of the Bush Doctrine. In many ways, Cheney simply cannot fathom the thought of democracy coming into its own without the heavy handed and preemptive involvement of the United States in planting of all the seeds and promising to pick all the weeds, even if, as we’ve seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, that only means picking one just to plant it in charge.

And if that’s the case, maybe he’s right. It’s uncertain what will develop in the coming months and years in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Recently, Egyptian security forces made headlines by storming Al-Jazeera headquarters in al-Ahram and confiscating transmission equipment. Yet today, the Ennahada party of Tunisia has tipped the upcoming post-revolution election polls with a manifesto that promises “to safeguard religious freedom, the rights of minorities and the status of women.” Along with a watchful eye of the international community, the future of these countries that have fought long and hard for the change that they currently live is in their hands. But that is not a problem; rather, that is how it should be.

Savannah Cox is a Foreign Languages/International Studies and Political Science double major at Bellarmine University, and has recently returned from the University of Granada, where she studied Spanish and Political Science. She has interned for the World Affairs Council of Kentucky and Southern Indiana as well as Congressman John Yarmuth. In her free time, she enjoys reading, strumming a ukulele, and consuming large amounts of salty carbohydrates.

Albert Einstein once famously suggested that insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” With this definition in mind, what is more insane than Washington’s approach to the so-called “peace process?” Indeed, the same tired and regurgitated paradigms for negotiations remain dogma among American and Israeli officials. President Obama’s latest recommendation, no doubt influenced by the leading advocate of incrementalism Dennis Ross, is for Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate borders and security now and worry about “emotional issues” like refugees and Jerusalem at a later date.

This strategy, much like the entire peace process itself, will allow Israelis to continue to effectively annex more and more of the West Bank by continuing with the illegal settlement enterprise, furthering the “Bantustanization” of the West Bank. In February, the Obama administration vetoed a UN resolution, comprised of language directly appropriated from US policy, declaring settlement activity to be illegal. The other 14 members of the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution. Is there anything else to call this but a “cowardly failure,” to borrow from Chas Freeman, on the part of the Obama administration?

It seems that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has finally come to grips with the servitude of America to the status quo as directed by Israel. Indeed, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, a long compliant client of the US, has eschewed the peace process and refused to negotiate, and in the interim, Abbas and Fatah have reconciled with Hamas, with a unified front planning to bring a resolution to the UN in September to receive endorsement of Palestinian statehood. Regardless of what one thinks about this maneuver, it no doubt signals a radical departure of previous strategy. Whereas Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the PA were long content to serve as collaborators with the occupation, spending more time worrying about limiting Hamas influence in the West Bank than resisting the occupation, Abbas is now moving forward with an active strategy to force the hand of the US and Israel.

The resolution that Palestinians will present will no doubt pass in the General Assembly. Indeed, there are already over 100 countries that recognize Palestine as a state. What of the United States? As President Obama expresses support for democratic aspirations of protesters from Libya to Iran, how can the US legitimately justify vetoing Palestinian statehood? To be sure, the administration will call on the Palestinians to come to the negotiating table to forge a just and lasting peace. They will insist that the insane approach, which has allowed the settlement population to nearly double in the last twenty years, is the only way for Palestinians to acquire self-determination. In other words, the process that allows for Palestinians to receive their self-determination most come with American imprimatur. For the US and the Israelis, Palestinians should be incapable of determining their own self-determination.

Unfortunately, for the Obama and Netanyahu administrations, the developments in the region are unlikely to be conducive to the piecemeal peace process. Across the Arab world, people are standing up and refusing to countenance the untenable dictatorships, human rights abuses and suppression of their political and economic freedom. If there was any question that Palestinians would rise up as their other Arab brethren have done, on Nakba day (May 15), in an unprecedented move, thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon peacefully marched to protest the continued occupation.

Many decry Palestinians for not using nonviolent tactics to resist the occupation. This is, of course, a tendentiously crafted narrative. To start, many leaders and advocates of nonviolent resistance are locked away in Israeli jails. Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? He is probably languishing in an Israeli jail. For the past six years, in the Palestinian city of Bil’in, Palestinians have nonviolently resisted Israeli attempts to continue construction of the wall that would illegally confiscate half of their land. Indeed, three years ago pressure exerted by these protesters led the Israeli high court to order that the path of the wall be diverted so as to not annex parts of Bil’in. The emergence and growing power of the international boycott, divestment, sanctions movement (BDS), further belies the fraudulent accusations that Palestinians and their supporters refuse to resist nonviolently.

As the world’s attention remains focused on the uprisings in the Middle East, continued nonviolent pressure, protests and agitation for Palestinian independence remains the Palestinian’s most efficacious and important opportunity for ending the enervating occupation and acquiring Palestinian self-determination. The “Arab Spring” has ushered in a new reality in the Middle East. Whereas for decades “change” or “reform,” if there ever was any, was imposed by autocrats or foreign powers, the people of the region are now driving history. This will certainly be the case in Palestine.

Although UN General Assembly endorsement of Palestinian statehood is ineluctable, it will likely result in little change on the ground. Israel has violated international law and UN resolutions for decades with impunity. Moreover, any suggestion that the peace process will result in anything like sovereignty for the Palestinians is either delusional or mendacious. If Palestinians are to not control their borders, airspace, electromagnetic spectrum or water table and they are to not even have a military to protect themselves, what does statehood mean? The quasi-state that would emerge from the peace process would barely resemble a state. President Obama can adduce a peace plan, which will undoubtedly be similar to the Clinton Parameters, the Geneva Initiative, or the plan previous Israeli Prime Minister Olmert presented to Mahmoud Abbas, and the peace process charade can begin anew.

Meanwhile, influenced and encouraged by the uprising across the Arab world, Palestinians can continue to resist. If they stand up and demand political rights in all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, that is an inclusive state for the inhabitants of the land of Palestine/Israel, what will the Israelis do? With the world’s attention focused on the drive for freedom in the region, a violent crackdown by Israel will not only bolster accusations of apartheid, but it will also put Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and the Israeli leadership in the same historical trajectory as deposed Presidents Mubarak and Ben Ali. What would the United States response be?

As President Obama expresses support for the protesters across the region, any support for an Israeli crackdown on Palestinians’ demands for the same political freedoms will ring as deeply hypocritical. Time is not on the side of the advocates of the insane peace process. People in the region are standing up to determine their own future and those who continue to assert diplomatic and political maneuvering as the solution are simply continuing to buy into moribund paradigms that are no longer viable, particularly in light of the Arab Spring.

Adam Gallagher is a PhD student in Political Science at George Mason University and a contributor to the academic blog Tropics of Meta.

Since September 11, 2001, America has become cogently aware of a new global threat to its stability which has been termed terrorism. The source and nature of this threat is, however, far less clear. What might drive a person to hijack and fly an airliner into a building full of civilians is something foreign to our psychology. To Americans, it is madness, and a madness which begets violence against us and demands justice.

On the one hand, Americans have realized that peace and stability in part depends upon the very reaction to this threat. On the other hand, it has become clear that seeing things in terms of an “Axis of Evil,” wherein we can clearly draw the battle lines and say “these are our enemies,” and deal with them as such is an insufficient strategy. If it were so simple then Afghanistan could be abandoned shortly after its infrastructure was crippled. The ousting of Saddam Hussein, as an act of justice, could be left at that.

The conflict itself, as a full scale “War on Terror,” never fit into the clothing of justice alone. It was necessary for it to wear the clothing of a greater cause. Quickly after the reaction to the incident which took place on September 11th, it was reinterpreted as something more than a quest for justice. It was a quest to bring democracy. It became a quest to solve the problems which had allowed this threat against the U.S. to incubate in the first place. It was seemingly decided that what had driven these men to fly a plane into a building full of civilians was, then, a lack of democracy, and the true justice might then be to depose of these enemies of democracy, which, in their lack of it, had misunderstood the nature of American society as a threat to their way of life.

Before examining too closely the American understanding of the incident however, one should first examine the statements of Bin Laden, the so-called mastermind of the September 11th attacks regarding his understanding of America and the motivations of Al Qaeda.

“For over half a century, Muslims in Palestine have been slaughtered and assaulted and robbed of their honor and of their property. Their houses have been blasted, their crops destroyed. And the strange thing is that any act on their part to avenge themselves or to lift the injustice befalling them causes great agitation in the United Nations which hastens to call for an emergency meeting only to convict the victim and to censure the wronged and the tyrannized whose children have been killed and whose crops have been destroyed and whose farms have been pulverized.”

- Osama bin Laden, May 1998

“We swore that America wouldn’t live in security until we live it truly in Palestine. This showed the reality of America, which puts Israel’s interest above its own people’s interest. America won’t get out of this crisis until it gets out of the Arabian Peninsula, and until it stops its support of Israel.”

- Osama bin Laden, October 2001

For the moment, set aside the question of whether or not Bin Laden had a hand in masterminding the efforts of the hijackers, for it is clear that regardless of whether he set the particular plan into motion, he is an ideological face of American opposition. Now, Bin Laden has made the nature of his anti-American sentiments clear enough. However, there is a certain disconnect between the motivations that Bin Laden himself clearly possesses, which is to end the violence against the Palestinian people began by the warfare waged in the creation of the nation of Israel which persists to this day, backed by Western military and financial support, and the motivation of the attackers that was described to the American people by George W. Bush and the American media. In 2001, George W. Bush stated that America was attacked because it is “the brightest beacon of freedom and opportunity.”

Bush’s motivation for making such a statement is clear enough to characterize the foes of America with a broad stroke. It is not anything specific that the attackers demand, the attackers are opposed to freedom and opportunity. The very idea seems ridiculous, but it is still oft-mentioned to this day that the perpetrators of terrorism are primarily motivated by their religion, or by some hatred of American ideology, rather than opposition to American actions on the world stage.

The question is then how was this piece of rhetoric turned into a justification for things like anti-Muslim sentiments, and turned into a justification for the Iraq war? The answer lies in a proper understanding of two ideas around which America has oriented its foreign policy: The “War on Terror,” and the “Axis of Evil.” The two terms lay in bed together at night, and both fundamentally rely upon a super-nationalist self-understanding of the American worldview. That is to say, the reaction against the terrorist threat which brought the deaths of several thousand Americans was characterized in such a way that in order to support a national response to it, it seems that one must buy into an idea that America, itself, is inherently just in all its actions, and opposition by foreigners with regard to its policies itself constitutes being an enemy of freedom and justice altogether. An attack with pragmatic motivations, to fight back against American oppression of the Palestinian people, was interpreted as something that was done out of purely ideological interest – opposition to American identity itself.

America is now many years into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what has been accomplished? Finally, the death of Osama Bin Laden has been brought about. He, as a person, has been brought to justice. But what does this mean in terms of the War on Terror? As a codex of the enemies of freedom and justice, it would seem that the idea of the Axis of Evil has already failed us, evidenced by virtue of the fact that it is rarely even mentioned today. It has become clear that American ‘enemies’ and their motivations are not so black and white, though in the reception of news of the death of Bin Laden, this has again been momentarily forgotten. For its part, it seems like a small victory in what has been a long and difficult road.

Was the U.S. truly victorious in its fight against Bin Laden though? What seemed clear to the American people – support for the democratic nation of Israel, and opposition to the enemies of democracy who oppose it, the Palestinians, no longer seems clear at all. Anti-Israeli sentiment is on the rise in the U.S. and over time Bin Laden’s actual statements regarding U.S. policies have risen to the surface. Without the context of an inherently racist viewpoint — that the fundamentalist Muslims are driven by hatred of American identity — it would almost seem that Bin Laden makes sense and never operated from such a distance from an almost American sense of justice as was originally implied. Like the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the attackers were motivated, in part, by a sense of justice, a sense that the American people in the broad sense were the enemies of the Palestinians.

Although the terrorist sect known as Al Qaeda is most likely much weaker today than it was at the beginning of the U.S. war against it, anti-American sentiment itself has not at all subsided and the U.S. has painted itself a host of new enemies. It has become clear that what America labels enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan are not so much fundamentalist haters of American identity or even political radicals, but the desperate casualties in what has become a drawn out, American-led occupation of those countries.

In bringing matters of culture and conflict into scrutiny, it is important to avoid the temptations of suggesting first and final causes. It would be naive to simply blame Bush for post September 11th bloodlust, it is not as if politicians in democratic societies (as corrupt and unlikable as they may be) are wholly unrepresentative of the interests of their constituents. In the aftermath of September 11th, there was certainly a sort of unity displayed by both Congress and the American public. The time for political scapegoating and opportunism was ripe, so long as one built one’s case upon the common-sense supposition that “we are right and our enemies are wrong.”

As David Hume, one of the fathers of modern skepticism and empiricism notes, with regard to ethics that no “is” necessarily justifies an “ought.” Science, even if it is a superior methodology for describing and investigating what is, cannot logically form the basis of our suppositions of what ought to be the case. This is not to say that science does not play a role in informing action, it’s that it informs action in accordance with existent social mores, rather than forming the basis of those social mores. Outlawing murder, for example, within a society is not based upon a scientific determination of the wrongness of murder, it is based in fears and desires which are circumstantially informed, and thus necessarily built upon what came before.

The neoconservative religious right should not be left out of the equation either. Their reaction to the incident was admittedly predictable. What is worth noting, however, is how fundamentally similar it turns out to be to the atheistic reaction. Each makes the same normative argument (rational Americans are fundamentally better than the savage/fundamentalist/inherently violent/radicalized ‘others’) and seeks the same ends.

Sam Harris writes, “as a culture, we have clearly outgrown our tolerance for the deliberate torture and murder of innocents. We would do well to realize that much of the world has not.” Unfortunately, experience proves that not to be the case. The ideology at work in Bin Laden’s blurring of the line between enemy and innocent seems to work just as well in developed society as it does in what is ultimately made out to be savage society. Each side seems to endorse torture and murder of one’s enemies, and seems to view itself as the innocent victim.

It is important to remember that Bin Laden was an advocate of Sharia Law and a devout Muslim, he was partially informed in his practices by his Muslim identity just as American atheists and rationalists are not immune to having their notions informed in practice by their American identity. The question with regard to Americans, however, is whether Muslim identity inspires, by nature, terroristic conflict with Western society.

I intend no defense of Sharia law or Bin Laden’s actions or beliefs. However, it is only when all pretensions of divine notions of cultural or ethical superiority are thrown out the window that the issues of terrorism, nationalism, and imperialism on a macro-logical scale can begin to make sense. Ideologically each culture is similar in the way in which it regards its enemies on an ethical level, and similar in the means by which it casts them. What is different between the two cultures, what leads them into opposition with one another, is not rooted in American love of reason and democracy nor is it rooted in Palestinian or Muslim hatred for it. In order to understand the processes which have resulted in each party’s ideologies it is necessary to observe the historical circumstances in which they arose.

The Arabic disdain for the Western powers stems largely for the West’s hand in the creation of Israel and its unilateral military armament of it, a disdain that would feed into elements of the rise of Islamism in the late 20th century. The initial creation of the modern state of Israel was something that occurred largely as a by-product of British colonialism at the end of World War I. The recently conquered Ottoman Empire was in British hands, and it was deemed appropriate to allow Jews to settle in what was decided to be their historical homeland. Between then and now what has occurred was a declaration of independence from Palestine on behalf of the Jewish settlers and the creation of the nation of Israel. The West has assisted Israel financially and militarily in its colonization of the Middle East.

According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, the population of Israel is approximately 7,718,600, counting only those who live in permanent housing. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, there are approximately 4.8 million registered Palestinian refugees existent from the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Roughly 30% of these people currently reside in refugee camps, representing a people who were stripped of both opportunity and freedom in large part by Western indifference.

From the beginning, the creation and support of Israel has been sanctioned and assisted by Western policies of asymmetrical warfare – a foreign policy stance which necessarily pits the powerless against the powerful. The failures of the policies of asymmetrical warfare have been viciously apparent since the Vietnam conflict. While Iraq and Afghanistan are far from being “another Vietnam,” they do engender similar attitudes on the part of Americans. The attitude which underlies the notion of asymmetrical warfare is fundamentally imperialistic in nature, in that it presumes that it is America’s place to determine, by right of wealth and force, the course of affairs in weaker nations to its own benefit. It is clear that at its source, this conflict is not one in which religion or even ideology can be said to be at the core, these attitudes are for their parts simply along for the ride.

At its bottom, this is a conflict born in the contradiction between the economic interests of the powerful and the powerless. Western imperialism is, by virtue of its policies of asymmetrical warfare, primarily opportunistic in nature. It is a virtue of capitalistic relations of production and procurement that the wealthy have economic leverage to exploit misfortune and poverty, whether through sheer purchasing power, bribery, or simple military force. The powerful have these powers, and the powerless do not.

While the West has in its Arsenal the legitimate, normative powers of exploitation and corruption (it can afford to put soldiers on the ground in military uniforms and call it an official war), the Palestinian people are not afforded this right or ability. As a group, the Muslim community simply does not have this power in proportion to the West. Any means of struggle against Western expansion of power, justified or not, is necessarily retroactively considered illegitimate in accordance with Western society’s mores. In Western society, the normative, moral path to take when one has been wronged is to appeal to authority to correct the problem. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have no authority to appeal to as they are violently brutalized by the predominant authority.

Here we find the core of the “terrorist problem.” Terrorism is, by definition, violence which is enacted by those whom do not wield any formally recognized authority to commit that violence, and do not have the economic means to wage full scale warfare. These conflicts are not born out of culture or religion per-se (though each can play a part in reinforcing the cycle of violence), but in the marginalization of the powerless by the powerful. What the War on Terror thus represents is the formalization of a military mode of oppression against the displaced.

It would be naive to say that Bin Laden is simply an anti-imperialist who happens to be a Muslim. He, too, co-opted religion and cultural norms within the Muslim world to violent ends. The point is, however, that neither he, nor the majority of his supporters, nor the Palestinian people are motivated in their hatred of the West in particular by some desire to force their way of living upon the West. It is the West’s, intentional or not, forceful deprivation of their power to determine the course of their existences that primarily motivates anti-Western sentiment.

Written by Ross Wheeler, a young working class Marxist who believes in the necessity of letting suffering speak.

NATO, with America at the helm, is becoming increasingly involved in Libya under the guise of a humanitarian mission to protect the intentional killing of civilians opposed to the Libyan government. President Gaddafi has proven he is willing to murder his own people in order to stay in power and his removal from power may bring about a more democratic government and open society. However, what are the real reasons America and its allies have become so invested in Libya, given the unrest, uprising, and repression going on across the Middle East?

Consider the following: recent statistics place the civilian death toll in Libya at approximately 6,000. However, there are far worse scenarios in which the US did nothing and current humanitarian situations where the US continues to do nothing. In the early 1990′s, the Rwandian genocide claimed the lives of 800,000 people (20% of the countries population at the time), and yet we did nothing. It took 5 years of civil war and several years of on-the-ground reporting of massacres in Yugoslavia for NATO to act decisively. Meanwhile, regimes across the Middle East (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, and Yemen) have had massive protests that have ended with respective armies mowing down unarmed civilians. What has suddenly motivated the US and its allies to consider the Libyan situation worthy of active intervention?

The obvious answer is that Libya is the largest oil producer in Africa and the ninth largest in the world, producing 1.8 million barrels a day in 2006. Well-informed citizens understand the pattern here: our so-called “humanitarian missions” tend to happen in oil rich countries. Secondly, Libya is largely on the outskirts of the American sphere of power. Much like Saddam or Chavez, Gaddafi operated internationally by presenting himself as a revolutionary anti-imperialist outside of Western manipulation. The United States does not have to sacrifice a strategic partner or ally in removing Gaddafi; in fact, the US will most likely gain another government complacent to American interests:

The United States and its allies have already expressed their opposition to President Gaddafi, so it would be very difficult to negotiate or mediate in the case of the rebellion failing. The US and NATO have opted to establish a no-fly zone over Libya in an attempt to help level the playing field between the two forces, though concerns are arising that even with the no-fly zone in effect, the rebel armies will still be defeated. They simply lack the manpower, training and weaponry that Gaddafi’s forces possess. Talk has begun of arming and training rebel forces in an effort to help them further.

The real question then becomes what will happen if the rebels succeed in ousting the current government? With similar interventions in the past, the US ended up funding and arming groups that would inevitably be against American interests. In the 1980s, the US armed and trained anti-Soviet Union Afghan rebels in an effort to prevent the spread of communism, which would eventually morph into the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. US Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Admiral James Stavridis has already been quoted as saying that intelligence shows “flickers of potential al-Qaeda” in the rebel forces fighting Gaddafi.

Even with defeating Gaddafi, there are many issues. Removing him entirely will result in a power vacuum, which could potentially result in further fighting, as there was in Rwanda after President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, or in Burundi when democratically-elected president Melchior Ndadaye was assassinated. America wants to intervene to prevent Gaddafi from remaining in power but runs the risk of further alienating Middle East allies and moderates, and potentially funding groups opposed to US interests.

Matt Goldman is a pre-law Creative Writing Major and Political Science Minor at Western Michigan University. He is a contributor to Prose Before Hos and is currently working on a satirical science fiction novel.

For a detailed list, here’s a timeline of US involvement in Iran from St. Peace:

1953 – Under orders from President Eisenhower, the CIA organized a military coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Britain, unhappy that Iran nationalized its oil industry, came up with the idea for the coup and pressed the United States to mount a joint operation to remove Mossadeqh.

For years, the U.S. denied its involvement in the 1953 coup, but in March 2000, then Secretary of State Madeline Albright admitted, “In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeqh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”

1953 to 1979 – Following the coup, the U.S installed Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi , and the thriving democracy that existed in Iran was crushed. The Shah led 25 years of tyrannical rule (supported by the CIA) that resulted in the killing of thousands of Iranians who opposed the U.S. puppet government. On the economic front, the Shah denationalized Iran’s oil industry, 60% of which went to American firms.

1979 – U.S.-backed Shah of Iran forced to leave the country after widespread demonstrations and strikes. Islamic religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile and takes effective power. Sixty-six hostages taken by students at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The students justified taking the hostages as retaliation for the admission of the Shah into the U.S., and demanded the Shah be returned to Iran for a trial. The new Iranian regime believed the Shah was in the U.S. so that the U.S. could carry out another coup d’etat in Iran; the U.S. claimed he had come there only to seek medical attention. The Shah was given refuge and Iranians demanded his extradition to Iran to face justice. The U.S. rejected Iran’s request and the hostage taking ensued.

1980 – Iraq invades neighboring Iran with the approval and the assistance of the United States. The war lasts eight years and kills hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Iranians. Secret U.S. military mission to rescue hostages in Iran ends in disaster in sandstorm in central Iranian desert. Exiled Shah dies of cancer in Egypt, but hostage crisis continues. Iran suffered heavy casualties from Saddam’s chemical weapons, most of which were provided by the U.S.

1981 – Last 52 U.S. hostages freed in January after intense diplomatic activity. Their release comes a few hours after U.S. President Jimmy Carter leaves office. They had been held for 444 days.

1982 to 1983 – As Iranian forces gained the upper hand on the battlefield with Iraq, the U.S. launched another covert operation to arm and aid Saddam. It began clandestinely to supply Saddam with satellite intelligence on Iran’s deployments. Weapons were also sent via CIA fronts in Chile and Saudi Arabia directly to Baghdad. Between 1986 and 1989, some seventy-three transactions took place that included bacterial cultures to make weapons-grade anthrax, advanced computers, and equipment to repair jet engines and rockets.

1985 to 1986 – Iran-Contra Affair: U.S. holds secret talks with Iran and makes weapons shipments, allegedly in exchange for Iranian assistance in releasing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. With revelations that profits were illegally channeled to Nicaraguan rebels, this creates the biggest crisis of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

1987 – Following the mining of a U.S. Navy frigate, U.S. forces engage in series of encounters with Iranian naval forces, including strikes on Gulf oil platforms. The engagement was code named “Operation Praying Mantis”. The battle, the largest between surface forces since World War II, sank two Iranian warships and as many as six armed speedboats.

1988 – On patrol in the Persian Gulf, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger jet that it had mistaken for a hostile Iranian fighter aircraft. U.S. Navy Captain Will C. Rogers III ordered a single missile fired from his warship, which hit its target and killed all 290 people aboard the commercial Airbus.

1995 – President Clinton imposes oil and trade sanctions on Iran for alleged sponsorship of “terrorism”, seeking to acquire nuclear arms and hostility to the Middle East peace process.

2002 to 2003 – U.S. President George W Bush, in his State of the Union address, describes Iran as part of an “axis of evil”. The U.S. accuses Iran of seeking to develop a secret nuclear weapons program and refuses to rule out the “military option” in dealing with Iran.

2005 – 2006 – The United States is openly attempting to “promote democracy” in Iran by budgeting $3 million for various Iranian groups. Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations called the plan “a clear violation” of a 1981 U.S-Iranian agreement in which the U.S. pledged “not to intervene directly or indirectly, politically or militarily in Iran’s internal affairs.”

Long story short: they don’t hate us for our freedom, they hate us for destroying theirs.

He had the cops buying drugs on camera. Two plainclothes officers yanked Khaled Said from an Internet café in broad daylight. They dragged him into a dingy apartment lobby and smashed his head against an iron door, the stairs, and the wall. They left him there to die and thought that was that.

Khaled Said’s fate was sadly nothing new. His was simply the most recent and graphic in a long line of Egyptian police atrocities. But then something unusual happened. The grief went viral.

Five days after the murder, a Human Rights worker set up a We Are All Khaled Said Facebook page. He posted pictures of Said’s butchered corpse juxtaposed with Youtube videos of Said’s joyous life. Friends and neighbors trickled in. They extended their sympathies, groused about Egypt’s crooked police. Then their friends chimed in. Then their friends.
And then the grief mobilized. Users posted meeting places, security weak-points. Tunisians relayed the news from their own front-line. It became a war-room of sorts. 130,000 users liked the page within weeks. It is 662,000 now, and soaring. “We would post a video on Facebook and it would be shared by 50,000 people on their walls in hours,” Google-marketing-executive-turned-Egyptian-revolutionary Wael Ghonim recalled.

Cartoonists used Khaled Said’s likeness to rally the uprising. In memoriam, he morphed into a clarion call for young Egyptians fed up with the same old. He became the emblematic fallen soldier for a younger, tech-savvier army
Bloggers and students were the foot-soldiers of this revolution. The troops did not shoot. They tweeted. They stormed Tahrir Square but went no further. Five days into the uprising, Mubarak countered with shock and awe: he pulled the plug on Egypt’s Internet. But reinforcements arrived, courtesy of Google. The company’s engineers improvised with Twitter coders to construct Speak To Tweet, an Internet-less walkie-talkie of sorts. When Egyptians dialed +16504194196, they could leave voicemails that were automatically transcribed to Twitter with the hashtag #egypt for all to see. In a technological development that should chill governments from Algiers to Tehran to Beijing, protesters can now coordinate massive rallies without even the Internet. Mubarak capitulated, flipping the Internet back on the next day. He resigned on Day 18.

We have been warned not to be mesmerized by social media’s role in the revolution. “People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented,” author Malcolm Gladwell sneered. “They did it before the Internet came along.” Columnist Frank Rich chided Americans for comforting themselves in believing their Silicon Valley gizmos liberated the Middle East.

True. Social media meant nothing without the audacity of regular, every day Tunisians and Egyptians to stand up. But once they did, the courage rattled around in cyberspace. It was a digital perfect storm. Mark Zuckerberg proved the enabler. Julian Assange, the instigator. Zuckerberg built Facebook, the pixilated forum for Arabs to finally talk back to their autocratic leaders. Assange kindled the flames with WikiLeaks, leaking more cables about the corrupt ways of the besieged leader of the moment. And Al Jazeera played the sympathizer, streaming the riots into stunned TV rooms across the Middle East.

Governments have never had to reckon with a force like this before. Zuckerberg brings the people together. Assange brings governments down to the people. They accidentally formed a virtual good cop-bad cop duo that lets the people police their leaders. And even if Facebook and WikiLeaks are shuttered, they have already won. Because Mark Zuckerberg and Julian Assange will not be the end. The next wave of younger, prodigy coders will simply take their place.

We want to believe Cairo ’11 is a Berlin ’89 moment. It is not. Tunisia and Egypt were the humanizing tales of the army standing by but not intervening. Soldiers looked into the eyes of the protesters not as foes but countrymen. Fellow brothers and sisters who languished together for far too long under the same cruel patriarch.

The region will be freer but not free. Algeria may be the next to fall. Or perhaps Bahrain. But the Arab world is still too fractured. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, too barbaric. And the oil-rich Saudi Arabia monarchy, still too lavishly wealthy.
But Tahrir Square irrevocably changed the region forever. It stripped away the mystique and aura from the Middle East’s reigning dynasties. And what has ensued is the most sweeping movement in over thirty years. Tunisia set off a powder keg of latent Arabic anger across the Middle East. The revolutions are not Shiite versus Sunni but oppressors versus the oppressed. It is the stirring for a pan-Arabic identity led by students who know simply there must be a better life.

Now ruling families across the Middle East scramble to avoid a similar fate. King Abdullah of Jordan sacked the government and granted soldiers a $30/month raise. Yemen’s leader vowed not to run again. Kuwait gave its citizens $3,500 as a “gift”. And Syria lifted its ban on YouTube and Facebook last Tuesday. But this is not enough. They are mere concessions delaying the inevitable.

George W. Bush apologists smirk that he was right after all. The uprisings vindicate his “freedom agenda”. President Obama supporters retort it was the president’s quiet but firm endorsement of the protesters that nudged Mubarak to resign.

But the truth lies with neither, and this is why Middle Eastern leaders are so skittish. Because this is a democracy not minted in Washington. Unlike in Iraq, America did not impose this change of government. The people chose it themselves. To them, democracy is no longer a nebulous idea tinged with Abu Ghraib and other stains of American imperialism. This democracy is stamped Made In Cairo with young heroes all its own.

Roughly 60% of the Arab world population is under the age 25. They were born after the fall of the Shah of Iran but just in time for friend requests. Tahrir Square emblazoned the generation with its own moment. And so they will be more committed to make it last. They no longer have to listen to their grandfathers recount their revolutions. They have their own martyrs now in Khaled Said. And they can share their status with all the world.

Armed with status updates, tweets, and WikiLeak cables, they dig in knowing right makes might, not the other way around. Middle Eastern governments must accept a new, more transparent world order. A world order where anything they say can and will be used against them.

Those of you too young to remember the Cold War may not appreciate the subtleties of the dance involving North and South Korea, China and the United States. It’s a form of communication where superpowers express their positions through the actions of surrogates rather than diplomatic channels. If this is a return to Cold War communication, it would indicate that China used its proxy, North Korea, to send a message of discontent to the United States when they fired an artillery barrage on Yeonpyeong Island.

China’s unhappiness is understandable. After enjoying near double-digit GDP growth every year since 1994, there are signs that the Obama administration is intent on leveling the playing field. With its citizens demanding an ever higher standard of living, a cooling of China’s red-hot economy could galvanize its labor movement and lead to major and sustained political strife. It’s important to understand the dynamics that’s led to the expansion of the Chinese economy in order to appreciate what’s at stake.

By keeping its currency, the yuan, artificially low, Chinese manufactured goods have dominated international markets the past two decades. Cheap Chinese labor has also enticed many American manufacturers to move operations there. During the George W. Bush era, the migration was incentivized by the Corporate Foreign Tax Credit given to corporations to move jobs overseas, particularly to China. However, as China’s economy expanded, so did the expectations of workers that they would reap a greater portion of the pie.

Foxconn, a Taiwanese company, was forced to increase wages by 30% to its factory workers in China in June, followed by another 70% a week later. Workers are still not satisfied, yet the labor cost-differential between manufacturing in China and the US is closing rapidly. Foxconn’s intent was to raise wages by far less for the entire year, so these are major concessions to labor.

Another blow to China and the companies that have shifted their manufacturing there could be the discontinuation of the Corporate Foreign Tax Credit. Even with the wage disparity, many companies couldn’t justify the expense of operating overseas without the tax credits. End the Corporate Foreign Tax Credit and the gap between manufacturing costs in the United States versus China reduces even more.

Then there is yuan, hugely undervalued until the last couple of months. Mirroring former presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, it appears that Obama intends to devalue the dollar, which will be a devastating blow to China’s economy. Several nations have lamented China’s irresponsibility in artificially depressing its currency, and it appears the United States is about to enter the debate in a decisive fashion.

Being a net exporter of manufactured goods, China has relied on a weak currency to artificially depress the cost of its goods, but the rest of the world is saying enough. With low core inflation and interest rates in the US, devaluing the dollar is the smart move, one that’s already being pursued by the Fed.

China also holds upwards of $800 billion in U.S. Treasury bills, making it our largest creditor. Devaluing the currency will devalue those T-bills, further weakening China’s financial position. An indication that this strategy is being enacted is that banks are dumping dollars in favor of yuan. Increased demand for yuan coupled with banks dumping dollars will relatively strengthen the Chinese currency, making their manufactured goods less attractive in the United States and the rest of the world.

The extent of US banks holdings of yuan is not readily available, however with the currency having been undervalued for so long it’s hard to imagine banks having not hoarded them. American banks are in the business of buying low and selling high, which would make yuan an attractive acquisition, especially if they knew the American dollar was about to be devalued. Strictly conjecture on my part, however it felt like the banks rolled over far too easily on the Wall Street regulation bill, which would indicate a quid pro quo with Obama was in place. Three major banks, Citigroup Inc, HSBC Holdings Plc and CIMB Group Holdings Bhd, have announced their intentions to invest in yuan bonds. This news will drive the demand for the Chinese currency, further boosting its value against the dollar.

Assuming a quid pro quo relationship, this is exactly the way American banks would proceed to drive their position. It’s the same thing that happens every time Warren Buffet addresses the media with his opinion about a particular investment vehicle. A few words from Buffet can drive the value up or down in a matter of minutes. News that these three major banks are buying yuan-based investments will have the same effect. The promise of this kind of payday might be what enabled Obama to gain Wall Street’s acceptance of his financial regulation package. They can still make money, just not off the backs of working Americans, at least for now.

Obama also gets to feed Big Labor by making it more cost-effective to manufacture goods in the United States than in China. American corporations that held the line and kept jobs in the United States will benefit as well, not having to pay to relocate manufacturing capacity back to the United States or some other country. By embracing inflation he drives wages up, making people more able to afford that which they already own, and hopefully getting them above water in their homes. Obama wins all around on this one.

China is soon to experience some unpleasant fiscal consequences, mostly self-inflicted, albeit with help from Western banks, that will complicate the lives of its leaders. Mounting labor strife, decreased demand for its manufactured goods and an overheating economy that suddenly cools off is a trifecta no politician wants to face. Chinese leaders will reap the consequences of what they’ve sown for the last 20 years, and they don’t like it.

Although North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is reputedly unbalanced, it’s difficult to imagine him doing anything other than accepting direction from his only benefactor, China. It’s implausible that the exchange of artillery fire with South Korea was other than at Beijing’s direction. Beijing was expressing to Obama, “With all your other problems, you could have a war in Korea as well.”

Obama has responded by sending the USS George Washington to the China Sea for joint maneuvers with the South Korean military. It seems his response to China, by way of North Korea, was, “Let’s see you do anything with an American aircraft carrier sticking out of your ass.”

With 1.3 billion people, China could support North Korea with troops for an extended period, however the strengthening yuan proves problematic. As yuan strengthens, so would the cost of any war in which China finds itself. Conversely with a weakening dollar, the cost to America gets cheaper. Plus, South Korea is the only hot spot in the world where America is bound by treaty to act, so all Obama would have to say to justify it to the American people is that America honors its commitments. If war to re-ignite the economy is the plan, Korea is the ticket.

They’ll be lots of doom and gloom rhetoric as the value of the dollar slides and inflation heats up, however it will bring jobs for a job starved economy. I think most people will tolerate inflation just as long as they have a job whose wages are keeping pace. When it’s all said and done, the biggest winners will be Western banks who profited off the currency flip.

China is about to find out what happens when you swim with the sharks, and it won’t be pretty. We are preparing to drop a financial nuclear weapon of mass distraction on them, and they won’t know what hit them. Be glad you don’t live in China right now.

Larry Wohlgemuth was raised during the tumultuous 60s in the midst of sometimes violent civil rights and antiwar protests. After a stint in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, he earned a BBA degree from Washburn University. Wohlgemuth leans so far to the left he prefers to be called “Comrade”, and his book, “Capitalism’s Final Solution” is planned to be released in the spring, 2011. Larry is a contributor to Prose Before Hos and runs his own blog, It Begs the Question.

The right war is what Barack Obama called Afghanistan in his 2008 campaign. He declared Iraq the wrong war, and that we should never have been there in the first place. In reality, Obama knew that America had to take care of business in Iraq before we could turn our attention elsewhere. First, it’s important to understand how America finds itself in this current situation.

Throughout the early 70s, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) began nationalizing their respective oil industries. In 1968, Britain announced it would withdraw their military from Iran and the Middle East in 1971, and France was still smarting from its defeats in Indochina and Algeria. The American military was stretched to the limit and American public opinion had turned against the war in Vietnam, making further military action by the US unlikely. OPEC nations saw their opportunity.

While agreements had called for OPEC nations to receive as much as 55% of the price of a barrel of oil, no citizen of an OPEC country was allowed to be a director of any of these oil companies, nor were they allowed to see the books. Estimates are American oil companies paid these countries as little as 10%. By 1973, member countries owned as much as 60% of the oil industry in their respective nations, and they were effectively setting their own prices. A barrel of crude nearly quadrupled to over $11.

America didn’t respond militarily, though Richard Nixon negotiated a major concession from OPEC members in 1971: all oil transactions would be conducted in American dollars, setting the dollar as the de facto international currency for trade. The United States has made money hand over fist since, exploiting its financial hegemony on the international monetary exchange.

After the invasion of Kuwait in 1991, sanctions were placed on Iraq that prevented them from selling Iraqi oil other than through the United Nations endorsed Oil for Food Program. It’s estimated that a half million Iraqi children died from cholera because Iraq was not permitted to import antibiotics out of fear that Iraq might use these simple drugs to create “biological weapons of mass distraction.” Unofficial estimates put the total number of preventable Iraqi deaths as high as 1.7 million. These and other actions by Western states in the Middle East created significant acrimony between cultures and nations.

As the year 2000 rolled around and the sanctions were nearing expiration, Saddam Hussein began rumbling about creating his own international oil exchange denominated in Euros. This would have had devastating effects on the US dollar. Any ostensible reason to get into Iraq and destroy Saddam Hussein and his oil exchange was good enough, and the 9/11 attacks gave America a pretext. Although there was never any evidence linking Iraq with al Qaeda or the Taliban, nor was there any evidence of weapons of mass destruction, an invasion plan was initiated months before the events of 9/11 according to Bush Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill.

America needed to demonstrate to any who might challenge its petrodollar dominion that their actions would be seen as a declaration of war. The hundreds of thousands of people killed and wounded, the destroyed infrastructure, the wrecked economy — all intended to remind the world that you have to beat the champion to become the champion.

Although America had sent troops to Afghanistan first to locate and kill Osama bin Laden, a majority of the military’s resources were committed to the war in Iraq. Once Saddam Hussein was captured and executed, and the country handed over to “local control,” the drawdown of American troops could begin. But instead of coming home, these resources were redirected to take care of another thorny issue, and that was the Taliban. Thus we witness the 2009 “surge” in Afghanistan, however it draws into question why it was so important that we rid ourselves of the Taliban.

The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline was the brainchild of Unocal, a major petroleum explorer and marketer since bought out by Chevron in 2005. It wanted to harvest natural gas from the rich oil fields in southern Turkmenistan and transport it via a pipeline that would cross Afghanistan and Pakistan into India. There, Chevron would harvest its bounty and make certain that China, Russia or any other interested party would not get their hands on it unless Chevron was involved. America secured the Afghan government’s cooperation for 8% of the gross, but the fly in the ointment was the Taliban.

According to Voice of America, the Taliban controlled 80% geographically of Afghanistan as of September 11, 2009. They demanded a larger share of the proceeds than the Afghan government was offering. Chevron didn’t want to build a pipeline only to have to patrol thousands of square miles protecting it from sabotage, so the Taliban issued needed resolution. As of yet, construction on the pipeline has not begun.

It’s also why, because of the law of unintended consequences, America finds itself slowly encroaching into Pakistan. As the Taliban cross the border to avoid the American military, they remain capable of disrupting pipeline operations there. Unable to secure their cooperation, America concluded they need to be eliminated. There’s one more problem that’s being resolved as the Taliban are pushed out, and that’s in the poppy fields.

Afghan farmers cultivate approximately 175,000 acres of poppies and can produce over 4,000 tons of opium annually, accounting for nearly 75% of the world supply. The pious Taliban jailed farmers for growing poppies, and wouldn’t release them until they promised to eradicate the crop. By 2001, poppy production was reduced by over 90%, but it came at a price. The average farmer could make $1100 per year growing poppies, which gave them enough money to buy meat and grain for their families. Farming row crops and livestock feed paid less than $300 per year, creating a deep financial hardship for the farmers.

The farmers complied with the Taliban, not from religious conviction, but because they didn’t want to be thrown in jail. They figured they had a better chance of feeding their families if they were free than if they were behind bars. Today, Western forces attempt to placate the farmers by reinstating poppies as the national cash crop, and have even gone so far as to have American soldiers help them cultivate and harvest it. It was documented in this video clip featuring Geraldo Rivera from FOXNews:

We’re trying to befriend these farmers so when the pipeline is in place, they won’t have reason to commit acts of sabotage because their livelihoods are secure.

Another reason for the American military presence relates to Turkmenistan’s status as a former member state of the Soviet Union, and any continuing relationship they might have with Russia. Rumors persist that Russia and Turkmenistan might try to broker a deal on the side, and instead run the pipeline through Iran, an ally of Russia. In a 2007 article in the Asia Times, a high-level Iranian diplomatic source indicated that Vladimir Putin had declared, “An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an attack on Russia.” It explains America’s icy relations with Iran, which has nothing to do with nuclear capability and everything to do with natural gas in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan swears that Russia will not be involved with the pipeline, but America’s continued military presence will serve as an added deterrent.

As long as the Taliban exists, the United States cannot hope for an unmolested and uncontested delivery of gas through the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline. Hundreds of unguarded miles will make it far too tempting a target for the Taliban to resist.
Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, will be of little use. His administration is far too corrupt to provide any guarantees, so America is stuck needing to eliminate the Taliban or pay them off. While in the short run, it may be cheaper to buy their cooperation, ultimately the United States doesn’t want people thinking they can drive a hard bargain with us. There will be no peace with the Taliban until the Taliban is no more, or they accept the deal that’s already on the table. If you’re counting, that’s how much longer we’ll be in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Larry Wohlgemuth was raised during the tumultuous 60s in the midst of sometimes violent civil rights and antiwar protests. After a stint in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, he earned a BBA degree from Washburn University. Wohlgemuth leans so far to the left he prefers to be called “Comrade”, and his book, “Capitalism’s Final Solution” is planned to be released in the spring, 2011. Larry is a contributor to Prose Before Hos and runs his own blog, It Begs the Question.

See Also: A President Obama – Republican Alliance On Fighting The Wars?, Fucking hopeless, Obama Extends Afghan War To 2014, Has U.S. Foreign Policy Ever Been This Screwed Up?, Karzai’s vision of sugar plums & Taliban, Afghanistan: What to watch, and Winning hearts and minds.

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