Note to the U.S.: The View from the Arab Street

When the U.S. and the West wallows in heartfelt indecision on Libya, and decisive ambivalence about Mideast democratic revolutions in general, it sends a clear message to the Arab "Street" - as opposed to the Arab "throne", from which emanate winks, nods, and solemn, secret applause. The message is that the U.S., and the West,
WANT, NEED, tyrants in the Middle East. The U.S. and NATO want to avoid "instability". They can't "interfere" in "civil wars". The West will help with "humanitarian efforts" - the band-aids. But to get at the cause??? Well, everybody loves a tyrant!

Arabs on the Street see the West has adopted their much-loved "domino theory". If one tyrant goes, others could fall. And the U.S., apparently, NEEDS tyrants.

Oh yes, we condemned Qaddafi. Reagan even tried to assassinate him back in the day. And we have no problem with regime change, assassination, fomenting civil wars in other countries, or even occupying them. Just look at Iraq, and don't forget Vietnam. But Libya?? Heavens, no!

Why? Simple. We're not calling the shots. We didn't start the revolt. Libyans did. Therein lies the issue, the trigger-finger block. We loathe any revolution that wasn't, shall we say, "made in the U.S.A." If it wasn't our idea, to tell with it.

But...let's look more closely at this domino theory. We're not talking about nations falling to communist revolutions. We're talking about repressive regimes falling to democratic revolutions, about fights for freedom, democracy and representative government - the West's rhetorical ideals. We're talking about the very sorts of revolutions we've been blaming the Arabs for not having for decades, the lack of which has been brought out ad nauseum as proof of Arabs' "backwardness" and lack of "readiness for democracy". And now, here's your true-blood, liberal, Western-style revolt! These are not Islamists. They want a real, free democracy. They want out of dictatorships.

Yet the West gives credence to the worst of all regimes, buying into Qaddafi's "civil war" story, buying into his propaganda that his people "love" him. The West doesn't quibble with this, presumes - for their own convenience - that he has loyalists who have not been bought or terrorized into submission, and that these loyalists are fighting for what they conceive of as a legitimate cause.

The U.S. backed Mubarak until it became openly hideous to do so, and now backs Qaddafi by allowing him to decimate his population and call it a "civil war" instead of a massacre. It seems the U.S. is also trying to shore of Yemen's Ali Saleh, and OMG don't mention the Saudi regime - now there's one hell of a repressive regime if there ever was one! Let alone...please don't say it... the unmentionable, the sacred, the fetus-in-a-jar...Israel. (When Israel openly supports fellow democracies in the region instead of trying to decimate them in some way as per Lebanon, I'll stop calling it a fetus. A democracy that doesn't support democracy is not a democracy, but some kind of hybrid. Is the US trying to rebrand itself, too?)

So what is the Arab on the street to presume? That the West loves democracy? That they believe in human rights and freedom? Or that they only impose, by force of arms, "freedom" when it suits their needs, when they are in full control of that freedom. But isn't "freedom under someone's control" an oxymoron???

Massacre Is Not Civil War: The West Buys Into Qaddafi's Paradigms

A pathologically insane tyrant and his pathological tyrant sons are massacring their civilian populations with total impunity as the West engages in its usual lap-dancing, hypocritical vacillations. It's not that anyone actually likes Qaddafi. It's not that people are not disgusted by his massacre of Libyans in Zawiya and elsewhere or by Qaddafi's and his sons' obvious lies and cover ups. It's that the West basically doesn't give a damn.

Obama doesn't know what he's doing. Most of Europe doesn't give a damn. Cameron wants to look like he gives a damn, but he doesn't really...and so on...So why? Why don't the deaths of civilians being crushed by heavily armed troops inspire enough rage? Why are Libyans being categorized in Qaddafi's terms as "rebels" instead of as protesters forced to become fighters with no experience, weapons or training? Why does the West buy into Qaddafi's "rebel" and "civil war" line instead of calling them wheat they are - civilians who began what was conceived as a non-violent protest against the brutal Qaddafi regime modeled after the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions?

When more and more Libyans joined the once-peaceful revolution, Qaddafi decided to call it a "civil war" and threatened via Seif - his son-turned-War-Pimp - that there would be "blood in the streets." He made good on his promise and massacred unarmed civilians by armed troops from air, land, sea, and close range, calling it "civil war". Now NATO says they can't take action because this is a civil war and they don't "interfere" in civil wars.

Yes, the U.S., NATO, the EU, the West all buy Qaddafi's repackaging of violence. It's not a modern weaponized and mechanized armed force decimating its civilian population to keep them under a madman's repressive tyranny. No, it's a "civil war" with two sides: "the government" vs. "the rebels". But those are not "rebels" and never were. They are civilians who are fighting for their own freedom, for their lives, for their own country on their own land, for the democracy so touted in Western rhetoric. But Qaddafi, whose personal life centers on women, sex, and drugs (he's obviously strung out on drugs most of the time), will kill every man, woman and child in Libya who opposes him to keep the power and money he pathologically craves. He is hell-bent on holding the reins of his psychopathocracy and will stop at nothing. Slaughter is child's play to him. And as for his so-called devoted "people" - Apparently, no one noticed the protests in his so-called "stronghold", Tripoli, which he crushed by nothing less than all-out slaughter, coupled with fear tactics and propaganda. If he has so much "support", why does he have to bribe them? Why does he need to important foreign nationals to fight for him? So to adopt his "civil war" line is itself crazy.

Is NATO crazy? Is Obama crazy? No. But there's a sense of fear of getting mired in this, and there's political liability. There's no self-interest in backing the Libyan people, at least not in the Machiavellian sense. If he stays, the West gets oil. If he leaves, they get oil. So what's the diff? And Qaddafi knows this. He knows the West is all talk, no action. Qaddafi says when it comes to oil, Libya is important. When it comes to human rights and crimes against humanity, Libya is unimportant. The West has clearly bought into this and is currently acting on it. This plays directly into his regime.

The Generals say we need weeks, months, and the "rebels" will lose. Note: not "get slaughtered", no - "lose". We just can't take action like that in a civil war, they say. But these are Qaddafi's words.

Who said this was a civil war? Qaddafi. Who proclaimed there will be a civil war? Qaddafi. Who said when it comes to freedom, de,ocracy and human rights, Libya is unimportant? Qaddafi.

And who are happily mouthing Qaddafi's words, using his terminology, his repackaging of horrific massacre into another entirely different "internal struggle" scenario? Who are choosing when Libya is important or unimportant exactly and solely based on Qaddafi's own set conditions?

NATO. America. The West.

Now tell me - who is calling the shots? Who sets the agenda here?

And the Libyan people's hope for democracy? Their faith in Western nations' willingness to support the cause of freedom? They were hoping for Western leadership, moral backbone. Good luck with that.