Michele Bachmann: Obama caused the Arab Spring
Paul Mutter | Obama teaparty That's right: a Republican is giving Obama more credit than even his own party will for influencing the "Arab Spring." MSNBC broke the story, capturing footage of Michele Bachmann, GOP presidential hopeful saying that:
"Just like Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s [who] didn’t have the back of the Shah of Iran, we saw the Shah fall and the rise of the Ayatollah. And we saw the rise and the beginnings of radical jihad which have changed this world and changed this nation."
“So too, under Barack Obama, we saw him put a lot of daylight between our relationship with our ally Israel. And when he called on Israel to retreat to its indefensible 1967 borders, don’t think that message wasn’t lost on Israel’s 26 hostile neighbors."
“You want to know why we have an Arab Spring? Barack Obama has laid the table for an Arab Spring by demonstrating weakness from the United States of America."
There are just so many things worth commenting on in this speech, like the strawman of Obama calling Israel "to retreat to its 1967 indefensible borders," and the total historical amnesia surrounding the Iranian Revolution (Khomeini was a dictator, but then, what was the Shah? Oh yes, a dictator, just like the Arab ones Bachmann now bemoans the loss of.). These statements aren't anything we have not heard from Israeli or American officials and pundits before, though. Or the fact that Obama's casus belli "1967 borders" speech postdated the start of popular uprisings in the Arab world.
My favorite parts in this tirade against Obama are the parts where she is sorta-kinda right.
American imperial overreach has indeed helped revolutionaries in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, but it is not Obama's creation.Decades of support for military dictatorships and monarchies that began in the 1940s are now coming back to bite the U.S. in the ass. And the greatest geopolitical upsets in the region over the past decade —Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and Hama's victory thereafter, Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon, the U.S.-led regime change in Iraq, Operation Cast Lead — all occurred on George W. Bush's watch.
In Tunisia and Egypt, the U.S. resigned itself to the overthrow of Presidents Ben Ali and Mubarak when it became clear that those countries' security apparatuses — whose equipment and paychecks have long depended on U.S. largesse — were positioning themselves to take charge of the countries, not unlike how the Soviets lost big time when their supposedly indomitable Warsaw Pact colleagues made a similar choice in 1989. Without a USSR or Saddam to jockey against, the U.S. and its ruling elite allies in the Arab world have become increasingly hard-pressed to hold together their special relationships.
One form of "Arab Spring" assistance Obama can credibly claim to have rendered is the decision to launch NATO strikes in support for Libya's NTC (which Bachmann opposed).
Bachmann's most glaring omission in discussing Obama's role in Arab Spring is quite partisan, and really unfair to Obama: she overlooks his sterling record over the past year in joining hands with the Saudis to assist the Bahraini and Yemeni authorities clamp down on dissent in the name of containing both Iran and al Qaeda. Give the man some credit, Michele: he's no "dhimmi" (as Islamophobes sometimes call him) when it comes to the Persian Gulf. He, or rather, our riot gear and munitions, are standing up for our interests there.
My other favorite part is how she says that Obama "put a lot of daylight between our relationship with our ally Israel." Tsk tsk, look how his attempt to give Netanyahu a tongue-lashing over the settlements emboldened those perfidious Arabs. Fortunately, Israel's friends in the U.S. have put the president back on the straight and narrow.
"Daylight," i.e., Obama actually attempting public criticism of Israeli policies that have led to increased settlement construction? Or the unremarkable speech he gave a few months ago largely echoing previous administrations' positions on a two-state solution? Criticism that prompted such a furious response from Netanyahu and Congressional Republicans that even former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates lost his temper and called Israel "an ungrateful ally."
"Daylight" is indeed the last thing any American alliance in the Middle East can withstand. Bachmann has hit the nail on the head, though it was probably unintentional (especially when her foreign policy aide, neocon Frank Gaffney, is such a committeddemocratizer).
I have to admit, her refusal to even pay lip service to the whole "America wants democracy in the Middle East" meme is refreshingly honest. She sees democratization in the region quite accurately — as a threat to U.S. hegemony. And regarding the Shah, she also correctly surmises that if the U.S. gives even an inch over its client states undemocratic behavior, the people of those states will seize a mile from us and our cronies
Reader Comments (4)
Wry and to the point, great read
As an American this evokes a lot of emotions. I want to laugh at Bachmann's deeply flawed view of history, cry over the racism and profoundly anti-democratic values she expresses, and rejoice that this crazy has finally fallen out as a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination all at the same time. The worst part is that in her startling ignorance, she might actually accurately represent the collective thought process of a majority of the members of the U.S. of Congress vis-a-vis Israel and American influence in the Middle East.
So a "clamp down" on Bahrain and Yemen was a good thing?? Without assisting with the fundamental problems that led to the uprisings/??
Although I applaud Paul's assessment of Bachmann, I think that actually feeling there should be a response to it reveals an ignorance of American politics that I wish to enlighten. Given my review of the world press, I've concluded that most of the world is unaware of a recent epidemic here in the US, of a disease I call "total destruction of one's reality testing". The main symptoms are absolutely no need for any evidence before you adopt and vigorous promote any particular political / political view; having the view that you never need to even imagine, much less prove, the workability of a view before you adopt and vigorous promote it; and of particular importance, totally abandoning the capacity to recognize when you are out and out lying, so you can appear as enthusiastic and sure of a stone cold lie as you can if you ever (which is rare in such people) tell the truth about some situation.
You may, as I did once, assume that every human has at least a modicum of conscience, that keeps that person from promoting what cannot ever be true, unless they are authentically insane. But I now want you to give up that delusion, because in the US, beginning in the 1990's, when "political correctness" came into view; which really means "you and I can be in the same situation, each have a view that is fundamentally incompatible with the other, and both pretend we are in reality"; also described at the time as "your reality and my reality"; more and more Americans moved into giving up all reality testing for every last area of their lives.
This movement was accelerated on 9/11 when the vast majority of the US public accepted that Bush was telling the truth, when for the first time in human history police solved a major crime in about 8 hours, that took place in three separate places, when there were no survivors; that accelerating significantly increased when the US public bought the idea that the Bush administration was using actual intelligence to back its claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, after it became obvious none were there (as opposed to the public realizing, that if there were no wmd's there was no supporting intelligence, and the Bush administration deliberately lied to get permission to invade Iraq; to fulfill a hidden agenda that had nothing to do with protecting the American people from anything, and was solely to fulfill a Bush family agenda of killing Saddam Hussain, because of a personal desire for revenge).
And when almost everyone decided to assume our recent financial crisis was solely due to bad bankers, as opposed to realizing it was due to almost all Americans becoming quite corrupt and beginning to approach using money in insane ways, the acceleration reached the point where most people act as I described in the first paragraph.
People like Michelle Bachmann, and Sarah Palin (her sister in arms in the promotion of absurdity in the US), no longer need any evidence for any statement. So when she blames Jimmy Carter for allowing Khomeini to take over, she doesn't know the Shah was a tyrant with a secret service that rivals the Gestapo is inflicting harm. And when she talks about Barak causing the Arab Spring, she really doesn't mean the Arab Spring, she is referring to the Jihadist governments that she now assumes run Tunisia and Egypt.
I am sure that if you went to a place in Egypt where certifiably insane people hang out; you know those types that are homeless and tell you it is because their fellow board members conspired against them when they were CEO of the 10th largest corporation in the world; and one of them told you he knows the secret plans as to how Israeli secret service has infiltrated and now runs the Egyptian military, you would have no need to quote him on the Arabist and assess why his thinking is not reasonable. You should have the same attitude for all Michelle Bachmann types.