Question: Why would the U.S. overthrow secular governments in the Middle East

[UnrepentantLiberal]

and replace them with fundamentalist Islamic governments?

That's what I keep reading in the comments to OPs about Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. What would the U.S. and Israel gain by doing this?

[JVS]

1. I don't know the logic, but empirical evidence suggests that Islamic fundamentalist government...

in the model of the Saudi's is the US' preferred choice for governments in the region since at least 1990.

[HiPointDem]

2. Arundhati Roy is saying similar things...

Arundhati Roy: e the war happened. Before the war happened, everybody knew that they were being fed lies...But, unfortunately, now, all these years later, we have to ask ourselves two questions. One is: Who benefited from this war..? Did the U.S. government? Did the U.S. people benefit? Did they get the oil contracts that they wanted, in the way that they wanted? The answer is no. And yet, today you hear Dick Cheney saying he would do it all over again in a second.

We are dealing with a psychopathic situation. And all of us, including myself, we can’t do anything but keep being reasonable, keep saying what needs to be said. But that doesn’t seem to help the situation, because, of course, as we know, after Iraq, there’s been Libya, there’s Syria, and the rhetoric of, you know, democracy versus radical Islam. When you look at the countries that were attacked, none of them were Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalist countries. Those ones are supported, financed by the U.S., so there is a real collusion between radical Islam and capitalism. What is going on is really a different kind of battle.

And today, you have the Democrats bombing Pakistan, destroying that country, too. So, just in this last decade, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria—all these countries have been—have been shattered.

You know, we heard a lot about why—you know, the war in Afghanistan was fought for feminist reasons, and the Marines were really on this feminist mission. But today, all the women in all these countries have been driven back into medieval situations...The U.S. is supporting al-Qaeda militias all over this region and pretending that it’s fighting Islam. So we are in a situation of—it is psychopathic.


http://www.truth-out.org/video/item/15209-arundhati-roy-on-iraq-wars-10th-bush-may-be-gone-but-psychosis-of-us-foreign-policy-prevails

[UnrepentantLiberal]

3. Why do you think it is?

Why would the U.S. government want to replace Ben Ali and Mubarak with Islamic governments?

[HiPointDem]

5. That's an interesting question and I don't have an answer. I've gotten this far:

1. Ultimately, it's always about power & control (over resources, people, territory).

2. It's not always about the governments of countries per se (i.e. it may be about factions within countries, global finance alliances, or other covert economic/political formations).

3. The big power players are always about 10 steps ahead of the proles in the cheap seats.

4. Things are not always what they are made to seem. Maybe never.

5. What's happened in the ME is likely of a piece with other global developments, i.e. the restructuring of the entire world economy along neoliberal lines, austerity, globalism/'free trade,' etc.


Roy implies it's deliberate. But the idea that we would foment conflict in order to get more customers for military contractors is too insane for ordinary people to fathom.

[Recursion]

23. Because the Neocons in think tanks are the ones who were too stupid to teach at Chicago?

And they honestly think that if you overthrow a secular dictator you will wind up with a pro-trade parliamentary democracy.

[The Straight Story]

4. Perhaps because

It is not about whom they are replacing people with but the fact they like to replace governments when they don't play along with them.

Now if I were to guess I would say because an Islamic government can wield more control over their citizens and if we are in on them coming to power (and promise them more power and money) we can utilize them to open up more pipelines - not just for oil though. Look at Mali - they have gold and uranium and investments from companies in the west who need protection.

We are not the policemen of the world but of companies who can supply resources.

Saddam was a decent ally for a long time. Held a lot of power, was a dictator, got things done we needed him to do. When he stopped serving his purpose, he was gone.

Rinse. Repeat.

[Fumesucker]

8. When Saddam left the dollar for payment for oil he sealed his fate and that of Iraq

That was in November of 2000.

[The Straight Story]

9. Good point and thanks for reminding me of that (nt)

[NoMoreWarNow]

11. yes, that's part of it but I think it's more than a coincidence that so many

secular Islamic countries have been overthrown with our help and replaced with more fundamentalist govts.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Arrogance and a limited understanding of the dynamics of the region.

"If we get rid of (insert dictator here) then the power vacuum will be filled by a people's assembly declaring liberal parliamentary democracy!" They thought that the Middle East was like the Eastern Bloc in the Cold War and it was going to be 1989 all over again.

[HiPointDem]

7. I doubt it. Because they keep doing the same thing, despite the example of repeated

failures.

They are not that stupid.

[NoMoreWarNow]

10. perpetual war, which is good for govt and bankers

not so good for us.

[pampango]

12. It is human nature that people do not like living under repressive kings/dictators.

I wouldn't like it. You wouldn't like. 'They' don't like it. The French didn't like it in the 1780's. The Russians didn't like it in 1917. Not surprisingly - Arabs being people too - they don't like it either.

Usually there is little that anyone can do about one's government - particularly so if a government uses the military, police and security services to maintain control of society and preserve their rule. Just because people are not constantly demonstrating or actively rebelling (resulting in being jailed, tortured and killed) against a repressive government does not mean that they are happy about their situation.

I'm sure the French king, the Russian tsar and every other king/dictator, when faced with a revolution, thought "Where did this come from? The peasants all seemed to be happy last year. Who's causing this unrest? Must be some foreigner! My people love me."

If, hypothetically, Obama had come up with a strategy to replace Mubarak and Assad with fundamentalist Islamic governments then the tea partiers would congratulate themselves. He would have proven that he is a Muslim fundamentalist bent on installing Sharia law in the US. Their train of thought (if you can give them this much credit):

Obama started the Arab Spring in Tunisia rather than in Egypt or Syria, because he wanted to try it out in a small country that has nothing that we are really interested in. He saw how well it worked in Tunisia - how easy it is to fool people that their lives will be better without a dictator; they still believe that 'human dignity' stuff just like the French and Russians did long ago!

Having seen how well the Arab Spring game worked in Tunisia, Obama then took his show on the road to Libya, Egypt then Syria because he hates 'secular' dictators (even those that have done the US' bidding for decades) and really wants fundamentalist dictators. It worked in Egypt when the US-supported military largely refused to shoot civilians in large numbers; it worked in Libya when the military did shoot back, but NATO bombed them; it may or may not work in Syria where the military shot back and no one bombed them.

Once a fundamentalist dictator is safely installed in Syria, Obama will go after Jordan, Algeria, Morocco and every other 'secular' government. Once that is accomplished Obama will have to decide whether to go after Europe first (where the far-right already worries that Muslim influence is ruining the continent) or go straight for Sharia law in the US and an Obama socialist/Islamic dictatorship).

End of tea party 'train of thought'.

We have come to expect that kind of lunatic 'thought' from the far-right in the US.

I suspect most on the left who have qualms about what is happening in the Arab Spring prefer secular dictators to unpredictable democratic governments that have to deal with the frustrations and contradictions created by decades of repressive rule. Muslim fundamentalists were often the only even semi-effective opposition to entrenched dictators, so when the dictators were removed they got much credit. Secular dictators may have been able to enforce some decent policies but, since they ruled through repression, their policies were discredited and created a backlash that surfaced when society opens up.

Just as the French and Russian revolutions did not 'succeed' in creating stable, progressive governments in the short run, Arab democracies have struggled. One can only hope that things improve over time and that the backlashes, frustrations and contradictions created by repressive rule will be replaced with progress as people learn to deal with their societies' problems.

[HiPointDem]

17. most of humanity lived under repressive dictators for most of history. and the repressive

dictators we have overthrown were better than a lot of the repressive dictators we keep in power.

whose people, oddly, don't show much indication of being ready to overthrow.

seems it's mostly the repressive dictators on the pnac list who are so intolerable. also repressive dictators like aristide, chavez, etc.

[pampango]

26. We supported Mubarak for decades and Egyptians showed they were quite ready to overthrow him.

His rule was apparently quite 'intolerable' as far as his people were concerned. I doubt that Tunisia was on the pnac list, as well. As far as I know, Ben Ali was friendly to the US so I suppose he was 'ours' too and yet his people found his rule to be 'intolerable' as well.

My view is that the people in Egypt and Tunisia don't care that their dictators were not on the pnac list. And the people in Libya and Syria don't care that their dictators were on the list. And the French and Russian people didn't care that their kings/tsars existed before there was a pnac list. When you are governed by a repressive dictator who arrests, tortures and 'disappears' your friends and family, you are not all that concerned with who is friends and enemies are.

Fortunately most of humanity does not live under repressive dictators anymore. Progress has been made over the centuries. I am sure you are not saying that people should accept rule by repressive regimes because that's the way it had been historically. (Now that sounds like an attitude that would go over well at pnac.) None of us want to see the world regress back to a situation where repressive kings/tsars/dictators are the rule not the exception.

[stevenleser]

21. Good points. We'll have to see the what the outcome is like.

I'm not sure I would have done the same thing in Obama's shoes. But what he did isn't immoral either. We're not occupying those countries.

[Paul E Ester]

35. "unpredictable democratic governments"

Nice euphemism for Islamic theocratic rule you came up with.

[leveymg]

13. Follow the money - Saudi Arabia gains. Who do you think owns many multinational oil corps along

with a controlling stake in a host of other American and "British" companies, such as NewsCorp? What do those companies do? They make political contributions, mostly to the more conservative parties, but also favor neocons in the Democratic Party and Labour.

And, then, there are the Saudi slush funds, such as "Al Yamamah" that have been used to funnel cash to cooperative western politicians for decades. See, http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/578

Why do the Saudis want to overthrow westernized secularist regimes and Shi'ia states in the region? Do you really have to ask?

[UnrepentantLiberal]

15. So you're saying U.S. polititians are overthrowing secular governments in the Middle East

because the Saudis are paying them to do it?

[HiPointDem]

18. i think he's saying the us is hand-in-glove with the saudis to stabilize SA

[leveymg]

22. Essentially, yes, we are viewed by the Saudis as hired mercenaries. Useful, but only to a point.

This picture is worth several trillion dollars:



For a long time, it was Houston that had veto power over Riyadh. At this point in the Mideast and North Africa, it is hard to say who is the senior and the junior partner. I suspect that there's been a shift of power, and that occurred to a very large degree because of the overreaching greed and stupidity of the Bush family and its minions. See picture, above, again for reference.

Of course, there are other competing power elites who vie for influence and control over American and western policy. For instance, the Israelis are allies of convenience with the Saudis with regard to Iran, Syria and the other Shi'ia states. Elites are not monolithic - the Chinese have been exerting countervailing force, as they see stability as the key to low energy prices and to recovering their sizable investment in U.S. and western debt and equities, while the Saudis and other OPEC states have made enormous fortunes many times over during wars that restrain production and supplies on the world markets. But, no matter how complex the picture really is, who can deny the power of oil money, and its linkage to Mideast wars and revolutions?

[UnrepentantLiberal]

14. I've been reading these comments for a few years now.

This article someone posted is what made me post this OP:

When is the Syrian 'opposition' Syrian?

A novelist, filmmaker and journalist makes his way to the Turkish-Syria border with the help of his Turkish left friends and contacts, to investigate the refugee camps and military camps where he says Syrian and non-Syrian fighters are undergoing training. The locals he meets seem to confirm their suspicions.



At the outskirts of the city of Adana in southern Turkey is located an enormous US Air force base called Incirlik. It is actually only nicknamed ‘the US base’, in reality it is being utilized by the United States Air Force, the Turkish Air Force and by the British RAF. Of course for the United States it may be one of the key overseas military facilities; Incirlik is a home to about five thousand US airmen, ‘complimented’ by several hundred airmen from the British Royal Air Force. But the primary unit stationed at Incirlik is the 39th Air Base Wing (39 ABW) of the US Air Force. One look at the map and the significance becomes obvious: several ‘important’, ‘strategic’ countries appear to be in a relatively short flying distance from here: Syria, Iran, Lebanon and Iraq to name just a few. But recently the base is gaining new infamy: “There is plenty of evidence that they are now training so called Syrian ‘opposition’ on the premises of Incirlik”, I was told by renowned Turkish investigative journalist Huseyin Guler in the city of Hatay, near the Syrian border.

The base propels the economy of the entire area, both formal and informal. We park at the entrance of “Mujda’s Café & Restaurant”, near the main gate leading to the base. At Mujda’s, all prices are exhibited in US dollars, not in Turkish liras. Photographs depicting US military hardware, airplanes and the officers with all their decorations and medals on display are covering the walls. The exhibits are out of place alongside the kebabs, beer and yoghurt drinks. “Do people around here talk about the Syrian crises?” I ask. “They do, of course”, answers the waiter. “Do they talk about the training of the so called ‘Syrian opposition’”? I press further. “Some do”, he smiles evasively. There is a girl working nearby. We ask her about surveillance. “Of course my phone is tapped, “ she replies. “But that is nothing unusual. They are tapping everyone’s phones around here. Other things happen as well, but I can’t talk about them.” My colleague and friend Levent (he has to be identified only by his first name, for safety reasons) joins the discussion: “Wiretapping is just one of the most innocent things this government does. It is not only used for collecting intelligence, but also for character assassination of those who dare to stand in its way. For instance, the phones of the generals who declared their outrage and opposition over western involvement in Turkish affairs had been tapped, their conversation flow recorded and broken up to be fabricated into ludicrous but extremely damaging sentences, electronically.”

Incirlik however – is just the beginning of our journey. We drive 200 kilometers to the city of Hatay – a culturally and religiously diverse southernmost Turkish metropolis near the several border crossings to Syria. Most of the way the highway is suspiciously smooth and fast, perfect for the deployment of troops. It is clear that in Hatay almost everyone is afraid to talk, from the local barbers to shop owners, hotel receptionists or even the majority of common passers by. Suleyman, an owner of a huge coffee shop with several impressive water pipes is one exception, but even he prefers to keep his full name and the name of his business anonymous:

“People that the west describes as ‘Syrian opposition’ are considered here, in Hatay, as just a bunch of renegades and bandits. It is hard to believe they actually call them refugees! Refugees with guns, roaming our streets; get real! They are not good people. Almost all of them wear beards, carry guns and make our citizens frightened.”

More: http://www.opendemocracy.net/andre-vltchek/when-is-syrian-opposition-syrian

[JHB]

16. Part of it is their Cold War mindset of the neocons

Most if not all those countries were Soviet client states at one time or another.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

20. That's an interesting theory.

They're trying to limit Putin's influence in the Middle East.

[JHB]

25. See the Wesley Clark interviews in this thread...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017106588

He recounts a 1991 conversation he had with Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon (Wolfo was the #3 man there at the time), where PW laments not ousting Saddam and has his eye on "cleaning up" the old Soviet client states in the region. That view can be seen later in the policies PNAC advocated, and under Dubya they had the chance to try it.

I don't have the timing for the first video, but on the second it starts at the 3:10 mark.

Clarke also notes that this conversation took place just after the Shia uprising, also noting that we provoked it then stood aside. The thing to remember with that incident is that (Poppy) Bush had been fishing for a coup d'etat by the Iraqi military or elements within to oust Saddam. That would let him declare victory and go home with Iraq safely in the hands of a new friendly dictator or junta, even if that was just as bad or worse for the average Iraqi.

However, one thing Saddam was good at was preventing anyone else from gaining enough of a power base to challenge him. Nobody in the army stuck their neck out into the chopping block, but the shias took Bush up on his invitation to rise up. They wouldn't be quite so easily influenced, though, and the uprising threatened to split the country in three (the third being the Kurdish area). So Bush had our forces stand by while Saddam put it down, and the country (& and our forces' mission there) stayed in limbo for the next 10 years, apparently waiting for Saddam to keel over of his own accord. That also kept us in Saudi Arabia, and one of the things that had Osama bin Laden in a lather was our infidel presence in holy (to him) lands. So Poppy's non-solution was one of the things fueling al Queda. Huzzah!

One of the big alarm bells with the 2002(3?) authorization of force (other than its passing in the first place) was how geographically open-ended it was. If he had the chance, Bush could have used it to push on to the other countries on the neocon list.

[valerief]

19. Whatever it gains by keeping America Fundamentalist Jesus. nt

[bemildred]

24. To weaken them, basically. "Divide and rule". It's quite old.

Much in the same spirit that OBL attacked the WTC in order to provoke us.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. From what I read about Egypt, the Islamists provided a social safety net

during the Mubarak era, something the Mubarak government did not do. They set up headquarters in the poor neighborhoods and distributed food, provided medical care, and offered tuition-free schooling at their madrassas.

In Iran, the U.S. supported the Shah as he wiped out or exiled all his moderate opponents. Only the mullahs were left by the time he was through.

I think that the rise of Islamist governments in the region is more an effect of U.S. support of repressive governments than an effect of their overthrow.

[pampango]

32. Well said. Dictators (and their foreign supporters) in the region have created the Islamist

opposition Perhaps they did this unintentionally - the Islamists were just the only opposition with enough organization to be able to survive the repression. Or perhaps the dictators did this intentionally to give foreign backers a choice of "you have to continue to support me or the Islamists take over" scary scenario.

You are right, IMHO, that Islamists gained credibility in opposition to Mubarak by providing social services that the dictator was not interested in providing.

The rise of Islamist governments is an effect "of U.S. (and other foreign) support of repressive governments than an effect of their overthrow." I agree.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

28. "It's all the Republicans' fault."

[Wounded Bear]

29. Because democracies are inherently unstable...

and tend to lean toward socialistic philosophies that will want to nationalize industries and resources, which is anathema to multi-ntional corporate interests.

Does anyone really think that we 'support' democracy around the world. The record says otherwise.

[demwing]

30. Continued instability and war, which feeds the MIC /nt

[atreides1]

31. You're assuming.

You're assuming that the US is concerned what Israel gains.

[Puzzledtraveller]

33. I do not know what the gambit is all about

They would have to know that the fundamentalist forces are going to be the most aggresive and after all we did to intervene and have been doing in the mideast for so long they would be mostly embraced by the populace once the current governments collapse. Make no mistake, we are still waging nation building, regime change, to what ends remains the mystery.

[Cal Carpenter]

34. Economic hegemony

Fomenting divisions, divide and conquer...

Same shit different day

[librechik]

36. they are only interested in creating chaos in secular governments (including the US)

because for them, causing chaos is painless, and without consequences. Except for being VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY PROFITABLE.