Tunisia: catch all

[Bob's World]

Police are typically lifers. The average soldier is a two-year draftee with no professional lifer NCO corps over him. He was a university student last year, and will likely be one again next year. He associates far more with the people around him in the street than he does with the officers over him.

But yes, I am sure the officer corps has profited from long association with the U.S. as well. I have fond memories of my time spent with the Egyptian Ranger BDE and their 6th Mech Division during the Gulf War.

But bad things can happen, take our own Kent State example. One group of Americans with student deferments square off with another group with National Guard deferments (most likely primarily those who's student deferments had expired but who had the political clout to get a coveted billet in the Guard and avoid going into the draft). Two groups of elites with deferments from going to Vietnam square off and a tragedy ensues.

We need to keep this in mind if at some point a similar event occurs in Egypt, if some scared kid in uniform inadvertently opens fires on some some group of emboldened civilians who see him as a convenient symbol of the government they rally to oppose.

Kent State was not "the military" firing at students, it was two groups of like-minded Americans trying to stay out Vietnam but suddenly pushed together in a tragic exchange. Similarly, if there is an exchange in Egypt it will likely be misinterpreted by the media as something that it probably really is not.

[Dayuhan]

Do not supply arms. The point here is not so much that this will deprive them off arms (others will sell them), but it'll make the army less happy and thus more inclined to not support the dictator in a critical moment.

Not supplying arms is a tough one at the moment, especially to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. We're not giving the stuff away to them. They are paying, and paying plenty: the Saudis alone are in for $60 billion. I've read that this amounts to some 75k US jobs, no doubt strategically distributed among key legislative districts... that total is probably massaged a bit, but any way you slice it the number will be large. The other Gulf states have another $60 billion on order, with similar implications for US employment figures.

Withdrawing these sales would leave much of the US defense industry is a position of doubtful viability and would generate a significant domestic backlash. I don't think any US politician is going to propose blocking $120 billion in orders from US factories in this economic climate... to put it simply, it ain't gonna happen.

People who think the US has leverage over these regimes badly need to recalibrate their assumptions. If anything the leverage is running in the other direction.