Egypt's Spring Revolution (2011-2013)

[Ken White]

Ah, the old hawk song, where only shouts and fists supposedly work well on certain people. It's apparently a matter of attitude whether people believe this song or not.

Speaking of attitude...

One could suggest that the songs you believe are at least equally flawed -- if not more so...

But I digress. Lemme give you a hawkish comment. If you allow people to bulldoze you or shout you down, then they will. You, Fuchs, personally typify the antithesis of that because you do not allow that to occur. Nor should you. Nor should a nation tolerate continued -- note that word, continued -- provocations from a single source. Not a single party, a single source which may involve multiple parties. The Middle East was and is such a source and it does provide multiple parties with various grudges and strategies -- it is not monolithic.

We did tolerate such provocations from a single source, partly trying to be nice and partly assuming that as the provenance of theses acts varied there were different actors, multiple sources, involved. Wrong deduction, same crowd, different players.

I don't get your "30 years", though.

Not surprising, it's hard to see through bias blinders.

I can easily identify 33 years of provocations of Arabs by the U.S. (taking the first delivery of F-4 Phantom II in 1968 as marking).

You weren't paying attention -- you weren't even born, in fact. Crowbat is closer but even he's about eight years late (Google ArAmCo and look around). Franklin D. Roosevelt started diddling around in the ME in 1942, met Ibn Saud in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945...

30 years of provocations of the U.S. from the region seems otherwise a bit stretched, for I don't recall an earlier significant incident than 1979 embassy crisis. That was Iran (Persians, not Arabs!), though.

Allow me to repeat what I wrote:

"in response to 30 years of provocations from the ME; not from Muslims -- though most were that -- from the ME."

Note the ME, for Middle East, which includes Iran. The Iraniha , some of them at any rate, were upset with us for moving in to their country, uninvited and supporting the old Shah in 1943. The fact that the main intent was to force the then present USSR to back off and leave Iran often gets lost in all the ill informed left wing rhetorical flourishes. That long predates Bob's World's Operation Ajax in 1953 which placed that Shah's son on the throne. Regardless of motivation -- and erroneous assumptions, the Persians led the ME -- again, as they had for centuries. They broke the ice, so to speak in attacking the Great Satan -a and getting away with it. The Arabs then piled on -- ME way of warfare...

If you doubt that, you should spend some time there and get out on the street and talk to people. Not Academics, the elites -- the people.

2001 - 30 = 1971. What exactly did Arabs do to the U.S. around that time?

Just plotted. As a result of the Munich attack, Nixon directed a study (LINK) which got rolling (at the Deputy level, really) and produced a report which was remarkably prescient. So we've been interested since the early 70s (LINK), over 30 years -- and so was the opposition...

Why exactly do you believe that the U.S. was not strong enough in its responses? I recall it bombed Libya in the 1980's quite strongly.

Not at all strongly; better than nothing perhaps -- maybe not. Sometimes minor efforts like that do more harm than good and make one look rather ineffectual. All of our ME responses were like that, ineffectual -- until Iraq (and that wasn't as good as it should have been because DoD and the US Armed Forces did not do a good job)

The US is always more concerned with domestic politics than it is with the broader world. Nixon's effort produce some good results which were ignored. Carter totally mishandled the hostage crisis by actually sending the Ayatollah Ruhollah K. a letter saying he would not use force. Khomeini had been about to direct the Students (note that world, ponder Taliban and look at Tunisia and Egypt today...) at the Embassy to release the hostages but upon receipt of Carter's letter, told then to continue the march. Reagan Failed utterly in first sending troops to Lebanon in 1983, second in allowing State to tie their hands and thirdly in doing little to nothing about the Embassy and troop billet bombings and latterly by withdrawing -- that merely encouraged everyone to believe the US had no staying power. In his defense, he learned from that and thus the Libyan attack in 1986, though it was really not much of an effort. Follow him with Bush 41 failing to topple Saddam -- some moderately good reasons not to but in the ME a very different message was received. Then Somalia and Clinton's feeble effort, all of which failed to impress anyone.

In short: I don't call this 'They are the aggressors and we powerful and patient people didn't push them back, but appeased them.' view.

We can differ on that.

All of which is off thread. So if you want to continue this, let's do it by PM.