Egypt's Spring Revolution (2011-2013)

[Ken White]

I took your "ME" as "Arabs" because it makes no sense to discuss 9/11 and Iran together.

If one does not realize the linkage and pervasive influence of the Persian Empires (plural) throughout the area on mores and attitudes, I can understand that. OTOH, if one is aware of that, the linkage is obvious. As I said, the Persians have been out in front of the Arabs for centuries...

They had as much if not more influence on the ME and eastern North Africa than did Islam and far more than did the Ottomans.

The Munich assassinations were about Arabs and Israel, not about the U.S. - this cannot seriously be counted as ME-born provocation against the U.S.

In order; Of course they were, True - I didn't say it was.

However, it was the first big transnational terrorist attack against the West and emanating from the ME. It was a harbinger of things to come and it was extremely important because the west got a wakeup call and except for the formation of GSG 9, mostly ignored it...

That is true of the US, Nixon wisely said let's take a look, we did, saw what was going to happen -- and did nothing. Mostly because of domestic politics (It seems de rigueur in the US for a new Administration to disavow ANYTHING the previous Admin did...). We sat on our hands and let a problem develop when we could have taken diplomatic and economic steps to forestall or defuse the problem. Contrary to what you seem to believe, every comment that inadequate action was taken does not entail attack or a military response -- those are usually, IMO, ill advised. However, I do believe that if they are necessary, as they occasionally are, they should be effective. I'd even go a step further and say that if such measures are employed, necessary or not, they should be effective and not just futile swats. Those can result in doing more harm than good (witness most of the past 30 years...[from today]).

You still did not explain which Arab/ME actions of around '71 pointed the beginning of provocations against the U.S.

Sorry, thought it would be obvious. Apparently not. This is 2011, just barely. Thirty years ago would make it 1981 and Reagan would have been recently inaugurated and the Hostages released. I should have been more precise and instead of saying 30 years (meaning a not stated 'from today' and as a rough or approximate figure) should have written "since 4 November 1979..."

This is central to your earlier idea that the U.S. did not respond appropriately to provocations for three decades. No provocations = no lacking response.

Try recomputing with that 1979 start date, see if that works, don't forget to count the Embassy bombings (all of them), attacks on the World Trade Center (all of them), the Barracks bombings (all of them), the aircraft hijackings and bombings (all of them) and I think you'll come up with a fair total over the first 22 of that 30 plus years. Not quite one major attack a year but not far off, either.

Throw in the ship attacks plus Viet Nam and Somalia -- which you may not deem important in this context but of which many in the ME and Asia are well aware and often cite, not least including Bin Laden and Zawahiri, the Egyptian and Abu Yahya al-Libi -- the Libyan AQ strategist. .

As an aside, you seem to accord the 2001 attacks far more importance than I do. While extracting a higher body count and having great symbolic effect, it was just another attack IMO, just one more (or three or four more, depending upon how one counts) atop all the others over the [from 2001] previous 22 years (and that's a figure I've used often on this board...).

Even worse, the whole idea that the U.S. was too soft/dovish towards ME powers/extremists/whatever seems to be clearly unhistorical to me.

If one paid attention -- and few outside the US had or have any reason to do so -- one might come to a different conclusion. I did, do and have...

Most if not all intelligence services are apparently (see 20th century history) rather ineffective at inciting popular revolts anyway. They have much "better" track records with sponsoring extremists or military coups.

True. So we can agree on that.

Also on Egypt -- that first comment of mine above -- "linkage and pervasive influence of the Persian Empires (plural) throughout the area on mores and attitudes" -- applies to Egypt as well...