A ‘new Middle East’

August 11, 2006

Something tells me King Abdullah, one of the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East, isn’t terribly impressed with the Bush administration’s efforts to transform the region.

A British Broadcasting Co. interviewer, chatting with major U.S. ally Jordan’s King Abdullah , began: ” Condoleezza Rice called it the birth pangs of a new Middle East, but it . . .”

“A new Middle East?” his highness interjected. “The way I’m looking at this new Middle East, I’m seeing what is happening in Somalia, I’m seeing what’s happening in Gaza, I see what’s happening in Lebanon, I’m seeing what’s happening in Iraq. This is a new Middle East?”

Actually, yes. Is King Abdullah not impressed with “freedom on the march”?

“Is King Abdullah not impressed with “freedom on the march”? ” – CB

Maybe he thinks it resembles the Bataan Death March too much?

The problem with the whole birth-pangs analogy is that mothers often die in child birth, and frankly, I doubt Condi and the Bushites are any more competent as mid-wives than they are at any other task.

But when you get down to it, why, when America sends Billions of dollars to prop up various Arab governments, do we insist that the ones who are our enemies have to be democratized first? I mean, the Egyptians jail their democratic activists, and we still send them money. If the Bushites and Boy George II were serious about creating a ‘New Middle East’, you’d think they would start there.

  • The Jabotinskyites (the original neocons, whose existence proves that “Jewish Fascists” really exist) currently running Israel have managed with their war-of-choice in Lebanon to demonstrate the limits of Israeli power, as Bush’s neocons managed to demonstrate the limits of American power in Israel.And by so doing, they have indeed created “a new Middle East,” just not the one they thought they’d create.

    Both countries suffer from having incompetent wingnuts with no experience of war choosing to jump into the “tar baby” when neither needed to do so.

  • If anyone hasn’t seen this clip from the Daily Show with “Middle Eastern Affairs Correspondent” Aasif Mandvi’s perspective … “at half the price of an American reporter” … It is sooooo funny!

    Stewart: When I see the news, people are really … they seem angry. People are screaming angrily.

    Mandvi: Do what did you expect? As Secretary Rice said, ‘We’re going through some birth pangs here.’ And you know how people tend to scream and say things they don’t mean when they’re in labor. Nonsense like, ‘How could you do this to me?’ Or, ‘Death to America.’ And, then, once the baby arrives all is forgiven. What we’re going through is exactly like that. We all understand it in exactly those terms.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5-4Kes8kws

  • DKS,

    My wife and I nearly died from laughter watching Aasif Mandvi. He was sooooo deadpan, it was a joy.

    God, I’d love to clamp Condi Rice’s eyes open and make her watch it.

  • That’s America for you.

    Take 4,000 years of incredibly complex tribal histories, overlain with centuries and decades of externally imposed religions and political boundaries and the bloddy conflict which accompany those — all of it sitting on several of the world’s major petroleum supplies in a globally strategic location. Now have the willfully ignorant Regal Moron come out of his stupor long enough to wave what he thinks is a magic wand and see if he can intone “freedom on the march”.

    Problem solved. Next?

  • AHH but he lives in the Middle East, not on the other side of the Looking Glass in an alternate universe that is his problem.

  • Ah, my dear king, you missed the point. This IS what the face of the new Middle East is supposed to look like. It is the one envisioned by both the Bush cabal and those who stand to profit most (in many cases those being one and the same) from a state of constant conflict in the area. It provides justification for everything from one-party rule and the suppression of individual freedoms in the U.S. to oil price inflation to empire building via the monopolization of actual and potential oil resources.

  • First chaos, then order. Just wondering, but it seems to be very possible that things could get so damned chaotic and out of control, that the world may not have the leadership and resources to put it back together again. Guess Mel Gibson might be able to find a new gig — Mad Max consulting.

  • Our “allies’ will be even less impressed with the Bush misadministration when we start bombing Iran. The current war in Lebanon was supposed to prevent retaliation from Hezbollah after war with Iran starts by eliminating the rockets that Hezbollah can fire into Israel. This is also why the Israelis bombed all the bridges and roads into Lebanon to prevent any more armaments from being brought into Lebanon. Regardless of the fact that Israel’s war is not going as well as planned and they haven’t yet removed the threat of the rockets doesn’t mean the US or Israel won’t bomb nuclear facilities in Iran before the year’s end.

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