The Arab Spring Has Become the European Flood

The Arab Spring was the hopeful term for a new beginning when there were anti-government protests and uprisings in the Middle East. I recall universal media support to the decision to provide air support to the rebels fighting Gaddafi’s forces in Libya until he was captured and summarily executed. The Obama Middle East foreign policy, which included the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and killing Gaddafi, has contributed to in a virtual flood of refugees out of the Middle East to Europe. One reporting site records that there are “…nine civil wars now going on in Islamic countries between Pakistan and Nigeria. This is why there are so many refugees fleeing for their lives. Half of the 23 million population of Syria have been forced from their homes, with four million becoming refugees in other countries…Some 2.6 million Iraqis have been displaced by the Islamic State—Isis…”

From a USA Today article, “A record 522,124 migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe by sea this year, the International Organization for Migration said Tuesday. The number is more than double the previous high set only last year. Of the estimated number of migrants who made the hazardous journey by sea, 388,000 arrived in Greece and 130,891 in Italy. They hail from countries that include Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Bangladesh, the IOM said. Last year, 219,000 migrants and refugees escaping war and poverty sailed to Europe.”

Many of the images of the flood of refugees are of women carrying or leading children to a safer place. However, many of the images are of young men who are of “military age.” My question is how many of them are Isis who are taking advantage of the situation to infiltrate receiving countries to create mischief or terrorism?

I would be curious whether President Obama thinks his Middle East policy has been a success. .

Mideast Turmoil

The media infatuation with the “Arab Spring” reminded me of the high hopes when Fidel Castro overthrew Batista in Cuba. There was a celebratory feel to the reporting about that event. The bloom was quickly taken off  when Che Guevara presided over show trials in a sports stadium and the summary execution of large numbers of people. There weren’t that many executions after the overthrow of dictators in the Middle East, although Moammar Gadhafi may have thought there was at least one important execution.

Democracy is always messier than dictatorships, and the recent protests, riots, and U.S. embassy attacks are a good reminder of that. There were two headlines in the Sunday, September 16, 2012 Denver post pertinent to the current events in that part of the world. One that doesn’t require much more explanation is “No Plan for Syria” by Albert Aji of the Associated Press. “The new international envoy tasked with ending Syria’s civil war summed up his first foray to Damascus on Saturday with a startling and frank admission that he has no plan for stopping the bloodshed that he warned could threaten world peace.”

The second headline was “Don’t give up on Arab Spring” by Shadi Hamid. He points out there is irony that Barrack Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya resulted in the overthrow of Gadhafi’s dictatorship. That set up the conditions for the attack on the U.S. embassy and the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans. Frighteningly, Mr. Hamid observes that Libya is “…the most pro-American country in the Arab world.” He also says anti-American sentiment “…will almost certainly increase after the NATO operations fades from memory. In fact…U.S. favorability ratings have been lower under Obama than they were in the final years of President George W. Bush’s administration.” There might be wisdom in observations that demonstration of strength results in respect and conciliation results in contempt.

U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is in a terrible mess, and that probably shouldn’t be a surprise in an area where the control provided by brutal dictatorships has been removed. People have learned that they can gain political power with violence. I find it curious that the policies of the Obama administration are not being questioned by much of the U.S. media.  Reports seem to focus on Romney “getting in the way” with comments suggesting our foreign policy should not be based on apologies.

Syria, the Spanish Civil War, and NATO

I’ve read two separate warnings about Syria that make that civil war even more frightening. The first by Patrick J. Buchanan observes that the Spanish Civil War was “…the Great Rehearsal for World War II. He asks in his title whether the Syrian conflict is a “Dress Rehearsal for a Mideast War?” The other warning is that NATO might be drawn into the conflict if Turkey pursues retaliation against Syria for shooting down one of its planes.

The brutal Spanish Civil War began in 1936 and lasted three years. It pitted Franco’s Fascists against an agglomeration of Socialists, Anarchists, and both Stalinist and Trotskyite Communists. Stalin sent emissaries and officers to command the Nationalists (while he emptied the Spanish treasury of gold as payment for the help). Mussolini sent troops to fight with Franco and Hitler sent his Condor Legion. The planes of the Condor Legion gave air support to Franco and also firebombed the non-military town of Guernica.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt publically claimed neutrality about the war, primarily because he did not want to lose the Catholic vote. Some factions of the Nationalists were persecuting, torturing, and murdering Catholic priests. FDR said, “We shun commitments which might entangle us in foreign wars…” FDR did approve shipments of military supplies to France and understood that they would be sent to the Spanish Nationalists.

The NATO connection is the source of the other recent warning that history could be in the process of repeating. Politicians had established vast national alliances in the early 1900s in what was thought to be a counterbalance against the threat of war. The alliances instead caused the domino effect leading to World War I when Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. I’ve always had trouble mentally following the complicated series of events that followed. The assassination led to the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia and Serbia appealed to its Russian ally for help. Russia began mobilizing its army. Germany took the mobilization to be a threat and declared war on Russia. They attacked France through neutral Belgium because France was Russia’s ally. The violation of Belgian neutrality brought Great Britain into the war. The United States joined the war a bit later.

NATO was originally established to oppose the now defunct Warsaw Pact. Turkey, a member of NATO has called for a full meeting to discuss the Syrian downing of a Turkish fighter jet and claims that another was fired on by the Syrians. Syria has a formal defense pact with Iran and is heavily supplied and supported by Russia. The Russians and Chinese have blocked all UN efforts to take action against Syria.

The news out of Syria today does not encourage that the situation will improve. Three senior government officials have been killed in a bombing, creating speculation that others will probably now chose to join the defectors in Turkey. There is a prediction that Assad will go into hiding or to a country that would harbor him “within 36 hours.”Russia is thought to believe a collapse of the Assad regime would be an opening for the U.S. to gain power in the Mideast. I don’t know that I agree. Iran, al Qaeda, and Hezbollah are probably ready to fill any vacuum.

The Syrian army recently was reported to have pulled chemical weapons out of storage. An escalation of hostilities has the ominous possibility of some desperate Syrian commander deciding Saddam Hussein was justified in using chemical weapons against Kurdish villages.

I won’t speculate about the outcome, but I have this disturbing image of someone intentionally carelessly smoking inside an ammunition bunker.