THE
ROVING EYE The sweet smell of
counter-revolution By Pepe
Escobar
To follow Pepe's articles on
the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.
United States Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates is in Riyadh to talk to Saudi King
Abdullah. The Associated Press told the world's
media they should discuss the "Arab upheaval".
Then there are all those other cliches -
"political reform", oil production, "the Iran
threat". But as the Pentagon meets the House of
Saud at the current juncture, they can only say
one thing: I love the smell of counter-revolution
in the morning.
Yes, it smells greater
than napalm. And it does smell like victory. The
US-Saudi counter-revolution is winning, hands
down, against
the great 2011 Arab revolt.
The House of Saud wanted Hosni Mubarak in Egypt to
hang on to power all the way - and so did
Washington, who first said the regime was
"stable", then bet on Omar "Sheikh al-Torture"
Suleiman carrying an "orderly transition", and
then, when the collapse was inevitable,
reluctantly joined the Tahrir Square crowds.
To prevent Washington from even trying to
embark again on the right side of history, the
House of Saud had its plan in place to smash the
peaceful protests in Bahrain, by invading its
neighbor across the King Fahd causeway. This was
only possible because a crucial exchange with
Washington was already clinched; we get you an
Arab League vote for a no-fly zone over Libya, you
let us deal with Bahrain (see Exposed:
the US-Saudi Libya deal Asia Times Online,
April 2, 2011).
As Gates and Abdullah
discuss the intricacies of "US outreach" (those
dictators that can get away with murder) and
"regime alteration" (those they want thrown to the
dogs), the current juncture spells out
Washington/House of Saud in charge on all fronts -
wrong side of history and all.
The House
of Saud and Qatar are now (subtly) dictating the
"transition" in Libya. This Qatari-Saudi alliance
now mirrors the Israeli-Saudi alliance. The House
of Saud is also dictating the transition in Yemen
- now that the Barack Obama administration has
decided to throw President Ali Abdullah Saleh to
the dogs (because he was incompetent enough to not
kill enough of his people and thus smash their
peaceful revolution). Saleh is now worthless as
"our bastard" in the American war against al-Qaeda
in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP) even as the Yemeni
opposition - which does not trust the Saudis - is
being co-opted by corrupt, al-Qaeda-friendly
General Ali Mohsen. The US Central Intelligence
Agency is merrily accepting bids for Saleh's
successor.
Qatar, now more hawkish than
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), is
being duly rewarded. A Qatari diplomat should
succeed opportunist Amr Moussa as secretary
general of the Arab League (Moussa wants an
upgrade, as the next Egyptian president). What
next? A Qatari secretary general for NATO? Well,
they had enough money to buy the 2022 soccer World
Cup.
Gates and Abdullah may also talk
about the spectacular success of the Pentagon's
Africom, which only started proceedings in late
2008 but already has been involved in its first
major African war. Who cares that Africom
commander, General Carter Ham, now has to explain
this war to scores of African Union (AU)
member-states, who never wanted his command in
their lands in the first place? Even Gates had
admitted that the war on Libya was not exactly a
US strategic priority.
A House of Saud
cabinet meeting, according to Saudi paper Arab
News, "expressed appreciation" for a statement by
the pathetic al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain
thanking the Saudis for invading their country;
"peace and stability returned to Bahrain as a
result of the wisdom of its leadership in dealing
with its internal matters". Then everybody yelled
and blamed Iran.
Time to be
inclusive The al-Khalifas in Bahrain are
definitely succeeding in toppling their own
people. If only they could throw 70% of the
population into the Persian Gulf and thus rule in
peace. They closed the country's only opposition
newspaper - al-Wasat - and then reopened it with a
pro-Khalifa new editor.
Human rights
activists, journalists and bloggers have vanished
- or were made to vanish. Businessmen and chief
executive officers are being threatened for not
firing workers who went on strike. Virtually no
one is tweeting or facebooking anymore. Shi'ite
families who live in mixed neighborhoods are
moving out because they are being threatened every
time they are stopped in checkpoints. People are
talking in code on the phone. As far as the Obama
administration is concerned, Bahrain does not even
exist.
Bahrain's descent into the 7th
century is Dubai's gain. Dubai will grow up to 4%
this year - benefiting from the "turmoil" in the
Arab world. The United Arab Emirates (UAE)
population will reach 8.26 million; foreign
workers are streaming in, many of them from
Bahrain.
Qatar and UAE are part of the
small, unrepresentative "coalition of the willing"
involved in the NATO no-fly zone scam in Libya.
Now the British are "urging" these two Arab
paragons of democracy to train that motley crew -
the eastern Libya "rebels", so they can annex and
hold to a few grains of desert sand before some
kind of ceasefire is negotiated.
Translation: good business for British
"private security companies", as in mercenaries,
some of whom have special services experience.
Their salaries soon should be paid by Qatar, UAE
and Jordan, that land infested with "security
officers" and ruled by King Playstation. This
proves once more there's only one, non-United
Nations resolution 1973-authorized game in town;
regime change.
No one can predict what the
ramifications of the great 2011 Arab revolt will
be in terms of oil production, immigration flows,
the relationship with Israel, the attraction of
Turkey as a political model, and the future of the
al-Qaeda franchise. But as it stands Washington's
national security policy still looks and feels
like an Orientalist opium dream; we can only deal
with the Arab world via a local comprador
tyrant/dictator. Quick, more of that opium; we're
just so hooked on it.
So why not just
annex the whole thing? America could do well with
an oil-rich 51st state. Talk about a stimulus
package. US citizens could even collect the oil as
their taxes. Time to cut the middlemen. Who in the
Arab world wouldn't love to answer to Obama rather
than those pathetic Abdullahs and al-Khalifas?
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