An overarching backdrop

By Carl 

The Teabagger-infused acrimony over things domestic has implications beyond our borders. Perhaps this is by design: 

In one swoop, Britain has recognized Libya's rebel government, expelled the remaining London diplomatic staff of the Tripoli-based regime, and freed up millions in assets that can now be funneled to the cash-strapped rebel troops.

Amid a weeks-long stalemate, diplomatic activity seems to have stepped up. This is likely partially because Ramadan begins next week, which will force NATO forces to scale down the fighting as most of Libya begins the month-long daily fast. The US and France have already recognized the rebel government.

"This decision reflects the national transitional council's increasing legitimacy, competence and success in reaching out to Libyans across the country," Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday, according to the Guardian. 

As the title of the article states, the U.K. is really taking the lead on the withdrawal from Libya.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's true, the U.S. participation in this NATO exercise has been about as non-existent as a sasquatch (which is real, by the way), and again, my suspicion is that's by design on the part of the Teabaggers.

Three wars, even with one on a limited scale like Libya and one in a draw-down phase like Iraq, is three wars too many for a peacenik like me and two wars too many for an armed force to fight. So it's a good thing the Teabaggers have played the role of Shadow Ministry for Commiepinkohippiefags this time around. I'm glad for that.

And House Weaker Boehner has grasped the Prime Minister for War Opponents like it was a goose for Christmas dinner, rattling the President's cage over the War Powers Act violations, and essentially going nowhere with that tactic. Again, failure is an option for the GOP. Me likey.

It worries me, too. All this fussin' and fightin' over debt limits and War Powers Acts and birth certificates and Messicans has created one overarching backdrop against which any President for the foreseeable future (but in particular, Scary Black Man) will have to contend. The fucking loons of the right wing have managed to turn the once-great America into a joke.

I'm not sure when it started. I mean, you can go all the way back to Joe McCarthy, I suppose. Certainly, Barry Goldwater is worth a look. Ronald Reagan, too.

But somewhere along the thread here, the American right morphed from a set of reasonable people with radical goals into a set of radical asshats with goals best left to Robert Heinlein novels.

In some regards, they fulfill one of the last remaining holes in my theory that Republicans run about a generation behind Democrats.

It goes like this: What Democrats endured as a party in the '60s and '70s, the Republicans only began to experience in the '90s and '00s. And now in the Teens. Party divisions? Democrats saw those flourish in the aftermath of Watergate when it looked like Democrats could maintain a permanent Democratic majority in perpetuity, and everyone wanted a piece of the prize and the squabbling allowed a stealth conservative movement the opportunity to undermine the good works and progress done to that point.

A gradual loss of relevance as a political party, turning into massive jokes during some Presidential campaigns? Look no further than the 1984 Reagan re-election for Dems. Look no further than the 2008 McCain/Palin campaign for the GOP.

A wresting of the party's center with a jerk to the wing? The Dems in 1968. The Republicans in... well, I'd say 1994, but Newt Gingrich's "revolution" looks moderate and centrist by comparison to today's kamikaze. 

All these growing pains -- and we must keep in mind that we are but a stranger in a strange land still, this novel experiment in democracy -- have taken our focus away from what was our purview for decades: our place in international affairs.

Some see this as a good thing and I might concur, but it's the way that we went about it that troubles me. We didn't gracefully exit the world stage, as President Obama put it in his address on Afghanistan, for "nation-building at home." We were dragged away like a mother in a supermarket trying to placate a panicked and tired toddler who demands attention. Or at the very least, candy.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

The Arab Spring midterm

Guest post by Ali Ezzatyar 

Ali Ezzatyar is a journalist and American attorney practising in Paris, France.

(Ed. note: This is Ali's fifth guest post at The Reaction. Last month, he wrote on Obama's foreign policy and the secular uprisings in the Middle East. In February, he wrote on dictatorship in Tunisia and Egypt and on the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. In January 2010, he co-wrote a post on Iran with Bryan Tollin. -- MJWS)

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It's test-time. The durability of an unpopular dictator, Arab or otherwise, has been called into question since January. Fair enough. But each bud of the Arab Spring has taught us another thing or two.

Tunisia taught us that an aura of inevitability bolstered by rhetoric from abroad could do little to help against galvanized, anti-governmental will. Egypt confirmed that Tunisia was not a fluke, with the additional lesson that years of foreign support and patronage can do little to hold a dictator and his system in place. On the flip side, Algeria is showing us how years of civil war can make a population complacent to revolution. They all demonstrate how the information age has changed politics forever. So if precedental value is important, how do we interpret Libya and Syria?

First, tribal and sectarian allegiances are obstinate, even in the face of destiny.

In February, it looked inevitable that Qaddafi would be the third dictator deposed in so many months. As the so-called Libyan rebels swallowed up government territory on their way to Tripoli, few could have predicted the stalemate that has set in today. The reality is that Qaddafi's counter-punch was engineered through a consolidation of tribal loyalties in and around Tripoli, not a regrouping of government arms. With the rebels faltering, many of Libya's tribal leaders (who have long had a "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" relationship with Qaddafi) rallied around the colonel. They have now succeeded in keeping him in power. Similarly, what we are seeing in Syria is the hardening of the core of Alavi patrons that make up the regime, with the Assad family as their figurehead. The Alavi minority, since coming to power in the mid 1960s, has been the primary power broker in that country. It stands to lose significantly more than any one group in Tunisia or Egypt ever could.

Second, an absence of meaningful diplomatic ties to world's most powerful countries actually hardens regimes and their power.

One could as easily conclude that pariah-status endangers dictators, alienating their populations and driving them to resentment. In Egypt and Tunisia, however, it was the relationships the dictatorial regimes had with democratic countries that allowed the world to exercise influence when it counted. Libya and Syria are regimes that are accountable to almost no one, whose dictators (and respective entourages) are not welcome anywhere. There is nobody to apply pressure or give incentives; the regime is left to fend for its life in the wake of rebellion. What's more, populations in isolated countries probably resent the rest of the world almost as much as they do their own regimes, which has implications for intervention of any kind.

Still, if the world had reacted to help the rebels when even the most loyal to Qaddafi would have bet against him, things could be different there today. Similarly, in countries like Syria (and Iran for that matter), there is probably much less today to the argument that isolation, with tools like sanctions and fiery rhetoric, makes for productive long-term foreign policy. A more rigorous diplomatic project in these places could have set the stage for regime change. Alas, what's done is done.

Partially on account of these lessons, one would imagine that if the regime does fall in Syria, its implications would have a particular thrust. It is the most entrenched, perhaps the most brutal, and almost certainly the most domestically popular of the large Arab dictatorships. Regime change there would usher in a certain inevitability that would echo from Riyadh to Rabat; it could mean the death knell of the Arab dictator as we know it.

Sure, this is conjecture for now. But, hey, this is just the midterm.

Libya, Home of Human Rights

      Twice this past week I heard stories that gave me pause.

     The first involved the daughter of Moammar Gadhafi  being stripped of her Goodwill Ambassador status by the U.N.

     The second story reported on the U.N. removing Libya from that international organization's Human Rights Commission.

     Gee, what happened in Libya to change the mind of the United Nations community? Was Libya something of a Human Rights crusader before its people suddenly revolted?