Persiflage & Paroxysm

We were always going to be faced with this choice sooner or later, to tolerate our violently repressive dictators, at least until we liberate Palestine and defeat imperialism, or to rebel against them and risk sweeping to power intolerant religious extremists who would threaten the cultural, ethnic and religious character and diversity of Arab countries. The Arab Spring has forced the issue to the fore and it has also laid bare the instrumental role Gulf countries played in encouraging the young facebook and twitter revolutionaries, offering unlimited financial assistance to Islamic parties to help depose the old dictators and in Egypt the military. But they did not do all this out of a charitable heart and a sincere desire to see Arab peoples free from their shackles, they had an agenda: to defeat Arab nationalism. I always wondered what prompted a good portion of the Syrian people to break the so-called ‘fear barrier’ and go out and demonstrate in large numbers against th...

I have always been fascinated with naval warfare, both the modern and the ancient: the projection of the power of the State beyond its limited land mass and its ability to affect commerce and trade both in positive and negative ways. But naval forces are also useful in cementing alliances across the seas; such naval forces add a crucial element of prestige, especially in the eyes of third world allies that respect the 'gun boat' more than mere words and threats. The naval build up in the East Mediterranean goes beyond the immediate international crisis over Syria . The US has dominated the Mediterranean ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union . Now the Russian Federation is looking to recapture some of its predecessor's lost power and prestige, and why not indeed. By some accounts the Russian de facto Mediterranean task force consists of roughly 16 surface ships. The US 6th Fleet alone has consisted of as many as 40 surface ships at one time. Is this a re...

A good person would never take sides in his neighbor’s domestic disputes. He may try to extinguish a fiery argument by trying to get the parties to reconcile, but he would never take sides in the hope of deriving some personal benefit, that would be too obscene. Well, clearly Lebanon is not a good neighbor; and as a result, our involvement in Syria on one side of the dispute or the other, has cost us our own peace of mind. Maybe next time (if there is a next time) we will learn to mind our own business and pray to God that our deep political rifts do not erupt into full blown civil war too. The Lebanese have a very wild imagination and they perceive reality in their own special way. They see their country as a cross between the Wild West, some American western territory in the mid to late 1800s where the law has a patchy presence at best, and the Monte Carlo of the James Bond movies. In reality, we are a cross between Mos Eisley (Star Wars reference) and an amalgam of every t...

Arab Springs or foreign occupations, both are symptoms of a common Arab disease: dictatorship, our refusal to take charge of our own government, sticking our head in the sand and our need to hear the crack of the whip every now and then to assure us all is well. We seem incapable of working together and governing ourselves like mature responsible adults without the help of military strong men. The Arab Spring, I once naively thought, was supposed to sweep out the old corrupt order, the purveyors of fear and terror, and sweep to power freedom loving democrats, instead all we have done is place at risk the nation State model in the Arab world. We all helped light the fuse on this disaster. Those who have ‘democratically’ come to power, like in Egypt, or even in Iraq, did not seek to create consensus and lay the ground work for a modern State, instead they sought to replace the old dictatorship, in essence to occupy their fellow countrymen, to jump on their backs and screw them from behi...

Listening to the news one would think the United States and its allies are set on an irreversible course towards war in the Eastern Mediterranean and that the war to come will be a guided missile fight with the US and its allies having the upper hand. The outcome in any conflict is never guaranteed, but this didn’t prevent the news media from making predictable comparisons with Iraq circa 1991 and 2003. The Syrian situation is very different, Lavrov’s statement on not wanting to be drawn in to war over Syria notwithstanding. When it comes to guided missiles, the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans build them cheaper and in some cases better than the Americans can. Let us not forget that the great British Navy with its glorious and storied past was under constant threat from the Argentine Navy’s French-made Exocet anti-ship missiles during the Falklands campaign in 1982. The missiles, that could be launched from ships, aircraft or coastal positions, sunk at least...

It's easy to know which side to be on, just look at which side the US is on and support the opposing side. It seems the Takfeeris and their American allies (sounds weird, I know) are determined to replay the Iraqi tragedy in Syria to the muted chorus of protestation from Russia. It was foolish to think the Russians would go all the way in defending the anti-Israel camp at any rate. So, according to the LBC Syria had better brace for incoming tomahawks from the US imperialist navy should Obama take such a catastrophic decision. I sometimes wonder what kids in schools a hundred years from now will make of this history we are making every day. As the Arab ships of State sink one after the other religious and ethnic minorities cling to the deadwood of obsolete dictatorships while the overwhelming majority turn to faith-based groups and their violent rhetoric and the proponents of chaos find willing cannon fodder among the desperate peoples of our long suffering Middle East. I wonder w...

We have seen it all before in Iraq, the steady wearing down of the people’s resilience and determination with an unrelenting and monotonous campaign of bombings that target large civilian conurbations, market places and places of worship. Bomb blasts that harvest hundreds of burned and dismembered corpses and hundreds more wounded and this includes both wounds that can be seen and others that cannot be seen. Lebanon it turns out is not special after all, not particularly immune to ‘Somalization’ or ‘Iraqization’ as some have and continue to suggest, we are just another third world Arab mess torn apart by its own contradictions, teetering on the brink of failed Statehood. Of course the standard refrain from locals is that regional and global powers have conspired against Lebanon because somehow our small country is really that important in the large scheme of things. For the Western media a bomb blast in Iraq is no longer something new or interesting. The honeymoon, one could s...

The favorite targets of Muslim extremists and Takfeeris from Kabul to Cairo are three: carved images and sculptures that are considered signs of idolatry, religious minorities of all faiths and sects, and State institutions and symbols of State authority. We have seen all three attacked in Egypt over the past few days as Coptic Christian churches have been burned, nuns and women harassed, ordinary people shot at for just walking down a street, antiquities’ museums vandalized, precious artifacts smashed, and police stations and other symbols of State authority attacked. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood are very different organizations, at least when you look at their public face, but beneath the surface they are essentially the same as they feed off the same extremist ideology and drink from the same poisoned well in which I am sure they would like us all to drown. Their goal is one, to sow chaos and fear and then to step into the vacuum left behind by the Stat...

Arab States have very little in the way of immunization and protection from violent extremists and uncompromising ideologies. Most have weak, underdeveloped national institutions and a long history of one party or one man rule sustained for decades by corruption and nepotism with the help of Western governments, chiefly the United States . National armies are all that stand between the extremists and the total collapse of the Nation State. When Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, they not only removed a dictator from power they destroyed the national army that was fiercely loyal to the regime. The result was total chaos and a river of blood unleashed on to the streets of Iraq daily. To this day, ten years on from the invasion, Iraq has still had no respite from terror. What was once one of the most developed Arab countries with a high percentage of university graduates is one of the most backward and conflict ridden. It is little wonder then that Arab populations are deeply prot...

The successful military campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood encampments in Cairo today was a watershed moment in Egyptian and indeed Arab history akin to Muhammad Ali's 'elimination' of the Mameluk threat over 200 years ago. A new page has been turned and Muhammed Ali’s army has come out on top as undisputed victor once again. What happens next is any one's guess, but the line has been drawn in the sand and redrawn, negotiated and renegotiated over and both sides have stubbornly refused to budge an inch or try to find an acceptable middle ground. In the end, the side which had the military means and the will to use force to bolster its authority did so. In the Middle East it has always been an all-or-nothing game, either total victory or total defeat. This same struggle will likely be played out time and again across the Arab world as the struggle to find and hold on to that precious middle ground is lost in favor of a zero sum strategy. But according to m...