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Home Front: WoT
Obama administration prepares for possibility of new post-revolt Islamist regimes
2011-03-04
I don't think Obama means a military solution, either...
The Obama administration is preparing for the prospect that Islamist governments will take hold in North Africa and the Middle East, acknowledging that the popular revolutions there will bring a more religious cast to the region's politics.

The administration is already taking steps to distinguish between various movements in the region that promote Islamic law in government. An internal assessment, ordered by the White House last month, identified large ideological differences between such movements as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Qaeda that will guide the U.S. approach to the region.

"We shouldn't be afraid of Islam in the politics of these countries," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal policy deliberations. "It's the behavior of political parties and governments that we will judge them on, not their relationship with Islam."
Hello, accommodation. That worked really well with the old Soviet Union, didn't it.
Islamist governments span a range of ideologies and ambitions, from the primitive brutality of the Taliban in Afghanistan to Turkey's Justice and Development Party, a movement with Islamist roots that heads a largely secular political system.
Which the Islamist roots are working to change in every possible way...
None of the revolutions over the past several weeks has been overtly Islamist,
Not true. Yemen clearly is. Egypt may well be in the end, we just need to see how phase 2 plays out.
but there are signs that the uprisings could give way to more religious forces. An influential Yemeni cleric called this week for the U.S.-backed administration of President Ali Abdullah Saleh to be replaced with Islamist rule, and in Egypt, an Islamist theoretician has a leading role in drafting constitutional changes after President Hosni Mubarak's fall from power last month.
So the Post reporter is trying to say what I'm saying, but he needs a lot more words to not-quite-say it.
A number of other Islamist parties are deciding now how big a role to play in protests or post-revolution reforms.
They need to decide whether they are scorpions or pythons...
Since taking office, President Obama has argued for a "new beginning" with Islam, suggesting that Islamic belief and democratic politics are not incompatible.
Which is what George W Bush said, so it's not exactly a 'new beginning'...
But in doing so, he has alarmed some foreign-policy pragmatists and allies such as Israel, who fear that governments based on religious law will inevitably undercut democratic reforms and other Western values.
He also managed to alarm just about everyone else who has been paying attention.
Some within the U.S. intelligence community, foreign diplomatic circles and the Republican Party say Obama's readiness to accept Islamist movements, even ones that meet certain conditions, fails to take into consideration the methodical approach many such parties adopt toward gradually transforming secular nations into Islamic states at odds with U.S. policy goals.
That's one of the things we think, exactly. Look at Erdogan in Turkey as an example. He's smart enough not to want to end up in front of a Turkish military firing squad, and he's political end to know just how hard he can push on any given day.
Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories have prospered in democratic elections and exert huge influence.
One man, one vote, one time. You haven't seen either subjecting themselves to an election in which they could possibly lose.
Neither party, each with an armed wing, supports Israel's right to exist, nor have they renounced violence as a political tool.
Hamas explicitly endorses violence except when the uppity Jooooz get the better of them, which is nearly always...
And while many in the region point to Turkey as a model mixture of Islam and democracy, the ruling Islamist party is restrained by the country's highly secular army and court system, a pair of strong institutional checks that countries such as Egypt and Tunisia lack.
A restraint that the Islamists are working to erode.
"The actual word and definition of Islamism does not in and of itself pose a threat," said Jonathan Peled, the spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, citing Israel's relationship with the Turkish government, among others.

But Peled said Israel fears that "anti-democratic extremist forces could take advantage of a democratic system," as, he said, Hamas did with its 2006 victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections. Israel allowed Hamas to participate only under pressure from the George W. Bush administration as part of its stated commitment to promote Arab democracy.

"We obviously have concerns that are different than the administration's," Peled said. "We live in the neighborhood, obviously, and so we experience the results more closely."
I'm not sure that any American, other than the citizens of Berkeley, Madison and Massachusetts, would allow themselves to be rocketed more than once before going total postal on the perpetrators. The Israelis are a model of restraint.
The choice between stability and democracy has been a constant tension in U.S. foreign policy, and in few places has it been more pronounced than in the Middle East.

Many of the fallen or imperiled autocrats in the region were supported by successive U.S. governments, either as Cold War foils to the Soviet Union or as bulwarks against Islamist extremism before and after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Something that Dubya foresaw and was working to change until he lost his mojo in 2005...
In his June 2009 address at Cairo University, Obama acknowledged the controversy that the Bush administration's democracy promotion stirred in the region.

"That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people," he said, adding that "each nation gives life to the principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people."

In the Arab Middle East, those traditions include Islam, although Obama did not directly address the religion's role in democratic politics. He said the United States "will welcome all elected, peaceful governments - provided they govern with respect for all their people."
Fine words but then we didn't back it up when the Iranian elections of 2009 demonstrated that the Mad Mullahs™ would do whatever it took to keep power. One might forgive the average resident of the Middle East from wondering if Obama lied to him/her the same way as the local thugs do.
The goal of Islamist movements after taking power is at the root of concern expressed by Republican lawmakers and others in Washington.

Paul Pillar, a longtime CIA analyst who now teaches at Georgetown University, said, "Most of the people in the intelligence community would see things on this topic very similarly to the president - that is, political Islam as a very diverse series of ideologies, all of which use a similar vocabulary, but all quite different."

As the Arab revolutions unfold, the White House is studying various Islamist movements, identifying ideological differences for clues to how they might govern in the short and long term.

The White House's internal assessment, dated Feb. 16, looked at the Muslim Brotherhood's and al-Qaeda's views on global jihad, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United States, Islam in politics, democracy and nationalism, among others.

The report draws sharp distinctions between the ambitions of the two groups, suggesting that the Brotherhood's mix of Islam and nationalism make it a far different organization than al-Qaeda, which sees national boundaries as obstacles to restoring the Islamic caliphate.
Idiotic: the Brotherhood has a branch wing in Gaza and affiliates elsewhere. They're just smart enough not to advertise their belief in a single caliphate right now.
The study also concludes that the Brotherhood criticizes the United States largely for what it perceives as America's hypocritical stance toward democracy - promoting it rhetorically but supporting leaders such as Mubarak.

"If our policy can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, we won't be able to adapt to this change," the senior administration official said. "We're also not going to allow ourselves to be driven by fear."
We shouldn't allow ourselves to be driven by fantasy, either...
After Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, the United States and Israel led an international boycott of the government. But Obama administration officials, reviewing that history with an eye toward the current revolutions, say the reason for the U.S. boycott was not Hamas's Islamic character but its refusal to agree to conditions such as recognizing Israel.
Which is what Bush said at the time.
In a speech Monday in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to draw on that lesson, implicitly inviting Islamist parties to participate in the region's future elections with conditions. "Political participation," Clinton said, "must be open to all people across the spectrum who reject violence, uphold equality and agree to play by the rules of democracy."
Good luck finding anyone in power or about to be in power North Africa who would buy into that.
Posted by:Steve White

#3  CHINESE MILITARY FORUM > AL-QAIDA NO. 2 CALLS FOR ISLAMIC RULE IN EGYPT [+ Yemen].

So-called "Islamic State(s)".

AYMAN's Audio Video #4.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2011-03-04 20:24  

#2  WAFF > BAHRAIN MAY BE AN UPRISING TOO FAR FOR SUADIS AVOIDING IRAN'S GRIP.

D *** NG IT, BAHRAIN CAN'T DO THAT - DATS US-BASE-TOO-FAR QATAR'S JOB!

Of course you know this means War = SCOTT WALKER + WISCONSIN LABOR UNIONS HAVE TO BE INFORMED OF BAHRAIN'S WILY DASTARDLY USURPIOUS DEED [But first a Taco Bell QUAD STEAK]!?
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2011-03-04 20:22  

#1  Also read, NUCLEAR-ARMED ISLAMIST REGIMES + MILITANT-TERR GROUPS.

"2012", or very shortly thereafter.

OWG Caliphate rising.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2011-03-04 18:40  

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