International Affairs

David Horovitz writes today in the Jerusalem Post re: the “era-defining series of popular uprisings”: “Exacerbating our concern is the striking failure of our much-vaunted intelligence services to see any of this coming.”

We have heard that before, most recently when the money crashed, but first in our time with the fall of the Soviet Union. But all these things were well-predicted; it was just that they who made the predictions were completely ignored by the press.

It was suggested, then, that the fault fell to the feet of political science. It is not really a science, they said. Why don’t we just do without it and downsize by eliminating those departments of political science and sociology from the university? When history and literature and language were studied instead, knowing was complex and its practitioners vast.

The popular uprisings of recent weeks are homegrown reactions to the oppression everyday people have suffered from successive governments going all the way back to the Ottoman Empire. They are an indication that theocracies as a form of government do not measure up to the realities of today’s world.

The demonstrations thus viewed denote the growing political maturity in the Arab world. With a relatively young population, they have access to the West through the television and the social media. They are eager to join the rest of the world and they admire American prosperity. The reigning regimes in much of the Arab world are holdovers from a bygone era. They came to power at a time in which the West was concerned about Soviet expansionism and Israel was concerned about Islamic extremism.

Despite all the talk in Washington and London about establishing a “no-fly zone” over Libya to forcibly prevent Col. Moammar Gadhafi from bombing his own people, such a measure would require U.N. cover unless the U.S. and its allies want to go it alone with an invasion.

In the light of the 2003 Iraq invasion, which was opposed by then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), it is unlikely that President Obama would approve unilateral military action now to topple the Libyan dictator.

The U.S. delegation to the U.N. attempted to slip a reference to U.N. member states using "all means necessary to protect civilians and key installations" into the resolution on Libya adopted by the U.N. Security Council last Friday, according to the Turtle Bay blog by Washington Post U.N. correspondent Colum Lynch. The resolution, which was strong by U.N. standards, imposed an arms embargo, assets freeze and travel ban on Gadhafi and his regime, and referred Libya to the International Criminal Court. But it was adopted nevertheless without the language sought by the U.S., which would have provided a legal basis for the no-fly zones.

The unrest that continues to grip the Middle East is, first and foremost, a reminder of a truth that is too often forgotten: The desire to live in dignity is more powerful than any dictator or army.
 
It’s also a reminder of another truth that most would prefer to overlook: our ability to discern the geopolitical signs of the times remains remarkably poor. Recent history is replete with examples of such failures — failures to predict as well as predictions that turned out to be incorrect, often egregiously so.

So Hillary Clinton is going to Geneva, where on Friday the United Nations Human Rights Council meets to consider the popular uprising in Libya.

The 47-nation Council’s credibility is on the line here. Given Libya’s dubious human-rights credentials even before Moammar Gadhafi’s bloody crackdown on his own people, it is unacceptable that it should remain a member of the U.N. body to which it was elected last year.

Clinton should take the lead in Geneva to ensure that Libya is expelled — it is the very least she can do given President Obama’s framing of the protests across the Middle East as fulfilling aspirations for “universal rights.”

The nerd imperialists and their feckless and pathologically irresponsible MSM accomplices, claiming that Cairo will be “the new Silicon Valley,” should be held accountable as Libya cracks in half and Iranian warships approach Israel’s shores.

It is part of the American vanity that every tribe will be better off without its queen or natural leader; what they really want, we were told a few years back, is Cal Klein and Michael Jackson. iPads this time, and smartphones.

America encouraged this unraveling from the beginning, which has absurdly advanced even to Ohio and Indiana. We do so because we were born without a sense of dominion ourselves; it leaves us neurotic; we need to conquer and are compelled outward. But primary anthropology tells us that when you remove the king from the tribe you are left only with a horde. Barely a week on we are unnerved and unprepared. Everyone is unprepared; Apple cracks, stocks crash, oil soars. Everyone except Israel, which has been preparing for this for 60 years.

Moshe Feiglin is the leader of Manhigut Yehudit, the Jewish Leadership Movement in Israel. He is considered a “thorn in the side” of Benjamin Netanyahu because his group holds sway in the Likud. He calls for authentic Jewish leadership in Israel.

We never hear a word about this group in the mainstream American press, but in my opinion it is an important parallel to the Tea Party in the United States. His influence will rise in Israel as the Tea Party is rising here. The key to both: authenticity and a sense of place in the world to which one belongs. It is, in essence — in Feiglin’s phrase — “faith-based revolution” bringing into balance “Torah, Temple, Physical and Metaphysical.” His commentary on the Egyptian uprising and Israel gives a sense of this new movement:

“Why didn't Mubarak send in the tanks? Why didn't Tahrir Square turn into Tiananmen Square? Is the Egyptian regime less cruel than its Chinese counterpart?

What triggers revolution? In the Middle East, popular uprisings that swept the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt from power have spread to challenge authoritarian rulers for crushing their freedom over decades. In Britain, the steep rise in university tuition fees has mobilized student demonstrators in numbers not seen in a generation. In Italy, the last straw for the people is “bunga bunga.”

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been chased through the courts over his financial dealings for years. But the issue that brought hundreds of thousands of women onto the streets was an allegation that he paid an underage girl for sex in “bunga bunga” parties at his Sardinian villa. Berlusconi, who denies the sex charge and says he was unaware that she was 17, now faces trial in Italy before an all-woman panel in April.

It is a Berlin Wall moment in Egypt. We are all Egyptian today.

This was one of the great grassroots, peaceful, mass-movement democracy revolutions of our generation and any generation. It is a profound day for Egyptian patriotism and a spectacular day for believers in democracy, whoever they are and wherever they live.

There is no credit to be shared by anyone except the people of Egypt. This is their movement, their country and their day. They did something against great odds that few believed they could ever accomplish.

Mohamed Elbaradei, who has spent almost all of his waking life on American soil and sees New York, where he taught and worked, as the center of the world, has finally come up with a slogan to unite the Egyptian masses: “Yes, we can.” It does have a catchy ring. The Tunisian revolution, he writes this morning in The New York Times, “sent a powerful psychological message, ‘Yes, we can.’ ” It is clear to Elbaradei who the true leader of Egypt is: American President Barack Obama. But things took a turn yesterday when Hosni Mubarak, who actually lives in Egypt, refused to yield to his demands. President Obama virtually ordered him to step down. Leon Panetta, chief of the CIA, announced that Mubarak would follow the directive without hesitation last night. But he did not. Mubarak’s slogan might be, “No, we won’t.”