Revolution Plus Budget Slashing Madness

As anybody who has paid even the least little bit of attention to world news lately knows, the popular protests in Egypt that I wrote about in a previous post succeeded in forcing long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak out of power, and other popular protest movements are ongoing elsewhere in the region. There were major protests in Iran (though there haven't been many reports on Iranian protests in the past week or so), Yemen, Bahrain, and Libya, where the situation has deteriorated into a civil war between long-time dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi and many of his people.

At the moment, only the Bahrain situation looks like it has a good chance of ending with a victory for democratic forces but without large amounts of bloodshed. The police assaults on the protesters last week were disgraceful, but the ruling family seems to have backed down from its attempt to violently suppress the protests, and is now allowing the protests to proceed, though they haven't given into demands that the government (including the long-time prime minister, who is the king's uncle) be forced out. The US made moderately strong statements deploring the violence against the protesters, and one would hope strong pressure was put on Bahrain's government behind the scenes to stop the violence. If so, this would be to the credit of the Obama administration. Unfortunately, it's hard to be sure as I haven't seen any detailed reports on the US role (and we may never know what was said behind the scenes, unless the relevant diplomatic cables get leaked like the ones Wikileaks has been releasing).

The situation is Iran is unclear, as the government has succeeded in blacking out most news of the protests there (and reports from the official news agency are filled with absurd propaganda, judging from one I read). In Yemen, the situation is somewhat chaotic; the protests have been smaller than elsewhere, but are complicated by the different types of opposition to the regime (for example, many protesters in the south want to secede from the country, while those in the capital simply want to force the president out). Libya is now dominating the news, despite a news blackout as pervasive as Iran's, since Gaddafi has not shown even the minimal restraint other regimes have shown, instead ordering full-scale attacks on protesters, and in turn encouraging even more people, including some of the army and his government, to turn against him. Reportedly the anti-Gaddafi forces now control the major cities of eastern Libya, while violence continues elsewhere, and Gaddafi in a speech that by all accounts was somewhat unhinged vowed to keep slaughtering his opponents. Hard to say how this one will end, though one would hope that enough of his remaining supporters will desert him so that the opposition can take control without too much more violence (unfortunately Gaddafi's use of foreign mercenaries may make this difficult).

Unfortunately, the US can't influence events in Iran and Libya to the extent that it could in Egypt and Bahrain, as the latter two are long-time US allies and the former two are long-time enemies (the rapprochement with Libya being far too recent and limited to give the US much leverage). At least the Obama administration did make a statement in support of the protesters in Iran that was stronger than the ones they made during the post-election protests in 2009. Admittedly there are reasons for caution; the Iranian government -- and indeed all the governments in the region -- is prone to claim anti-government protesters are backed by foreign governments, largely to play on the nationalistic feelings of the rest of the populace so they will side with the government. In a country like Egypt, government attempts to blame the protests on the US were not so likely to be believed by the people, as everyone knew the US had long supported Mubarak, but in a country like Iran, the government might easily succeed in painting the protests as a foreign plot. I still think the US is obligated to make a strong statement, but it does have to be careful not to lend the government too much ammunition to use against the anti-government demonstrators. In Libya, the most the US can do is lend its support to action at the UN Security Council, such as declaring Libya a no-fly zone so Gaddafi can't use his air force to attack protesters or fly in any more foreign mercenaries. But even there, I have read the US has felt restrained by its need to evacuate US citizens first, apparently fearing that Gaddafi might make them targets if the US works too strongly against him.

It probably won't be until the dust has settled from all the changes taking place in the Middle East that we can assess the US role and what should have been done differently. Some have been highly critical of the administration's role in Egypt, one reasonable criticism being the inconsistency of some of the statements it made, at times seeming to support the protesters fully and at other times expressing a desire for Mubarak to stay in office for at least a while longer. Others have been more positive about the administration's role, such as this piece. Incidentally, having previously mentioned Glenn Beck's bizarre rants about Egypt, I found this article about how even fellow conservatives criticized his claims interesting. The most amusing bit was at the end, where there was a quote from this piece by Jeffrey Goldberg, though I've read elsewhere that Goldberg himself promoted the only somewhat less delusional fantasy that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were allies. Still, his parody of Glenn Beck's conspiracy theories is hilarious.

In other news, the Republican House has persisted in its insane budget cutting, slashing large amounts from important programs while refusing to raise taxes on the rich even slightly or to make more than minor cuts to the truly bloated parts of the budget, such as defense. I may want to write about this at length in the future, but for now this article and even better this article make a number of good points about how their approach makes little sense. But then the Republicans have rarely shown much sense, carrying their partisan approach to governing almost to the point of their portrayal in this parody from the Onion. I just hope that between them Obama and the Senate can rescue enough of the vital programs from the budget slashing crazies, though as long as the latter refuse to consider any tax increases, serious cuts in the defense budget, or measures fixing problems with Medicare and Medicaid, the deficit will only get worse.