From:
The Middle East’s New Normal
(The American Conservative) -- by Leon Hadar --
Even if Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak succeeds in clinging to power, that is not going to change the writing on Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia that the whole world has been reading: The days of the Middle Eastern autocrats, allied with the U.S. and open to some sort of co-existence with Israel — in fact, of the entire American hegemonic project in the Middle East — may be numbered.
But whether it comes to promoting its values or to securing strategic interests, U.S. clout in the Middle East has been shrinking now to its lowest point since the end of the Cold War when the U.S. had emerged as the only global player in the region: The “peace process” is all but dead. The radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr’s movement has joined an Iran-oriented Iraqi government. The new Lebanese Prime Minister was selected by Hizbollah. Turkey is pursuing a foreign policy independent of Washington and Iran is continuing to flex its muscle in the Levant and the Persian Gulf.
So it was not surprising that the only mention of the Middle East in Obama’s State of the Union Address was a brief reference to the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq — to American retreat from the region.
The political crisis in Egypt – and the no-win policy choices available now to Washington — demonstrates the dramatic erosion in U.S. influence there. The Mubaraks of the Middle East may still be able to count on the support of their militaries and Mukhabarts (secret services). But having lost their legitimacy as national leaders they are threatened by the eruption of a political volcano — masses of young angry people. Their lowest common political denominator that brings them together is the hostility towards the U.S. which had helped keep their reviled rulers in power for so many years, and to Israel, which is perceived to be America’s partner in crime and the oppressor of their brothers and sisters in Palestine...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:
This goes right along with the concept that the post WWII generation (b.1935 – 55) is the “The Worst Generation.” Look at how much their elites were handed on a silver platter coming out of the Cold War — mostly handed to them due to sacrifices of the WWII generation, including the Cold War victory. And look how quickly they’ve utterly squandered it.
On the Left, the Clintons and their statist-liberal/neoliberal ilk. On the Right, ideological neocons like Cheney, McCain, Lieberman, GW Bush. Not coincidentally, the lot of them are “compassionate” and “progressive” Israel firsters.
What a curse the entirety of them have brought down upon America. It’s simply amazing how quickly they’ve been able to plunder and squander a sole superpower, and sabatoge the prospects for younger Americans for God knows how long.
Future Americans will be spitting on their graves, and rightly so.
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