Wiston Papers

A Tumultuous Arab Spring

The latest spate of anti-American violence in the Muslim World purportedly has been spawned by a 14-minute anti-Muslim video that appeared on YouTube.

Initial violence took the lives of four American diplomats at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Lybia and protestors attacked the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.  No injuries were reported there.  A secondary wave of anti-America hatred in recent days has embroiled Muslims from the Middle East to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

The combination of the Arab Spring, perceived blasphemy against Muslims in the aforementioned video, and a perpetual Anti-America simmer, is the recipe in the cauldron that has spewed forth this most recent enmity directed against the United States.

It could be avoided.

There are some truths about the Middle East that current and past American administrations either fail to perceive or choose not to acknowledge.  The result has been decades of  catastrophic U.S. political and military efforts.

1—Our sole reason for attempting to construct peace in the region is oil.  We want and need a secure, uninterrupted flow of petroleum from the Middle East to the United States.  That’s our only interest in the area.  Any other explanation is disingenuous.

2—The cultural and religious  realities of the Middle East mitigate against any realistic initiatives by the Western World including the United States to broker lasting peace agreements whether between the Israelis and Palestinians, between Israel and the rest of the Arab World or between Iraq and Iran.  The “eye for an eye” mentality of too many religious and political extremists in the Muslim world guarantees a constant cycle of retaliation and revenge against both citizens and foreigners in the area.  As long as each side insists on meting out the last vengeance, there will be no peace.

3—The so-called Arab Spring promises to usher in an unprecedented opportunity for the Middle East to reconstruct her socio-politico-economic future.  There is a real possibility that this future will not be to the liking of the Western World in general or the United States in particular.  Our presence in the region may become even less palatable and more perilous than it is today.

4—It makes no difference who our next president will be.  Neither the incumbent Barack Obama nor the challenger Mitt Romney will be able to affect events in the Middle East.

As long as we pretend that Washington can leverage peace in the region in exchange for guaranteed access to oil, we will continue to suffer the consequences of  our misguided political dementia.

America will be better off to pull out of the Middle East and let events unfold without our presence.

Steve Coon

September 19, 2012