Styx and Hades for Arab Leaders. From ‘Traditional’ States to Uber-Police States. Mubarak’s Son vs. Nasser’s Tarboosh
“Styx and Hades can have my bones….
But I got my son to immortalize me…..”
Typical Arab leader with a fake coin, to Charon
“Yes we can”!
That is what Arab leaders concluded sometime in, oh about 2006. They realized, long before the advent of the Age of Obama, that they could. And they did. But what is it that they did? They out-waited George W Bush, nay survived him. Just as Dick Cheney always knew they could and would.
They have managed to dodge one fundamentalist (of the Sunni variety) bullet, for now. For now: the jury is still out on that one.
They managed not only to cling to power, in most cases they tightened their grip on power by piggybacking on the ‘War on Terror’. Jihadist incarceration centers became convenient receptacles, tools, for the oligarchies to rid themselves of other dissidents as well. In the process most have become police states of the type that the Stasi would admire and envy. They found new ways to give their regimes some appearance of participation and democracy, while their security services tightened their grip on all aspects of life. Even the Saudis went through the motion of electing useless, toothless municipal councils, but only once. This week they canceled new elections by extending the terms of the existing councils by royal fiat- thus making these councils appointed bodies.
Some regimes have struck on the idea of half-appointed and half-elected bodies, sort of half-elected. The ruler always has a majority.
T
he rulers also often agree to a gradual slide toward Islamization of politics, in order to placate their tame fundamentalists, who in turn allow the rulers to run what is Caesar’s (usually power and money) as they see fit.
Cheating Charon:
Recently, the dictators and oligarchs have found a new way to extend their rule, beyond their own mortality, beyond the grave, past the river Styx and beyond their Hades. They have learned this new way from Kim Il Song who appointed his pudgy son (Kim Jong Il) to replace him (this Kim is reported ready to name his son, Kim Dim Sum to inherit). They also learned it from their own absolute kings and other monarchs. From Syria (al-Assad), to Baghdad (Hussein), to Egypt (Mubarak), to Libya and Yemen, they are all grooming their sons to inherit their countries. Even Stalin and Mao would never dream of doing that. I doubt that even Hitler, had he been able to sire a son with the help of Cialis or Viagra, would have done that.
Unlike the case with Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Sadat, for example, the people of Egypt will never be rid of Mubarak, especially if the son grows up to look like the father. Personally, I don’t think Mubarak is fit to kiss Nasser’s axe, even with his ill-advised foreign adventures in Yemen and in blundering into war in 1967. (I am doubtful about Sadat, though. There is something about him that I suspected was not kosher. Can’t put my finger on it, not yet. I am no psychoanalyst, but maybe another day. I still agreed with him when he called Arab leaders ‘dwarves and midgets’). The man, we're back to Nasser now, never dreamed of appointing his son as an heir, and he died no richer than when he took power. Well, maybe he ended up with a few more civilian suits- but he also had to give up his tarboosh (fez to you heathen).
Oddly, today, in this new age of the New Middle East, Arab states are more police states, run by the security services, than ever before. There is probably hardly anything about any citizen that the secret services in those countries do not know- except maybe what is in their minds. See my point?
If there is a difference between the Old Middle East and (Condi Rice’s) New Middle East, it is not necessarily for better. On this cheerful note,
Cheers
mhg
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