Rattlesnake Ridge      

        BFF

"Where is NATO?" some messages ask amid crackdowns that have claimed nearly 3,000 lives. The answer: Waiting on the sidelines with other world powers and showing no willingness to open a Libyan-style military offensive against the regime of Bashar Assad. "No intention whatsoever," emphasized NATO's secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, earlier this week in Brussels. The reason is a brew of international political complications, worries over unleashing a civil war and plausible risks of touching off a wider Middle East conflict with archfoes Israel and Iran in the mix. In the end, Assad has more powerful friends and carries far more wild cards than Moammar Gadhafi's Libya,………..”

The Arab world has sure changed. There was a time when the Arab ‘system’ of dictators and absolute tribal monarchs would ‘try’ to solve regional problems through intense discussions and sometimes a show of military force. In the summer of 1961, right after Kuwait became independent from Britain, it was threatened by Iraq’s strongman of the time, General Abdel Karim 'Qassim. 'Qassim was a peaceful pussycat compared to the murderous Ba’athists who came after him (he was killed in a coup staged by Ba’athist officers and the murderous Aref brothers, whose lives he had spared earlier). After a brief mission of British forces (several died of summer sunstroke) an Arab expeditionary force was sent to keep the peace at the border. The solution was engineered mainly by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. That was when Egypt led the Arabs, long before Egypt became a follower of the Saudi dynasty under Mubarak.

What a change. In Libya the Arabs have heartily welcomed NATO intervention, with some token minimal assistance from Qatar and the UAE. Neither of the two GCC countries have enough people to fill their own police forces: the UAE potentates increasingly hire foreign mercenaries, like Bahrain. Even the Salafi fundamentalists who spout hatred and vitriol against all others including the West, are happy to see “heathen” boys and girls (sans burq'a) do the job for them. Most of them pray for another war in the Gulf where God will ‘utilize’ heathen forces in the Salafi Wahhabi cause.

Now some Arabs want NATO to intervene in Syria as well, and not just Syrian opponents of the Ba’athist regime. They are beginning to like the milk from the new surrogate wet nurse, Mama NATO. And they mean Western NATO not the Turks. Our region sure has come along way, baby.

(Still curious how to pronounce the middle name of Anders Fogh Rasmussen).

Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com