Spokesperson P.J. Crowley replied, “Well, actually, in the other countries there is greater respect for the rights of the citizens.”
Phil Weiss, parodying a favorite neoconservative meme about Israel, called it “singling out Iran.”
But State is being responsive to the tough questions, and has come out with a statement on U.S. ally Bahrain. Here’s Crowley, in full:
]]>The United States is very concerned by recent violence surrounding protests in Bahrain. We have received confirmation that two protesters in Bahrain were recently killed, and offer our condolences to the families and friends of the two individuals who lost their lives.
The United States welcomes the Government of Bahrain’s statements that it will investigate these deaths, and that it will take legal action against any unjustified use of force by Bahraini security forces. We urge that it follow through on these statements as quickly as possible. We also call on all parties to exercise restraint and refrain from violence.
House Foreign Affairs chief Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) was wondering about the “nefarious ends” of some “elements” there, and Jeffrey Goldberg, who, with shifting views, expressed apprehension about the Muslim Brotherhood (giving space to FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht, who [...]]]>
House Foreign Affairs chief Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) was wondering about the “nefarious ends” of some “elements” there, and Jeffrey Goldberg, who, with shifting views, expressed apprehension about the Muslim Brotherhood (giving space to FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht, who seems open to Islamism, apparently, and Eli Lake, who doesn’t think Egypt’s peace deal with Israel will collapse).
Goldberg, to his credit, is asking big questions. And one of the biggest right now is about Islamism, and it’s role in the future of the Middle East. It’s playing out most acutely today in Tunisia and Egypt, but has been simmering all over the region, from Gaza to Qom.
Opinion makers in the U.S. seem to be divided along the lines that define what M.J. Rosenberg has called the “status quo lobby” (SQL), those whose actions — or key inactions — have thwarted a robust role for the U.S. in Middle East peacemaking. Goldberg and Ros-Lehtinen fit the paradigm: Both unflinching SQLers, they wear their hesitance for the long-awaited Arab democratic uprising on their sleeves.
The tepid support for Egyptians is about fear of Islamists, and no totalitarian strain, but one that has transitioned to seeking democratic legitimacy and inclusion. Yet events unfold in Egypt that drown out that narrative of what Phil Weiss, in an eloquent, must-read essay, called the “false choice of secular dictator-or-crazy Islamists.”
A bearded, angry young Arab shouted into a camera that “whether you’re Muslim, whether you’re a Christian, whether you’re an atheist, you will demand your goddamn rights.” Police held their fire, and protesters their stones, to break for prayers. On Twitter, Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University, wrote that a key day of demonstrations went forward even without the internet because people already knew where to meet up: “[O]n Friday everybody knew mosques would be focal points, didn’t need to coordinate.”
But the “false choice” clings to life among adherents of the SQL, where it is considered infallible wisdom.
The New York Times gave us a pretty even handed account a few weeks back about Tunisia’s relatively moderate Islamist party, then hauled out WINEP‘s Martin Kramer to unthinkingly denounce Islamism. (The Times also carried a pro-inclusion analyst.) Kramer, you see, hasn’t honestly answered or asked this question for decades.
Even Ben Birnbaum, a young reporter with the right-wing Washington Times, where he works with Lake, was asking himself some serious questions, too, on Twitter:
Do my mixed feelings about democracy in #Egypt make me a bad person? #Jan25
You get the feeling that Steve Coll had just the SQL in mind when he wrote, in the New Yorker, that the Tunisian Islamist party — the one that’s cool with “tourists sipping French wine in their bikinis” – is “raising anxieties in some quarters.”
In other quarters, however, questions are being asked. Take Coll himself:
[T]he corrosive effects of political and economic exclusion in the region cannot be sustained—among them the legions of pent-up, angry young men, Islamist and otherwise.
Yes, he calls for Obama to “thwart” Islamists in Tunisia. But the New Yorker‘s Comment is a column that important people read, and they’re reading about important questions.
]]>The real question is why the piece was published in the first place. I’ve written for Tablet before, and found the editors to be smart, thorough, and open-minded (as evidenced by their willingness to publish my piece in the first place). Reading Smith’s screed, I have to wonder how it made it through the publication process without anyone forcing him to provide some evidence for his claims.
More generally, it’s an interesting question why Smith has his gig at Tablet in the first place. I have no objection to the magazine airing neoconservative voices–they are a small minority in the American Jewish community, but an important one–but it is strange that the magazine would give its only weekly politics column to a neoconservative political operative who uses it exclusively as an echo chamber for talking points from Commentary and the Weekly Standard (where Smith also writes). I’ve gone through just about all of Smith’s Tablet columns, and virtually without fail they fall into one of two genres: there are hit pieces against whoever the neocons’ enemy of the week is (e.g. Trita Parsi, the Leveretts, and this latest article), and there are sycophantic puff pieces touting the wisdom of various Likudnik policymakers (e.g. Elliott Abrams, Michael Oren). Last week, he attempted a deeper think piece on Israel, Intellectuals, And The Fate Of Western Civilization, and it didn’t go too well–the kind of turgid pop philosophy that would be more at home in a college newspaper.
So why are we treated to Smith’s insights every week? Is it his good looks? His winning personality? A condition imposed by a funder? Regardless, his columns are jarringly out of place with the tenor of the rest of the magazine–and if his last couple are any indication, they’re only getting worse.
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