

Dual Uprisings Show Potent New Threats to Arab States - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14egypt-tunisia-protests.html

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tokenadult
This article includes astounding details about how Arab democracy movement
activists used new technologies to organize their movement internationally. It
also mentions little-known connections to writers and movements in other, non-
Arab countries. The phenomena described could sweep the world.

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Vivtek
_This_ is the twenty-first century I signed up for.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Don't count your eggs too early, this has yet to play out fully. The Iranian
uprising is either still simmering or largely ineffectual. Algeria has
apparently degenerated back to despotism. And it's too soon to see how Egypt
will develop.

On the whole though, these are positive signs. People in the Arab world are
taking an active role in their governance. They are having discussions about
the role of government and of liberty. They are being more and more exposed to
reporting and information from other countries. Compared to the state of
things a mere decade ago, this is a vast improvement.

~~~
Vivtek
I don't care - those honking horns on Friday will make me happy for months.
Just let me assume we're headed into the Kim Stanley Robinson future I so very
much want, OK? I haven't felt so hopeful about this lump of wet rock since the
Berlin Wall came down.

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zalew
_Mr. Obama ended the call, the official said, with these words: “I respect my
elders. And you have been in politics for a very long time, Mr. President. But
there are moments in history when just because things were the same way in the
past doesn’t mean they will be that way in the future.”_

I can't recall a single dictator in the modern history of the world which
would fall down without US interference. People's engagement and activism is
hard to undervalue and for sure the revolution is in their hands, but when I
came across lots of such comments <http://i.imgur.com/7u8xk.png> I was really
disappointed how people tend to easily forget history.

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afshin
The Shah of Iran was a dictator who only came to power because of an
American/British orchestrated coup. He was overthrown against American wishes,
and the government that came to exist in Iran is reactionary and hostile to
the West as a direct result.

This is a case of a homegrown movement to overthrow a dictator. The resultant
government is not necessarily what the West would prefer, but that is a
consequence of being (rightly) seen as the funders and supporters of both the
previous dictator _and_ the instigators of the war waged by the next-door
neighbor (Saddam Hussein's Iraq, whose military was entirely funded by Western
powers and was once among the most powerful in the world).

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_djo_
Do you have a citation for the claim that Saddam's military was 'entirely
funded by Western powers'? To my knowledge there was never any direct funding
of Iraq's military by any Western state during the Saddam era.

The West was certainly not averse to selling weapons to the country, though
neither was the Soviet bloc. During the 1980s the Iraqi air force was equipped
mostly with French aircraft, and the army mostly with Soviet tanks, vehicles
and weapons in addition to a smattering of weapons from other sources such as
100 G5 155mm howitzers from South Africa.

But it need not be said that selling weapons to a country is very different to
funding its military.

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afshin
Here's somebody else's research on the subject:

<http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/arming_iraq.php>

It seems pretty well cited. That citation itself came from this Wikipedia
article:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Iraq_War#U.S._support_for_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Iraq_War#U.S._support_for_Iraq)

~~~
_djo_
Neither of those sources contains a claim that Western states directly funded
Iraq's military, so they don't represent a citation for the claim that you
made.

As I mentioned before, the fact that Western countries and the Soviet bloc
happily sold Iraq weapons and dual-use items during the 1980s is not in
question. We know that happened, it has been public knowledge for quite some
time.

Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but I feel that accuracy matters. There is a vast
and important difference between directly funding a country's military and
merely selling it weaponry.

Besides, if we're referring solely to the issue of arming Iraq, then the
statement that Western countries were solely responsible for that is incorrect
too. As I said before, most of the Iraqi army's equipment was purchased from
the Soviets.

~~~
afshin
American and Soviet policies supported the Iraqi prosecution of the war while
funds to Iran were frozen and embargoes were placed.

I believe you're being overly specific in your definition of what constitutes
something more than mere partisanship. I think it's a reasonably safe
statement that the war would likely not have happened without American
blessings.

It is, of course, more complex because of the involvement of the Soviets, but
I think in this case both the Soviets and the West wanted to contain Iran and
both politically and materially encouraged Iraq to wage war.

~~~
_djo_
I think you're missing the point. The only thing I have questioned is a very
specific claim that you made in your original post, which was: _Saddam
Hussein's Iraq, whose military was entirely funded by Western powers_

All I've asked for is a citation for that claim. There really isn't much more
to this than that.

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afshin
I posted to a sibling of this comment, but here's the link again just in case
you miss it:

If you are nitpicking over the use of my quantifier "entirely" I'll retract
that. The evidence, though, is pretty clear:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_war)

~~~
_djo_
Still no evidence of direct Western funding of the Iraqi military, 'entirely'
or otherwise.

Again, selling Iraq weaponry, turning a blind eye to its actions and providing
it with intelligence information are all not the same thing as directly
funding its military. This is really such a simple issue that I'm surprised it
has gone on for this long.

~~~
afshin
Really? Are we reading the same article? Here are some direct quotations.

* The "Iraqgate" scandal revealed that an Atlanta branch of Italy's largest bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, relying heavily on U.S. government-guaranteed loans, funneled over US $5 billion to Iraq from 1985 to 1989.

* Saddam's elite troops received instruction in unconventional warfare at Fort Bragg

* The United States assisted Iraq through a military aid program known as "Bear Spares", whereby the U.S. military "made sure that spare parts and ammunition for Soviet or Soviet-style weaponry were available to countries which sought to reduce their dependence on the Soviets for defense needs."

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mkramlich
One thing I noticed about the recent Egyptian events that few have mentioned.
Folks in Egypt gather in Tahir Square and protest for almost 3 weeks, Mubarak
still in power. Obama administration on Thursday then basically gives an
ultimatum to the senior Egyptian military leadership, and bang, the next day
Mubarak has "resigned".

Lesson: huge props to the Egyptian people. But also give credit to the US
administration. They didn't have to do what they did. Also, the follow-in
issue being that probably the biggest reason why we had such strong leverage
over Egypt was the billions in military aid we give them annually. To a
government run by a dictator. Leverage is good, but backing dictators is bad
in the long run, despite short term benefits.

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Joakal
Seems to be correlation does not equal causation here. What if Mubarak needed
18 days to move his money offshore or a myriad of other reasons? Obama
administration could have simply saw the government deteriorating and joined
the crescendo of calls.

Joining the bandwagon doesn't give them any more credence than the many other
countries and people in the world demanding Mubarak to resign. They all
deserve as much credit.

~~~
mkramlich
> Seems to be correlation does not equal causation here.

True, not necessarily. But likewise, speculation does not equal evidence. The
actual evidence suggests that the US ultimatum to the Egyptian military was a
strong force toward Mubarak stepping down, and it correlates more highly
timeline-wise than the protestors actions. I could plot it on a graph and it
would make it more apparent. Obviously the Egyptian military leadership also
had a strong say in what happened. Many things probably had to be a certain
way for things to happen like they did. But to imply that the actions of say,
the government of New Zealand or Lichtenstein somehow played as strong a role
and deserve as much credit as the the US government (or the Egyptian military
leadership or the Egyptian protestors) I think is not reasonable based on the
reality of it.

Giving billions to a dictatorship may be bad but it also gives the giving
country a lot of political leverage when they want some kind of change on the
receiving end. To somehow hand wave that away as not being significant is not
realistic I think.

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mkramlich
Hopefully the events in Egypt will serve as a model for people in all the
other Middle East, Arab and Muslim dictatorships. If they don't want a foreign
country or coalition to come in and topple their regime then, well, they need
to do something domestically to make it happen. Otherwise it's hard to whine.
Pick your poison.

