The Mideast Malady

The Arab Mideast is sick. Tunisia sneezed and
blew its long-time President out of office into
exile in Saudi Arabia. Egypt caught a terrible
cough and expectorated its President out of
Cairo into exile in Sharm-a-Sheikh. Not so
curiously, Libya - alternately known as “The
Hidden Jewel Of Africa” or, by its detractors,
as “The Armpit Of Africa” - is geographically
sandwiched between the Tunisian sneeze and the
Egyptian cough. So, Libya and its mercurial
madman are also now suffering from a disabling
and perhaps fatal socio-political infection.

Even forty-one years of Jamahiriya (State of
the Masses) injections could not prevent
Qadaffi and not-so-loyal subjects from being
afflicted by the virus that is rapidly perfusing
the Mideast atmosphere. Apparently,Qadaffi’s
vaunted Jamahiriya juice (as that political
innoculation is derisively described by one
geopolitical pundit) has finally lost its
potency. But is this any surprise since
that now ineffectual vaccine was personally
manufactured by a leader who long ago lost
his legitimacy?

Not surprisingly, the Mideast malady that
has now percolated across much of North
Africa has mutated. Variant, but equally
virulent, forms of this virus (which some
have eagerly –if prematurely- dubbed
“The Arab Awakening”) have now severely
infected Bahrein, Yemen and Syria. Many
Arab states are scurrying about attempting
to provide their restive populations
with face masks (economic incentives aka
bribes) to limit the further spread of
the virus in their countries.

Depending upon what media reports and upon
whose human intelligence one relies, the
manifestations of the fast-spreading
Mideast malady may be characterized in
several ways. Some say the malady is a
profusion of widespread Arab interest in
the enhancement of human dignity. Perhaps.
Others suggest that the popular pursuit of
elementary human rights by young Arabs is
breeding the virus. Maybe. There are even
those who contend that the virus is fed
by an incipient Arab struggle for a more
democratic (or is it merely a less autocratic?)
society.

Would that some of this conjecture
was so. Perhaps some are, but slogans
are slippery, mottos are messy and
shoot-from-the-hip analyses are dicey. And
so are mass protests and public demonstrations
of discontent. They are not always what
they purport to be.

Indeed, the accuracy of the above diagnoses
of the Mideast malady is quite unconfirmed.
The true nature of the alleged Arab awakening
is subject to prolonged verification in
multiple Mideast laboratories. To be politically
correct, these laboratories are more accurately
identified as Arab nations. Not unexpectedly,
most –if not all- of these nations and their
potentates are committed –above all else- to
preserving the status quo. And that is the
redoubtable rub.

Pointedly, while Arab autocrats and Mideast
monarchs are distinctly different in multiple
regards, they do manifest one significant
common characteristic. They fight with a
defiant, dogged and seemingly fatalistic
determination to stay in power. Colonel
Qadaffi is not the exception, he is an
exemplar of this pattern.

Still, the two long-term Arab autocrats
in Tunisia and Egypt have already succumbed
to the Mideast malady. If that virus is
equally lethal to other Arab rulers, then
the potentates across the residue of the
Arab Mideast are hardly insulated from the
ravages of that implacable virus. Syria’s
President Bashir al-Assad recently protested
that Syria was immune from the turmoil. He
was wrong. Smug Saudi officials have made
similar protestations about the Saudi
populace. The Saudis may have unduly discounted
the relentless virulence of the Mideast malady.

It seems uncontrovertible that the fragmented
and fractured Arab populaces are uniformly
seeking new realities. But their aspirations
and the realities they seek are arguably as
different as are the nations they people and
the dictatorial rulers who dominate them.

In fact, the precise composition and character
of the many disparate groups that carry and/or
propagate the Mideast malady are still muddled.
Additionally, the nature of the new realities
they seek remains befogged by uncertainty,
beclouded by indecision and beset by a dirth
of demonstrable leadership. This is true in
Egypt, in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria and
elsewhere in the region. And all that, indeed,
may offer some insight into the pathology of
the relentless malady that is enveloping
and -perhaps- indefinitely paralyzing the Arab Mideast.

The often inscrutable insight of an old
Arabic aphorism may be be pertinent.
The adage suggests that “the best jihad
is telling the truth to the face of a dictator!”

Tumult In Tripoli

Some forty five years ago I was secreted into
Libya. No, I was not a CIA operative. And no,
I did not have a license, ala James Bond, to
do anything other than to hold a clandestine
meeting in Tripoli withan unusually prominent
Libyan citizen. By prearrangement, the Libyan
arrived alone an hour before me at a designated
location. Then I arrived, also alone. We
conducted a private meeting in a spartan room.
Then, also by prearrangement, the Libyan left.
After a reasonable time had elapsed, I also left
that location. At my very earliest opportunity,
I hightailed it out of Libya.

But this commentary is not about me. It is
about Libya. Indeed, in the years referred to
above, Libya was the locus of Wheelus Air Force
base. It was situated on a Mediterranean beach
on the outskirts of Tripoli. Wheelus was then
perhaps the largest U.S. Air Force base in the
world. Aircraft from that base used Libya’s
considerable desert as a convenient and
uninhabited bombing range.

In those years, King Idris I ruled Libya.
He was not terribly beloved by his subjects,
but neither was he horribly hated, except
by rabid nationalists and pan-Arabists who
disliked his cozy relationship with England
and the United States. Indeed, it can be argued
that King Idris was quite blindsided when,
in 1969, a twenty-seven year old Libyan army
captain named Muammar Qaddafi ousted him in
a bloodless coup.

From that date until this February, Libya and
Qadaffi, with a few notable exceptions,
seemed -at least on the surface- to have been
almost of one voice. Indeed, virtually from
the outset of his rule, Qaddafi has
repeatedly and viscerally protested that
Libya is an Islamic, socialist government
of the masses (jamahiriya). Theoretically,
Libya has been a direct democracy run by
communal councils which speak with the
voice of the people to the people and
for the people. Clearly, however, theory
and practice are not and have not been
birds of a feather in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

That said, upon assuming power, Col. Qaddafi
pointedly refused to promote himself from
Captain to General. He wittingly also
refrained from naming himself as President,
Ruler or Emir. In fact, it was forty years ago,
in keeping with his espoused egalitarian
ideology, that Qadaffi cast off his early
titles of prime minister and as secretary-general
of The General People’s Congress. As a matter
of and for public consumption by the Libyan
people, Qaddafi was to be no more and no
less than one of the masses.

Qaddafi’s egalitarian protestations notwithstanding,
deep down most Libyans have apparently always
fully understood who unilaterally called all
the shots and made all critical state decisions.
That awareness came into bold relief on 31 August
2006. It was then that Qaddafi - absent a scintilla
of discernible compunction, mental reservation or
emotional disquiet- blatantly urged his supporters
to kill enemies of his revolution and anyone who
sought political change in Libya.

But Qaddafi's violent and brutal propensities
have not been confined to Libya. Arguably,
Qadaffi financed the Black September
Movement which perpetrated the unspeakable
1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes.
Qaddafi was presumably behind the dastardly
1986 Berlin discotheque bombing which killed
three people and wounded hundreds, including
dozens of U.S. servicemen. It is Qadaffi
who purportedly personally authorized the
appalling 1988 downing of Pan Am Flight 103
over Lockerbie.

Premises considered, there should be little
cause for surprise that many Libyans are
now following the regime changing model so
recently set by their immediate neighbors
to the west in Tunisia and to the east
in Egypt.

What is surprising is that the West
in general and the United States in
particular seem to be painfully afflicted
with the errant notion that their adamant
verbal demands for safety, sensibility and
sanity in Libya will somehow be heeded by
that Libyan personality derisively known to
President Reagan as “The Mad Dog Of The Mideast.”