By Joseph J. Honick
The shock and awe of the explosions in the Middle East should come as no surprise to Western governments, especially the U.S. In fact, we should be ashamed of ourselves, both for having tolerated the dictators of those nations now in turmoil while we preached democracy loudly … and for intelligence agencies hardly on top of what should have been primary concerns all along.
But the worst shame comes from the embarrassment of how we so warmly embraced people like Mubarak and especially Gadaffi. In the latter case, it was not all that long ago when Britain’s Tony Blair and President George Bush warmly and physically embraced Gadaffi just as that wonderfully hypocritical body called the United Nations proudly and shamelessly welcomed this admitted killer back to the “family of nations.”
Not only did the world witness this embarrassing display with some modest and quiet disgust, it was then treated to the U.K. suddenly releasing the only person convicted of the slaughters on the PanAm flight over Lockerbie on the phony excuse the man was dying of prostate cancer. Adding to the insult, we saw this murderer welcomed back to the Arab world as a hero!
Worse than anything else, we have never yet admitted our shameful cooperation with all of this or even any complaint when it was all over. Certainly that “peacekeeping” UN has hardly registered much of anything at all…then or even now a massive and important part of the world is bubbling with revolution instigated against people who deserved it but with no knowledge of who is leading the revolts and what they themselves represent.
Few realize that the U.N. shamelessly named Libya to its Human Rights Council!
Nor was all this a fact of life in Libya alone. We have indulged dictatorships and other undemocratic regimes across the Middle East for years in order to maintain military bases and oil access. It is not as if we could completely alter what had been the history and culture of those nations, but it is a fact we represented the continuing flow of what ultimately totaled trillions of dollars into those economies, and oil industry corporations have been a sustained presence of major proportions. It is more than possible such presences might have nudged governments toward more generous treatment of their people if only to protect oil fields now threatened by civil unrest.
The fact the West has had little to no intensive relationship with those nations beyond occasional conflicts and massive oil flow was clearly demonstrated by our lack of intelligence warnings so that we find ourselves embarrassed and without a rational strategy to meet the current upheaval.
Adding to the serious nature of what is transpiring are the following at a minimum:
- We really do not know the quality or nature of what and who will replace the governments currently overthrown or in the process of such actions;
- We do not know what kind of “ransom” we might have to pay to help calm the region to insure the steady flow of oil;
- We do not know how any new alliances of revolutionaries will impact Israel’s security and how Israel will respond;
- We do not know how big the “peace price tag” will be;
- We have learned neither we nor those seeking new lives can count on any creative or intensive response from the so called “United” Nations.
And those are just a few of the realties that have to be faced as we ourselves battle our own internal political unrest and horrendous commitments to a war we don’t know to conclude and ongoing economic stresses of our own.
In this vacuum, the hope must be for those who pose as concerned and competent political and governmental leaders to council together with leaders of all affected nations to find solutions. It is also time for the powerful oil giants who’ve reaped fortunes by sucking out the precious liquid that drives the world to demonstrate innovative and realistic concerns.
So far, as one uprising follows another, we have shown little to suggest we can take the mantle in a time that cries out for courageous and unrelenting leadership. President Obama could start the process by sitting down first with his political oppositions to demonstrate some unity in mission, and then with his fellow key national leaders.
Unless just those critical steps are taken promptly, there is no word for the real chaos to follow from which we will not be immune.
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Joseph J. Honick is an international consultant
to business and government and writes for many publications,
including huntingtonnews.net. Honick can be reached
at [email protected]. |