By Joseph J. Honick
We seem to be frozen in our tracks trying to figure out what really we can do in response to the current Middle East rolling rebellions except to make a series of high level threatening demands in the apparent belief someone is listening or affected.
It would be folly to believe that Egyptian dictator Hasni Mubarak stepped down and fled Cairo because President Obama through is press secretary defined the term "now" for him to go. It’s a little like thinking that because President Reagan demanded that Mr. Gorbachev "take down that wall" is why the angry East Berliners did it on their own.
One of the overriding concern in the current uprisings is that, while we applaud without reservations the courageous rebels, we really do not know who they are, who their leaders are and what the world can expect when the noise dies down in all the affected places. The Wall Street Journal noted that the rebel "government" listed the names of only 10 of the 31 people on the newly minted "Libyan National Council."
It should have been of interest the other day when a newspaper article asserted that a "rebel leader" had rejected any deal with Libyan boss Gadaffi. Now that is indeed fascinating because I had not heard any indication of a "leader" nor who it might be and how he became the boss of any movement.
What’s more, no one in the lax media looking only for battle photos and interviews had even bothered to pursue these questions. Indeed, is their anyone in the front of battling rebels who issues commands at propitious times or do they merely stand around first, hoist a drink and then shout "Let’s Go!"?
Surely by now there must be some kind of communications network, lest one rebel group start firing on another or starts demanding the right to captured weapons and other useful stuff.
I tried to raise some of these questions in an earlier piece (Mideast Democracy Hypocrisy) wondering if we knew whom we are supporting and who might be helping them who might not be very friendly to us and to Israel when it all shakes out.
Sadly and perhaps dangerously, we have greeted the rebels with great euphoria simply assuming they are all just brave mostly young people fed up with arrogant dictatorship, lack of jobs and other demeaning circumstances.
It might have seemed, at least to this writer, that those courageous and smart folks would have worked to create some organized leadership if only to be aware of the responses from the governments they are working to overthrow. In other such convulsions, there were designated voices presenting specific and urgent requests for help from the outside world, mainly, of course, from the United States.
You would also believe no one in the entire United States Congress is aware of these ongoing upsets that threaten to disturb nations far removed from the muddled Middle East. The daily government shutdown threats still permeate the air and the media as the Department of Defense awards massive contracts seemingly unaffected by cries for spending cuts.
In short, it is hard to believe anyone in the world is really listening to us much and as the so called "United" Nations resembles nothing more than an impotent and expensively budgeted international colossus unable to any more than wring its collective hands … about the same as we are doing.
We are not looking and sounding like world leaders and we are hardly immune to what can follow.
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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]. |