Storms in the Arab Spring
My friends in Egypt are sounding both irritated and frustrated. There are a lot of incidents that indicate that the far right (financially strong) control their media, and many progressive voices are being blacked out. There's probably a lot more to it than that, but I rely on Google translate, and Arabic often turns into abstract poetry in English.
The Pakistanis are rounding up the people who informed us about OBL. What can we do about that? Not much. I suspect that the recent spate of top al-Q people being killed is a result of info gleaned from the OBL kill site. Once that's exhausted, will we make nice with Pakistan again? How can we not, short of a massive military effort to take away all their nukes and nuke making facility? ... and if we did that we'd have to do the same thing against India, Iran, North Korea, and Israel. Pretty expensive and unpopular move.
The Syria thing is pretty nasty looking. Libya is ugly, Yemen is frightening. Isn't there some war in Afghanistan?
Yet, in spite of all the nastiness, I'm still feeling hope that the world will emerge better than it was a year ago... it just won't be quick.
Of course this isn't an Arab Spring issue, but Greece is looking bad now too. Except the problem there is that the people have some ridiculous idea about not wanting to pay more taxes, but still having a social support network. They starved the beast, and it turns out the beast was pretty nice to have. Now, they have a generation of people who are going to pay the bills under adverse circumstances. No one is happy, but there is no way to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Interesting Times.
The Pakistanis are rounding up the people who informed us about OBL. What can we do about that? Not much. I suspect that the recent spate of top al-Q people being killed is a result of info gleaned from the OBL kill site. Once that's exhausted, will we make nice with Pakistan again? How can we not, short of a massive military effort to take away all their nukes and nuke making facility? ... and if we did that we'd have to do the same thing against India, Iran, North Korea, and Israel. Pretty expensive and unpopular move.
The Syria thing is pretty nasty looking. Libya is ugly, Yemen is frightening. Isn't there some war in Afghanistan?
Yet, in spite of all the nastiness, I'm still feeling hope that the world will emerge better than it was a year ago... it just won't be quick.
Of course this isn't an Arab Spring issue, but Greece is looking bad now too. Except the problem there is that the people have some ridiculous idea about not wanting to pay more taxes, but still having a social support network. They starved the beast, and it turns out the beast was pretty nice to have. Now, they have a generation of people who are going to pay the bills under adverse circumstances. No one is happy, but there is no way to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Interesting Times.