Reading the Arab Street

Below is my comment, currently pending approval, on Terry Glavin's otherwise excellent piece on Libya (and the great wimpish one currently sitting in the Oval Office wringing his hands and/or practicing his putt).

"Good on President Garcia, but I have to ask, how many Peruvian nationals are waiting in Tripoli or elsewhere (or trying to get to Tripoli) so they can be safely evacuated?

As we have seen, the Libyan regime has considerable control over the speed and efficiency, or even the very existence, of the process of evacuating foreign nationals.

They call the shots about who gets landing/docking rights and as such, they can delay the departure of foreigners and by extension, any overt action on the part of the countries whose people are stranded there.

And then there's the Skylink insurance thingy, just to make things interesting.

God-Damned-Daffy can do a lot of damage in the meantime, and can instantly declare hudna once every foreign national is out which could very well leave him lying in his luxurious tent until the next time the spirit moves him to crack down of the betrayers of the revolution.

It's all very fine to declare a no-fly zone, which will undoubtedly reduce Ghadafi's capacity to rape, pillage and murder, but the keyword there is reduce, not eliminate, and maybe just postpone.

In the meantime, we have the world paralyzed due to their fear of being too much like the much reviled Dubya.  After all, Libya has oil and no blood for oil is the new modus operandi."

But once foreign nationals are out, all bets should be off, IMHO. I'm fully aware that many of my "right" thinking colleagues have long ago washed their hands of the notions that Arabs may actually want to modernize and live by and under that suite of contemporary enlightenment values we call human rights, equality, etc. etc., but I am not one of them. I've met too many Arabs in my life, including Iraqis and Egyptians, to know that not to be true. It's the thugs in power and the cozy arrangement they have made with Islamists, that have created the stereotype and benefit from our wholesale acceptance of it.

Next time the streets and rooftops of Tehran are filled with young people wearing green armbands, listen to what they are shouting.

"Allahuakbar!!"

That's right. "God is Great!!"

Given the fact that the people of Iran have lived under the pre-eminent Islamist tyranny for decades, that cry is hardly a rallying call to embrace Islamism, is it? What it is, is a cry for justice and freedom. The same can be said of those on the so called Arab street in Cairo, Tunis, Saana, Tripoli, Manama and elsewhere over the past few weeks. If we ignore it or mis-read it, it is to our peril - and our shame.