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Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”
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Thinkers Forum USA January 2014 Lecture Meeting
Arab Spring and Liberal Democracy
In Continuation of the Article post on TF 4/13/2013
“THE ORIGIN OF DEMOCRACY AND ITS ROLE TODAY”
By Mirza Iqbal Ashraf
On Sunady, January 26, 2014 at 3;00 PM
At
48 New Main Street, Haverstraw, N.Y. 10927
SYNOPSIS: Since the first waves of revolts launched as ‘Arab Spring’ swept the Arab world, it seems uncertain that western liberal democracy will take hold in that part of the world. So far there are no signs that the future of Democracy in the Arab world is bright. Without any doubt one of the key question is whether Islam is compatible with democracy? Whether the basic concept of divine sovereignty and man as a divine-viceroy adopted by the ruling elite or the military dictators, are willing to give up power in favor of the popular sovereignty? Is it the religion of Islam, or the tribal cultural and traditional ethos, or the astonishingly only poetically based literary and cultural heritage of the pre-Islamic Arabic language and literature, barricading the emergence of liberal democracy? Is the Spanish concept of “Twine Toleration” that may consolidated liberal democracy in Arab world intertwined with the belief of the religious-oriented masses and the political leaders can help indigenize a form of liberal democracy? Is there a possibility that the Arabs should not conclude that politics and religion have a common object, but that in the beginning stages of a nation “one serves as an instrument of the other.” Or the Middle Eastern should follow what the renowned America poet Walt Whitman reflected upon liberal democracy as: “. . . For I say at the core of democracy, finally, is the religious element. All the religions, old and new, are there.” And what President Barack Hussain Obama views, “. . . Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.” And much more to express, know and discuss for all of us.
Mirza Ashraf
The Arab Sunset
The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies
Since their modern formation in the mid-twentieth century, Saudi Arabia and the five smaller Gulf monarchies — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — have been governed by highly autocratic and seemingly anachronistic regimes. Nevertheless, their rulers have demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of bloody conflicts on their doorsteps, fast-growing populations at home, and modernizing forces from abroad.
One of the monarchies’ most visible survival strategies has been to strengthen security ties with Western powers, in part by allowing the United States, France, and Britain to build massive bases on their soil and by spending lavishly on Western arms. In turn, this expensive militarization has aided a new generation of rulers that appears more prone than ever to antagonizing Iran and even other Gulf states. In some cases, grievances among them have grown strong enough to cause diplomatic crises, incite violence, or prompt one monarchy to interfere in the domestic politics of another.
It would thus be a mistake to think that the Gulf monarchies are somehow invincible. Notwithstanding existing internal threats, these regimes are also facing mounting external ones — from Western governments, from Iran, and each other. And these are only exacerbating their longstanding conflicts and inherent contradictions.
HOME BASES
As a proportion of GDP, the Gulf monarchies’ purchases make them the biggest arms buyers in the world.
The existence of substantial Western military bases on the Arabian Peninsula has always been problematic for the Gulf monarchies. To their critics, the hosting of non-Arab, non-Muslim armies is an affront to Islam and to national sovereignty. Their proliferation will likely draw further criticism, and perhaps serve as yet another flashpoint for the region’s opposition movements.
Among the largest Western installations in the Gulf is al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which owes its existence to the country’s former ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. In 1999, al-Thani told the United States that he would like to see 10,000 American servicemen permanently based in the emirate, and over the next few years, the United States duly began shifting personnel there from Saudi Arabia. Today, al-Udeid houses several thousand U.S. servicemen at a time and has also served as a forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), a U.S. Air Force expeditionary air wing, a CIA base, and an array of U.S. Special Forces teams. Nearby Bahrain hosts the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the entire U.S. Fifth Fleet, which includes some 6,000 U.S. personnel. The United States recently downsized its force in Kuwait, but four U.S. infantry bases remain, including Camp Patriot, which is believed to house about 3,000 U.S. soldiers and two air bases.
The United States plans to further expand its regional military presence in the near future. As CENTCOM recently announced, the country will be sending the latest U.S. antimissile systems to at least four Gulf states. These are new versions of the Patriot anti-missile batteries that the United States already sent to the region and are meant to assuage the Gulf rulers’ fears of Iranian missile attacks. Tellingly, the announcement did not reveal exactly which states had agreed to take the U.S. weapons. Yet analysts widely assume that the unnamed states are Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE.
To read the rest of the article, please click the hyper-link…
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140096/christopher-davidson/the-arab-sunset
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