Day Late, Dollar Short

While the Obama administration dithers in deciding how to "implement" its decision to support the populist uprising in Libya beyond mere words saying that Gaddafi "must step down", the situation has become worse. But it is more serious than that. Here is an intelligence summary from a newsletter (Kforce Government Solutions Inc.'s NightWatch newsletter) that tracks security threats to the US:

General comment: The general theme in the weekend protests is the youth movement appears to be fading. It claims credit for forcing two heads of state to resign, but that was actually intra-palace politics involving the armed forces. Libya's counter-revolution has encouraged all the tough-gut, hardline regimes to stand firm. Thus far, there are no revolutions.

In instability theory, the side with the most guns, including bullets, always wins. Libya is proving that point once again.

Some governments have made promises of modest political reforms, but even Egypt appears to be making only cosmetic changes by amending the constitution. All governments have regrouped and recovered. All promises are reversible. The movement appears to have peaked and does not look sustainable.

Some implications. First, the Arab youth lacks leadership, insight and planning. It poses no threat to anyone except itself. Western education and exposure made young Arabs feel uncomfortable without providing any practical sense about how to carry off a revolution or move for more acceptable changes. Modern technology seems to have tempted young Arabs with illusions of invincibility that provide no protection against real bullets.

The western democracies are out of energy and idealism for now. Having spent vast resources for modest results in the past decade in Iraq and especially Afghanistan, they are not inclined to get involved with the Arab youth. Western pressure is no threat to authoritarian regimes in Muslim countries, aside from insipid statements about unacceptable behavior and feckless sanctions. Qadhafi's vengeance on the rebels will be limited only by his own and his western-educated children's imaginations, provided they win.
The message thus far is a strong preference for regimes that are, regardless of their illegitimate antecedents and disreputable histories. Even governments that are the products of revolution have proven suspicious of and hesitant to deal with revolutionary movements.

The youth exposed vulnerabilities that wiser, more sophisticated enemies will exploit in the future. The Islamists, for example, will have obtained a better sense of the vulnerabilities of the authoritarian regimes and their strengths. When they make their move against the kingdoms, they will have benefited from the pending failure of the youth movement.

So much for "democracy sweeping the Arab world". Instead, the above cynical experts see only a win for the forces of darkness (both authoritarian governments and Al Qaeda wannabes). They will learn lessons from this and continue their death choke on the Muslim world.

What I find most disheartening is the idea that the idiotic and wasteful wars in Afghanistan and Iraq meant that governments were "exhausted" and not able to take advantage of the opportunity to spread democracy here. That makes no sense. Those wars cost well over a trillion dollars and 5,000 American lives. Assisting the popular revolts might have cost $100 million and maybe 2 or 3 lives. To say that you are "too exhausted" to do the latter because you did the former is to say that a man dying of thirst has crawled across a 200 mile desert but when he is within 10 feet of a glistening, fresh water pool, he just "doesn't have the energy" to crawl those 10 final feet. Nutty!