Via TPM’s intriguing new “Egypt wire”, this:
- President Obama was reportedly briefed for 40 minutes on the situation in Egypt today. Here, a photo of his meeting with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; Chief of Staff Bill Daley; Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes; Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; National Security Council Chief of Staff Denis McDonough; John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; and Robert Cardillo, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Intelligence Integration.
What is notable is the absence of anyone in the group who has any serious knowledge about either Egypt or the broader region.
So thorough-going has been the witch-hunt that AIPAC and its attack dogs have conducted over the past 25 years against anyone with real Middle East expertise that the U.S. government now contains no-one at the higher (or even mid-career) levels of policymaking who has any in-depth understanding of the region or of the aspirations of its people.
The campaign against anyone with regional expertise– the so-called “State Department Arabists”– was launched in the public sphere by the dreadful know-nothing Robert Kaplan, in the 1980s. It got a strong foothold throughout the federal bureaucracy– and far more broadly than in just the State department– with the arrival of Pres. Clinton in 1993. Clinton, that is, who brought along as his key advisers on the affairs of the whole region the two long-time pro-Israel activists Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk! Then, of course, under GWB, we had Elliott Abrams and rest of the neocons running regional affairs for the government.
And what was happening inside the State Department during all those years? Only hacks like Jeffrey Feltman or Donald Blome– the list is endless… — who could prove their unswerving loyalty to the pro-Israel agenda got promoted or retained. Throughout those 16 years of the Clinton and GWB presidencies, a generation of career diplomats grew up whose main mantra was to do nothing that might question or even upset Israel. (There were, of course, those heroic few who questioned the prevailing, AIPAC-fueled “wisdom” on the advisability of invading Iraq in 2003, who resigned their posts at the time.)
So now, in the Oval Office, we have the blind leading the blind and the blind advising the blind. No Chas Freeman, no Bill Quandt, no Rob Malley… (The list of those excluded on ideological grounds is pretty long, too.) No-one, in short, who can integrate into the advice the President desperately needs to hear any real understanding of how the peoples of the region think and how the regional system actually works. God save us all from their self-inflicted ignorance.
So now, in the Oval Office, we have the blind leading the blind and the blind advising the blind.
priceless!
the blind advising the blind
Hope those blind advice the blind US economy not just advising US government to print 600 Billion money note without cover.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
Press Release
28 January 2011
Egyptian authorities urged to rein in security forces
Amnesty International has urged the Egyptian authorities to rein in security forces to prevent further deaths of protesters, amid continuing nationwide protests.
Thousands have joined demonstrations across Egypt in recent days against poverty, police abuse and corruption.
“The Egyptian authorities must rein in the security forces to prevent bloodshed,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.
“The authorities cannot continue to rely on the 30-year-old State of Emergency to enforce a blanket prohibition on public demonstrations and grant sweeping powers of search and arrest.”
The organization said protesters must have the right to organize protests and demonstrate free from intimidation, violence, and the threat of detention and prosecution.
Late last night communication lines to much of Egypt were severely disrupted, with internet connections and mobile phone services being cut off.
This followed disruption to SMS services, Twitter and Bambuser earlier in the week. Prominent human rights activists had also had their mobile phone accounts deactivated.
“By taking this dramatic step of stopping the flow of information between Egyptians the authorities have shown the lengths to which they will go to remove the right to peaceful protest,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.
Amnesty International has condemned Egyptian security forces’ disproportionate and unnecessary use of live rounds and lethal force against protesters, which yesterday reportedly led to the death of another demonstrator.
Amnesty International has received information that 22-year-old Ahmed Atef was killed yesterday in North Sinai when security forces in the town of Sheikh Zuweid opened fire on a crowd of more than 1000 demonstrators. Seven protesters were reportedly killed in the north-eastern city of Suez.
There have now been at least eight people killed and many more injured in the popular unrest across Egypt that has seized the country since Tuesday.
At least 1120 protesters have been detained by the Egyptian security forces, according to figures gathered by lawyers and human rights organizations.
A number of detained protesters have told Amnesty International that they were beaten up during arrest and in detention at the Central Security camps, and denied adequate medical care.
Yesterday eight members of board of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, including Eissam Aryan and Mohamed Mursi, were arrested, as well as 20 other leaders from various governorates.
Background
Under international law police may use force only when strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty. In particular, they must not use firearms against persons except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury.
Charges against protesters have included gathering, assault on security forces, damaging public property and disrupting traffic. These charges have often been used by the authorities in order to curb freedom of assembly and deny Egyptians the right to peaceful demonstrations.
Public Document
****************************************
For more information please call Amnesty International’s press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 or email: press@amnesty.org
International Secretariat, Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW, UK
http://www.amnesty.org
People all over the Arabian world need a certain political perspective to be able to win what they are seeking: a life with basic human rights and a complete democratic political system. Therefore we should publish the following two statements which show a direct link between the situation in North Africa and the Theory of Permanent Revolution – the only solution for the masses of suppressed people all over the Arabian world:
http://wsws.org/ar/articles/2011/jan2011/tune-j22.shtml (arab)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/jan2011/pers-j17.shtml (english)
The U.S. should stay out of Egypt’s business. I was very surprised at the comments of Joe Biden but he does seem to be a loose cannon politically.
For long time ME citizens under heavy handed regimes although Arab citizen their sacrifices were huge and massive due to bad and unwise ruling of their states by bad leaders from take them to wars to bad economy built on thuggish state’s assets and money leaving millions suffering to die limits made their livelihood of Arab citizen miserable if not inhumane, not speaking about those ME citizens who are through unlawfully in mass numbers for years because they are apposing their rulers.
Time come these folk should go or let the some one who can lead for the better of the people of ME.
Attack dogs?
This may be deleted as conspiracy nonsense but my father’s colleague, John Montgomery (both working in the Truman Administration) with State died with a bullet the back of his head on Christmas Eve at a US Army facility in Kansas as his wife and three small children and an infant were on the way to celebrate Christmas together.
His PhD thesis (done at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Princeton) was that the US engagement and nurture of an Israeli state would not be in the long term strategic interest of the US. Following his work he was a small rising start at State. He and others like him were a threat the the emerging Zionist state that depended on US support. He and others like must be eliminated.
He paid for his intellectual honesty with a framed suicide. (check the rate of State “suicides” in the 50’s.)
Review the archives of the dissertations done at the Woodrow Wilson Center during this time.
Perhaps this fine man and others like him who spoke the truth and are now forgotten will be remembered.
Helena,
Not true.
Go to the State Department site and look up William J. Burns, who is the Undersecretary for Political Affairs, the highest ranking career position in the Sate Department.
I can assure you, Mr. Burns knows the Middle East.
Very true, Helena. And confirmation of the old saw that, given enough rope, the rogues will hang themselves.
In this case the rogues are those who have been substituting their subscription to the wishes of the powerful, for independent thought. And an appreciation of the wealth and power of potential patrons, for moral judgement.
The most notorious example-if one excludes politicians-is Secretary of Defence Gates who made a career out of assuring his superiors that the Soviet Union was developing secret weapons of amazing power with which it was preparing to launch attacks on western europe.
From Obama, to Biden, to Daley, to Clinton, to Gates, to Dennis Ross downwards we are dealing with people who, though they have assured us that they know the difference between chalk and cheese, have never actually been asked to point it out.
The political system, in which candidates are surrounded by speech writers and policy coaches and rarely exposed to direct questioning, allows pretentious gasbags to flourish, while it penalises those who try to think for themselves as weird, anti-social, nerds or bookworms or cranks.
Such exotica, the Kucinichs, Cynthia McKinleys even the Deans are then hunted down and destroyed.
An Empire whose most powerful commentators are the like of Bill O’Reilly, Wolf Blitzer and Tom Friedman, was never likely to last long in a world in which some peoples (like the Egyptians) take politics seriously enough to die fighting, barehanded, against the odds.
This would be a very good time for another bout of isolationism: countries which aren’t interested in the world, should not try to rule it.
Bill Burns. Okay, I’d give him a ‘B’ on understanding the region. But since that is a better degree of knowledge than anyone else in that Oval office meeting, why was he not there? The Prez cannot make the decisions he needs to make by listening only to the advice of warmed-over political hacks like most of the ones in that photo. He needs to hear directly from people with long and broad experience in the affairs of the region. Too bad the political hacks (among whom I certainly include long-time Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) have shut any such advice completely out of any effective positions in his administration.
Brilliant post Helena!
Blind leading blind, indeed. Need some new speech-writers, too.
PLEASE ASK TPM to put a DATE AND PLACE (e.g., Jan 28, 12:01 GMT) on this (otherwise) fascinating and useful list of events. Kinda like to know WHEN something happens.