By Edmond Y. Azadian
The political turmoil artificially created in the Arab and Muslim world has come to be named euphemistically as the Arab Spring, as if promising a better future for the citizens of that region. Instead, political instability, economic collapse and bloodbaths have come to be associated with that spring.
As one observes carefully, that “spring” visits certain specific countries, while others are bypassed. And that selection is based on the political orientation of the target country.
The avowed promise of the “spring” is to bring democracy, human rights and freedom to the nations subjected to the breeze of that gentle season. For example, that “spring” never visits a country like Saudi Arabia — a most reactionary country where people’s limbs are chopped off based on antiquated medieval laws and women not only rank as second-class citizens but they are bought and sold much like cattle in marriage. In the same category are Kuwait and the Emirates where the majority of foreign workers are treated as slaves, while the ruling class enjoys obscene opulence.
These are the darling allies of the US and enjoy the political epithet of “moderate,” truth notwithstanding. But the main reason that the breeze of that “spring” does not blow in their direction is because they are never perceived as a threat to our strategic ally, Israel. Thus, the rest of the Arab and Muslim countries are entitled to benefit from that “spring.”
The Middle East correspondent of London’s Independent, Robert Fiske, has pointed out the irony of the Arab Spring, where a medieval despotic kingdom like Saudi Arabia is engaged in an open war to bring democracy to Syria, the only Muslim-majority country where political Islam has no place, or at least did not until hired mercenaries were sent to destabilize that strong, progressive, and yes, authoritarian country. Saddam Hussein of Iraq was the first victim of that policy concocted elsewhere in the West and exported to the most stable countries.
