Jordan's Muslim opposition warns that Arabs ready to topple US-allied leaders across Mideast

[Joanne98]

Source: CP

AMMAN, Jordan — The leader of Jordan's powerful Muslim Brotherhood has warned that unrest in Egypt will spread across the Mideast and Arabs will topple their "tyrant" leaders allied with the U.S.

Hammam Saeed says Arabs have grown disgruntled with U.S. domination of their oil wealth, military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and its support for "totalitarian" leaders in the region.

Saeed did not specifically name Jordanian King Abdullah II — a key U.S. ally who has promised reforms in recent days in an apparent attempt to quell domestic discontent over economic troubles and a lack of political freedoms.

Saeed spoke Saturday at a rally he and some 100 leftists held outside the Egyptian Embassy in Amman.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5iRlcaHPO-now1SF3cr6MbJg3iwVw?docId=5796633

[Swede]

1. What about the ones not allied with the US?

Libya and Iran at the top of the list.

[social_critic]

40. Huh, I thought Lybia was a US ally now.

As far as I know Kaddafi made a deal and he's "friendly". Iran isn't, but the Jordanian opposition isn't about to mess with the Iranians. Don't forget the Iraqi government run al Maliki was formed only because al Sadr backed him. Al Sadr is shiite (so is Maliki), and just spent 4 years in Iran studying to be an ayatollah. So the tea leaves tell us the shiites with close ties to Iran are solidifying their power in Iraq - I bet Fox News won't tell you all about it.

On the other side, we got Syria, which is also allied with Iran. And next to Syria is Lebanon, where Hezbollah, also a shiite organization, is hunkering down and trying to re-form the government to its liking.

If one is a pragmatic politician in Jordan, asking publicly for the overthrow of the Iranian government would be kinda stupid - they would have Iraqis, Syrians, and Lebanese controlled by Hezbollah facing off across the border. What would be left to help? Israelis? That's a consolation.

[xchrom]

2. blah blah blah

you're playing the part of a legend in your own mind mr saeed.


much of the youth all across the region will be politically unaffiliated.

[Maine_Nurse]

6. It doesn't matter that they are "unaffiliated",

Basic Tactics 101 says to use any disruption of the status quo to your advantage. The communists helped the Nazis overthrow the Reichstag. Then the Nazis wiped out the communists.

If you look at Egypt, where the MB is banned, of course they would jump on the bandwagon with the youth to help topple what is there. Although the MB have long gotten people into the govt there by having them claim to be "independents", it is a trickle. With outright rebellion, the MB have a chance that the developing situation will give them openings to be legitimized or to manipulate idealistic youth to their advantage.

[Tempest]

10. For better or worse, the Muslim Brotherhood are ready to take over

And not the students.

The students are too unorganized and unprepared to take over anything.

[FLPanhandle]

12. The power vacuum will be filled by whomever is organized enough to step up.

The students may find they have gone from the frying pan into the fire.

[Tempest]

14. Maybe not

The Muslim Brotherhood isn't the boogey man Egypt and the U.S. makes them out to be.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/29/no-caring-democracy-bolton/

[FLPanhandle]

18. Who knows who will really end up with the power

Historically, when a vacuum appears, the most ruthless are the ones who tend to fill it.

[Tempest]

20. Not necessarily

The recent Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Tunisia overthrow tend to show that revolutions started by students and academics are more democratic than the rulers they threw out.

[FLPanhandle]

22. Of course there are exceptions

But they are just that...exceptions.

Like I said, historically the ones who grab power aren't the best ones.

Right now, no one knows who is going to fight their way into the new leadership position. The new leaders may make the old one look like a saint.

[Tempest]

23. Looking at something from a historical perspective tends to ignore current realities

We don't know what will happen in Egypt, but there are clear indications it won't be as bad as the current regime.

[Robb]

25. Ignore history at your own peril.

It's not Iran in 1979, but it ain't Cuba in 1959, either.

[Tempest]

27. Not ignoring history, just keeping it in perspective

But thanks for playing.


I also notice you failed to provide any evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood's so-called ties to radicals.

MAJOR FAIL!

[Robb]

30. LOL OK.

I'll just point out that the enemy of your enemy? Not always your friend. :hi:

[Tempest]

32. I never claimed otherwise

Read my posts again without the knee jerk reaction and you'll see it.

[Robb]

33. You keep wanting to make this about me.

You've got a good argument; I just don't agree with it. There's nothing "knee jerk" about decades of history informing my opinion on the Muslim Brotherhood.

You may be right -- one of my heroes renounced a lifetime of violence to make peace in South Africa. It happens.

I'm not convinced it's happening right now. This doesn't mean I wouldn't be delighted to be wrong. :hi:

[Tempest]

36. You're basing your belief on the past and ignoring current realities

You're completely ignoring that the Muslim Brotherhood isn't on any U.S. terror watch list and was removed from the U.N.'s terror financing list, nor have they been linked to any terrorist act in decades.

[Robb]

38. Yes, the Provos renounced violence as well.

The last car bomb in Belfast? http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/26/us-irish-bomb-police-idUSTRE70P7I720110126">Wednesday.

I'm telling you there are people in conflicts like this who never put their guns down, no matter who has blown the whistle. Again, I'd love to be wrong.

[FLPanhandle]

39. The current reality is that no one knows who will be in power

Someone from the Brotherhood, a faction of that group, another group, a collection of lesser groups.

I give them a 50-50 chance of actually getting a better government.

[bread_and_roses]

3. "Washington's Egyptian Nightmare"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/28-7

Washington's Egyptian Nightmare

by Gary Olson

Of course U.S. policymaker's recurring nightmare is that genuine democratization breaks out in in Egypt and spreads to the oil monarchies. And one assumes that at this moment Washington is doing everything in its power to sabotage this possibility or try to mitigate the damage. In a comment that won't surprise the Arab street, Secretary of State Clinton recently credited Mubarek's police state with "looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people." ...

...One hopes the current democratic stirrings succeed in toppling the three-decade old Mubarak dictatorhsip and then spread to Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and beyond. As Egyptian journalist Hossam El-Hamabwy recently noted about Tunisia, "We don't have only one Ben Ali in the Arab world; we have 22 Ben Alis, and they all need to go." I'm cautiously optimistic that more chickens have (finally) come home to roost in this part of the world for U.S. foreign policy and that it's yet another indicator of a declining U.S. empire.

And be damned to Clinton's mealy-mouthed "reforms." The unutterable hypocrisy of our "leaders" ....

[Turborama]

5. Good article!

Thanks for the share.

[Tempest]

11. Look what happened in South America after true democratic elections

The U.S. was marginalized and South American countries started turning to each other for support and not the U.S.

[lunatica]

4. The Muslim Brotherhood are fundamentalist Islamists

The Brotherhood's stated goal is to instill the Qur'an and Sunnah as the "sole reference point for ... ordering the life of the Muslim family, individual, community ... and state"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood

To the surprise of no one.

[azul]

9. But what will wake up "no one" to our involvement in radicalization

of people in the ME?

It should be obvious and behavior-changing to every one in the USA that every damn dollar handed over to corrupt oil regimes comes back blood-stained, wafting-off CO2, and with a usurious interest charge that will never be paid off.

The sputnik moment/Manhattan Project thingy is the electric car powered by solar panels on every roof, and enough conservation changes in power usage to close down dirty domestic coal. The MIC is forcefully telling every one not to buy it. What are you buying?

[Tempest]

13. They also denounced violence and are on Al Quada's hit list

The Egyptian brotherhood “renounced violence years ago, but its relative moderation has made it the target of extreme vilification by more radical Islamists. Al Qaeda’s leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri, started their political lives affiliated with the Brotherhood but both have denounced it for decades as too soft and a cat’s paw of Mubarak and America.” In other words, Bolton is attacking a mostly nonviolent Islamist movement that has acted as a bulwark against violent extremism. Following brutal attacks against Coptic Christians late last year, the Muslim Brotherhood unequivocally condemned the terrorism, calling for peace.

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/01/29/no-caring-democracy-bolton/

[Robb]

16. Riiiiiight.

I'll bet they did.

[Tempest]

17. Do you have evidence otherwise?

Your personal bias doesn't hold much weight around here.

[fascisthunter]

29. thank you for saying that

[Tempest]

31. Not on any U.S. terror watch list and removed from UN list

Apparently Robb prefers to live in the past with his "historical perspective".


One thing he failed to note in his Germany comparison is that the Nazi party was behind the violence that overthrew the government. That's not the case here at all. It's mostly unorganized protests that are in play.

[Robb]

34. Excuse me, where did I mention Germany or the Nazis?

Link to that, please. Perhaps I did it in my sleep. :hi:

[Tempest]

35. Sorry, I thought you agreed with another poster who made the comment

My apologies.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. A shout out to Cheney and Bush.

Now they're really bringing it on. Thanks for nuthin.

[Arctic Dave]

8. I guess the Arab world finally figured out we are at war with all of them.

Either through direct military occupation or direct support of pro western tyrants.

And people are suprised they are pissed after three decades or more of this.

[bread_and_roses]

15. "Washington's corrupt Arab dictators "

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/29

Fear Extreme Islamists in the Arab World? Blame Washington

by Jeff Cohen

... For decades beginning during the Cold War, U.S. policy in the Islamic world has been aimed at suppressing secular reformist and leftist movements. Beginning with the CIA-engineered coup against a secular democratic reform government in Iran in 1953 (it was about oil), Washington has propped up dictators, coaching these regimes in the black arts of torture and mayhem against secular liberals and the left.

...talk comes easy in U.S. media where Egyptian victims of rape and torture in Mubarak's jails are never seen. Where it's rarely emphasized that weapons of repression used against Egyptian demonstrators are paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Where Mubarak is almost always called "president" and almost never "dictator" (unlike the elected president of Venezuela).

When U.S. media glibly talk about the Egyptian and Tunisian "presidents" being valued "allies in the war on terror," it's no surprise they offer no details about the prisoners the U.S. has renditioned to these "pro-Western" countries for torture.

[Tempest]

19. US reported 'routine' police brutality in Egypt, WikiLeaks cables show

Police brutality in Egypt is "routine and pervasive" and the use of torture so widespread that the Egyptian government has stopped denying it exists, according to leaked cables released today by WikiLeaks.

The batch of US embassy cables paint a despairing portrait of a police force and security service in Egypt wholly out of control. They suggest torture is routinely used against ordinary criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/egypt-police-brutality-torture-wikileaks

[roamer65]

21. This road eventually leads to Riyadh.

The House of Saud should be very worried.

[Tempest]

24. And the U.S. is worried right along with them

It would be a major blow to U.S. interests in the Middle East should S.A. fall.

[ProgressIn2008]

26. My thoughts, too -- I was just reading about K. Abdullah's reaction to Egypt. nt

[roamer65]

28. Arabs are getting sick of the Saudi-American hegemony.

Notice how the unrest is spreading to countries all around Saudi Arabia.

Abdullah should be very worried.

[social_critic]

41. Don't forget israel

The US Backs Mubarak because he plays nice with the Israelis. The Saudis don't really factor that much in this game, they'll donate money to the Muslim brotherhood after it takes over Egypt. They may give MORE money to the Muslim brotherhood, which is Hamas' base station anyway.

[newspeak]

44. you don't think they finally read the PNAC agenda?

Of course, one must giggle at the concept of "creating democracy" in the ME, when we have been more than willing to deal with those with the worst human rights abuses in the world. And, SA already has their religious police thugs under the House of Saud. It seems that the Wahhabis have influence under the House of Saud, would things change?

[fedsron2us]

37. Official unemployment rate for Saudi Arabia is 10%

The real rate among the young is probably much higher.

Plenty of poverty and even homelessness hidden away in the Saudi kingdom despite its vast oil wealth.

[newspeak]

45. I wonder how much the House of Saud

actually shares with their people? They seem to live a very obscenely grand opulent lifestyle. Would too many unemployed and more falling into poverty, tip the scales for action?

[daleo]

42. Peak oil people

Expected political unrest in the middle east about the time oil production began to level off. It's an interesting confluence of events, though cause and effect can't be definitively established.

[social_critic]

43. Cause and effect can't be established with peak oil

But you may be able to link it to food prices. Which is associated a little bit with the conversion of land to grow biofuels in the USA. Which is associated with peak oil.

Which reminds me I need to go fill up.