Ben Stein: "Arab Spring" is a fraud

Now, I am going to tell you the truth about the so-called "Arab Spring," and about the Middle East generally right now. First, the "Arab Spring" as a force for democracy, human rights and peace in Egypt seems to me to be a fraud. The dictator and his entourage who were kicked out in Egypt were pro-West, a bit restrained on Israel, open to free enterprise, and resistant to Iranian-sponsored terror.

Egypt is now rapidly becoming anti-Israel, pro-Iran, pro the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group Hamas, and very far from being pro-human rights. They are arresting businessmen right and left in Egypt just for the crime of being successful. They have arrested Mubarak's sons, and have said they plan to try Mubarak.

The most potent of the political forces in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, hates the United States, loathes Israel, condemns the killing of bin Laden (whom they praised as a martyr), and have been wedded to terror for their entire existence.

Oh, P.S, they are closely connected with Adolph Hitler. They will probably take over Egypt completely sooner or later....

Has anyone noticed that the common denominator of all the successful Arab street movements is that they are sympathetic to Iran? When the dust settles, Iran is going to own the Middle East - except for maybe Saudi Arabia, if we have the guts to help them (which I very much doubt).

We are going to lose our pals in Bahrain - not nice guys, but pals of the U.S.A. anyway - and we are going to lose our pals in Yemen, and it will possibly have an actual al Qaeda government.

There is a gigantic regional coup by Iran taking place. We are doing very little, if anything, to stop it...

There is another dimension, and that is that the Hebrews, later Israelites and Judaeans/Jews, were an Amorite people; their name in their own language was Habiru, cf. the original tribal name of the Assyrians, Shubiru, who were also Amorites (the "hateful Amurru" of the Babylonian chronicles), i.e. members of the second wave of Semitic outmigration from the rapidly desiccating Arabian Peninsula (the original Paradise, a.k.a. "the land of milk and honey", which even the Romans called "Arabia Felix", i.e. "Happy Arabia").

During the 9th, 10th, and 11th Dynasties of Egypt, the Nile Delta received immigrants from the Fertile Crescent called "Hyksos" -- they were Semites, and it is supposed that Joseph and the Hebrews were among them. Eventually, the Egyptians reconquered the Hyksos kingdoms that had sprung up on Egyptian land in the last days of the 11th and then the 12th ("Middle Kingdom") Dynasties. Presumably this is when the Hebrews began their Biblical 400 years of slavery under the pharaohs, ending under Ramesses II of the brilliant 18th Dynasty, early in the 14th century BC.

who is this Ben Stein character.....

He is an author, actor, and gameshow host. He writes often on business matters for e.g. Barron's weekly. He wrote a series of Barron's articles, and then a book, about the Predators' Ball movers and shakers -- Michael Milken was the leader, Boone Pickens, Saul Steinberg, Carl Icahn, Nelson Peltz, Ron Perelman, and other "raiders" of the 80's.

Stein also writes about politics, Hollywood, celebrity, and movieland. He appeared as the dull-voiced teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and several other Hollywood "A"- and "B"-movies, a number of TV productions, and a TV game show called Win Ben Stein's Money.

Okay, wise guy. What's your theory? The Code Pink slut and both Ayers and Dohrn were all in Egypt just as a coincidence as the flotilla gig was going down? They weren't carrying messages from Obama? Obama's undercutting Mubarak was a coincidence?

My theory is certainly better than the one you are offering. So Obama, using his "courriers" Ayers and Dohrn have initiated the Arab Awakening? Obama and his pals in the MB started all of this in Tunisia and then moved on to Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria, and Libya. What nonsense.

What ignited all of this was an outcry over food prices. The entire Middle East with the exception of Israel has been ruled by corrupt tyrants who have used secret police and force to put down any opposition. Many of the same conditions that broke up the Soviet Union exist in the Middle East. These conditions existed long before Obama took office.

If you recall, Obama was slow to the dance. Initially, he was not calling for the removal of Mubarak. In fact, the envoy he sent to Mubarak, Frank Wisner, urged Mubarak to finish his term and stay in power as part of an orderly transition, i.e., write his own legacy. Obama had to distance himself from that assessment eventually saying the Mubarak had to go, which angered the Saudis. In fact, the Saudis are still angry, which is why they did not increase oil production when the events in Libya reduced global production.

Obama and the US have little control over what is going on now in the Middle East. Forces have been unleashed that will take some time to settle down and give us an idea as to the eventual outcome.

I have lived 7 years in the Middle East and been to almost all the countries in the region (including North Africa) except for Syria and Libya. The conditions in the region finally reached a boiling point. The people realize that their problems are caused by their own leadership, not Israel and the US.

Revolutions can sometimes have unintended consequences like in Iran. Carter, Vance, et. al. helped grease the skids for the Shah including counseling him not to use force against the oppostion which was composed businessmen, the intelligentsia, students, exiles, and clerics. Ultimately, Khomeini hijacked the Iranian Revolution and we and the Iranian people got someone far worse than the Shah. The same may happen in Egypt and in Libya.

Obama is not the puppeteer in the Middle East, he is the puppet to be manipulated.

My theory is certainly better than the one you are offering. ..... What nonsense.

What ignited all of this was an outcry over food prices. ....These conditions existed long before Obama took office.

The conditions that led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire likewise existed for many, many years -- for over a century -- before the freezing, moonlit night in December, 405, when five invasion columns of something like a quarter of a million Germans crossed the frozen Rhine and turned one of history's pages.

They crossed in a coordinated fashion. That was what defeated the Roman defense strategies of the previous 200 years and more, going back to Marcus Aurelius. The field armies of flying columns of heavy, cataphractary cavalry organized by Gallienus in the 260's could beat down one irruption after another, and serially beat down two or three -- but not five, if they were coordinated. And they were. Four years later, Honorius recalled his troops from Britain to help, but it wasn't enough. It was Game Over for the West.

For a strategy like that to succeed, someone has to give a signal when the time is right. Obama dropped the handkerchief by signalling to the MB that the United States would not give substantial practical help to the Egyptians, Bahrainis, and Yemenis.

Initially, he was not calling for the removal of Mubarak. In fact, the envoy he sent to Mubarak, Frank Wisner, urged Mubarak to finish his term....

That's what he told them -- it's called dissembling. Easy for a lifelong dissembler, and well-understood throughout the Middle East. It's just that a U.S. President hasn't done that before. Not to America's friends.

Ben Stein is establishing a name to facilitate running for office. He sees the Country swinging conservative, so he’s a conservative, now. Whatever it takes to earn the Congressional retirement package, that’s what Ben Stein will do!

???????????

I lost count at four wrong or questionable things. Are there more? Ben Stein already has a name in entertainment and journalism. He probably knows the "Buehler ... Buehler ..." guy could never get elected to office and is having too much fun to even want to. Whether on not the country is swinging conservative now, Ben's been a Republican for 40 years and more or less a conservative for most of that time. And I'd be surprised if he didn't already have a decent retirement portfolio. You might disagree with him about something, like his friendship with Franken, but that's no reason to run the guy down.

Obama dropped the handkerchief by signalling to the MB that the United States would not give substantial practical help to the Egyptians, Bahrainis, and Yemenis.

Exactly what "substantial practical help" could we have offered the dictators that run those countries?

That's what he told them -- it's called dissembling. Easy for a lifelong dissembler, and well-understood throughout the Middle East. It's just that a U.S. President hasn't done that before. Not to America's friends.

We have tossed "our friends" under the bus before. Remember the Shah or Batista or a host of other tyrants and dictators we have had to deal with. Nations don't have "friends," just strategic national interests.

Thanks La Lydia.

The dictator and his entourage who were kicked out in Egypt were pro-West, a bit restrained on Israel, open to free enterprise, and resistant to Iranian-sponsored terror. Egypt is now rapidly becoming anti-Israel, pro-Iran, pro the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group Hamas, and very far from being pro-human rights. They are arresting businessmen right and left in Egypt just for the crime of being successful. They have arrested Mubarak's sons, and have said they plan to try Mubarak... the Muslim Brotherhood, hates the United States, loathes Israel, condemns the killing of bin Laden (whom they praised as a martyr), and have been wedded to terror for their entire existence... they are closely connected with Adolph Hitler... the common denominator of all the successful Arab street movements is that they are sympathetic to Iran... Iran is going to own the Middle East -- except for maybe Saudi Arabia, if we have the guts to help them... Bahrain... Yemen... There is a gigantic regional coup by Iran taking place.

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Exactly what "substantial practical help" could we have offered the dictators that run those countries?

Diplomatic and moral support; police supporting services and equipment; realtime sigint and comint. Nonlethal mob-handling gear (disorienting gases, sleep gases -- hell, itching powder). Names and addresses and IP's -- intelligence around the clock. Orbiting flying intel centers (RIVET JOINT etc.), providing realtime intercepts. Background info on who's screwing Mubarak and why. We could have made it infinitely harder for the MB to turn out a flashmob without Mubarak's people knowing where, when, and how many -- and who, if there were a phat MB agitprop puke in charge.

We have tossed "our friends" under the bus before. Remember the Shah or Batista or a host of other tyrants and dictators we have had to deal with.

Batista got screwed by the International Left (formerly known as COMINTERN) working through the New York Times and other KGB exarchates manipulating American opinion. That one wasn't on us -- and we did put together the Bay of Pigs to do something about it. Too bad Jack Kennedy's guevos dropped off.

As for the Shah ..... yeah, you got me there, dragging that selfrighteous little pr*** Jimmy Carter's kill through the living room. Okay, I'll give you that one. But that's the only one I think we could really be guilty of having sold out. Maybe Somoza, but he screwed the pound-pooch when his goons executed that U.S. newsie on-camera. You don't do that to U.S. citizens, I don't care who you are. Even if it's a little liberal puke who insisted on sticking his nose into a hornet's nest.

That was Jimmuh again, by the way.

And the Vietnamese are on Ted Kennedy's conscience as he burns brightly in hell. Congress did that, not President Ford.

We stood up for, in no particular order, the Greeks, the Flips, the Turks (all against international Communists in the 50's), the Germans, the Austrians, the Izzies, the Egyptians (against Russian subversion), the Ethiopians (until Jimmuh showed up), the Afghans (until Jimmuh showed up), the Brits, the Frogs, the Taiwanese/Kuomintang, the Salvadorans, the Dominicans, the Cubans (so it didn't work -- so sue me), the Viets, the Laotians, the Khmers, the Thais, the Panamanian democrats, the Venezuelans and Indonesians (against the Communists in the 60's), the Chileans (ditto in the 70's), and who else have we got?

It's not like we've been lying down, eating grapes.

Diplomatic and moral support; police supporting services and equipment; realtime sigint and comint. Nonlethal mob-handling gear (disorienting gases, sleep gases -- hell, itching powder). Names and addresses and IP's -- intelligence around the clock. Orbiting flying intel centers (RIVET JOINT etc.), providing realtime intercepts. Background info on who's screwing Mubarak and why. We could have made it infinitely harder for the MB to turn out a flashmob without Mubarak's people knowing where, when, and how many -- and who, if there were a phat MB agitprop puke in charge.

As a former diplomat, I know how well moral support works. The reality is that Mubarak had come to the end of the line. He had to go. He was hated and dispised by the people. The one government institution that is still relatively respected is the military. They are fairly free of corruption and they are politically conservative. They will be the obstacle to a MB takeover. That is our current strategy, i.e., support the military and let them help orchestrate the transition.

It would have been a major mistake to support a violent suppression of the opposition. We would just be postponing the inevitable and pave the way for the MB. A peaceful, orderly transition is in our best interests.

We must have relations with all kinds of unsavory characters in this world to protect our strategic national interests. Many of them are dictators and tyrants who usually have oppressed the opposition so there is no clean, peaceful transition to another government when the leave the scene. We must plow the fields with the oxen God gave us.

We are seeing a seminal moment in the Middle East. It remains to be seen what the outcome of the Arab Awakening will be once the dust settles. It may turn out that they are just changing one dictator for another. Whatever happens, we will have just a marginal impact on the result.

Our involvement in Libya came from pressure by the Europeans who have a vested interest in keeping the oil from Libya coming and to stop the mass influx of refugees into Europe. Unfortunately, the Europeans are incapable militarily of doing very much without us. They couldn't deal alone with Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo and now they need our assistance to get rid of Ghadaffi. Obama's indecisiveness has dragged the conflict out, which has given the Europeans the results they didn't want, i.e., an interruption of oil from Libya and tens of thousands of refugees, many of them transiting Italy on their way to France.

I was in Tehran when the Shah left and Khomeini took power. Our involvement (read Carter and Vance) helped Khomeini hijack the Iranian Revolution and we are living with the results to this very day. Iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, the home and purveyor of radical Islamic fundamentalism, and a future possessor of nuclear weapons.

Life was easier in a bipolar world when the Soviet Union and the US were the two superpowers. The threat of Communism helped unify us in ways that are difficult today. Perhaps, if we could get pass political correctness, we could identify radical Islamic fundamentalism as the enemy.

The US is bankrupt. We have spent blood and treasure protecting freedom and democracy. The future bodes a decline in our global presence and role because we can no longer afford the costs. Just as the British Empire declined gradually, e.g., no troops East of Suez, we will be faced with similar choices. And don't underestimate the impact that being the world's biggest debtor will have on our foreign policy. You can't afford to piss off the people who hold your debt--namely the PRC.

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