{"id":9981,"date":"2011-12-13T12:24:59","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T20:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=9981"},"modified":"2011-12-14T21:06:15","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T05:36:15","slug":"did-the-pentagon-help-strangle-the-arab-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=9981","title":{"rendered":"Did the Pentagon Help Strangle the Arab Spring?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Turse wrote a great article exposing U.S. military aid to repressive governments in Africa and the Middle East <\/a>where some “Arab Spring” protests have been crushed by violence:<\/p>\n

As the Arab Spring blossomed and President Obama hesitated about whether to speak out in favor of protesters seeking democratic change in the Greater Middle East, the Pentagon acted decisively.\u00a0 It forged ever deeper ties with some of the most repressive regimes in the region, building up<\/a> military bases<\/a> and brokering weapons sales<\/a> and transfers to despots<\/a> from Bahrain<\/a> to Yemen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As state security forces across the region cracked down on democratic dissent, the Pentagon also repeatedly dispatched American troops on training missions to allied militaries there.\u00a0 During more than 40 such operations with names like Eager Lion and Friendship Two that sometimes lasted for weeks or months at a time, they taught Middle Eastern security forces the finer points of counterinsurgency, small unit tactics, intelligence gathering, and information operations — skills crucial to defeating popular uprisings.<\/p>\n

These recurrent joint-training exercises, seldom reported in the media and rarely mentioned outside the military, constitute the core of an elaborate, longstanding system that binds the Pentagon to the militaries of repressive regimes across the Middle East.\u00a0 Although the Pentagon shrouds these exercises in secrecy, refusing to answer basic questions about their scale, scope, or cost, an investigation by TomDispatch reveals the outlines of a region-wide training program whose ambitions are large and wholly at odds with Washington\u2019s professed aims of supporting democratic reforms in the Greater Middle East.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

This spring, as Operation African Lion proceeded and battered Moroccan protesters nursed their wounds, President Obama asserted that the \u201cUnited States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region\u201d and supports basic human rights for citizens throughout the Greater Middle East. \u00a0\u201cAnd these rights,\u201d he added, \u201cinclude free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders — whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or Tehran.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question remains, does the United States believe the same is true for those who live in Amman, Kuwait City, Rabat, or Riyahd?\u00a0 And if so, why is the Pentagon strengthening the hands of repressive rulers in those capitals?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Turse wrote a great article exposing U.S. military aid to repressive governments in Africa and the Middle East where some “Arab Spring” protests have been crushed by violence: As the Arab Spring blossomed and President Obama hesitated about whether to speak out in favor of protesters seeking democratic change in the Greater Middle East, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Did the Pentagon Help Strangle the Arab Spring?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2409],"class_list":["post-9981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-movements-resistance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9981"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9981"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9983,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9981\/revisions\/9983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}