Mixed signals?

A few days ago, we were confronted with two pieces of news that were seemingly at odds with each other.  First, we heard that the Arab League had endorsed the idea of a no-fly zone over Libya.  Second, we heard that many Gulf States (Saudi Arabia and the UAE included) were sending troops to Bahrain to help the ruling family put down civilian protests. My first reaction to this was to think that surely we had here two incompatible stances. On the one hand, the Arab League was acquiescing to foreign intervention to aid rebels in their bid to oust the leader of an Arab state; and on the other hand, they were actively providing military support to an Arab regime to quash unarmed rebellion within its territory.  Mixed messages?
On further reflection, I realized that there was a huge difference in the way these countries perceived Libya and its leadership (for want of a better term), and the way they perceived Bahrain and its ruling family.  And the word 'family' is one of the keys to this conundrum.
Libya is certainly like the Gulf States in that its politics and society is shaped in many ways (perhaps even dominated) by issues of clan/tribe membership, and Qaddafi's loyalties to his al-Qaddafa tribe speak to this matter.  However, the origins and the sources of Qaddafi's power are markedly different.  A colonel in the army of Libya's King Irdis, Qaddafi staged a successful coup in 1969, abolished monarchy and established a republic. His power is based on an anti-monarchical stance, and is entirely contemporary in origin.
Contrasted to this are the ruling families of the Gulf States.  The ruling families in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and the various city-states of the United Arab Emirates trace their power to authority that has been inherited, and not usurped.  Though the domination of such families as al-Saud, al-Nahyan, and  al-Khalifa can be traced back only a few generations, these families most likely see their rule as an entitlement, rather than a consequence of various fairly-recent geo-political forces (such as colonialism, the discovery of oil and various bargains made with the religious elite).  In this view, while the ouster of the upstart Qaddafi is a worthy cause, the dethroning of the al-Khalifa family is not at all an option.  The power vested in the al-Khalifa family is too much like the power they possess.  Theirs is power taken for granted as a consequence of their birth; Qaddafi's power comes from its seizure, and can therefore be seized away from him just as surely.
The presence of a large Shia population ruled by a Sunni ruling family in many of these Gulf States has also a role to play in this drama. But that may have to be the topic of another post.

The world changed ever so slightly

I was listening to NPR the other day, and the panel of commentators and experts were discussing the labour and union-related protests in Wisconsin.  And as the discussion wound down, one of the panelists said something that gave me pause.  She said that the intensity of the protests in Wisconsin may not let up as soon as one might imagine, and that some of that endurance and resilience could be a direct result of the events in Egypt.  That the power of the masses was tested and proven half a world away in Egypt, and the people in Wisconsin drew strength from this.


Had I heard the mainstream media in America ever speak of events in the Middle East in such terms before?  Arabs had flexed their democratic muscle and how refreshingly odd it was to hear of Americans drawing inspiration from this.  I had become so accustomed to hearing of freedom and democracy as America's primary exports to the world.  But here the current of ideas and ideologies seemed to have changed direction in a way that I would not have predicted as possible a mere month ago.


Perhaps this is a temporary reversal of roles, and perhaps American presumptions about the rest of the world shall in the long term remain unaltered.  But the optimist in me would like to believe that something has changed for good, if ever so slightly.  For once, our gaze in America looks farther away than the limits of red, white and blue.  For once, there is an acknowledgement that the freedom of another people is not being won at the end of American gun-barrels; that the rage of a mass of bearded men is a just rage; that veiled women are women with will and women with voices that can and are heard; and that we who have been lulled into complacence by the warm and fuzzy ideal of 'inalienable rights' have been awakened from our stupor by the voices of men and women we presumed to be mute.


How can we go back to the way we were after all this?