[Peace-discuss] Some serious politics

[C. G. Estabrook]

[I'm not sure the situation - e.g. in Iraq - is so dire for the US as Cockburn 
suggests. But I do think he's right about a serious threat to Saudi Arabia.  In 
fact, the cadre of the 101st Airborne are also quite likely familiarizing 
themselves with maps of Cairo and Beirut.]

Tremors in the Empire
By Alexander Cockburn

Tunisia and now Egypt see vast popular upsurges. The former's president flees; 
as I write, Mubarak clings on, even as Washington seeks an "orderly" transition 
to a reliable general. From Rabat to Riyadh, the air is electric with aroused 
political energy after decades of misery and oppression: a great awakening, indeed.
The custodians of Empire are right to be perturbed. Those crowds in Tunis and in 
Cairo, facing projectiles "made in America," know well enough the ultimate 
sponsor of the tyrannies against which they have risen. A belated chirp for 
"democracy" from Obama or Secretary of State Clinton will not purge that record.
But it behooves us to take a perspective longer than that opened a few short 
weeks ago by the revolt in Tunisia. We are witnessing a long process of decline. 
The attrition of the American Empire began not too many years after it seemed at 
its zenith, at the end of World War II in 1945.
There was a nasty jolt with the brief tenure in Iran of the nationalist Mohammed 
Mossadegh, at the start of the 1950s. Less than a decade later, Fidel Castro and 
his comrades entered Havana in January 1959, and, with its defeat at the Bay of 
Pigs not long thereafter, the U.S.A. "lost" Cuba - a hugely significant setback. 
A decade later, Libya saw Qaddafi's toppling of King Idris.
A far greater setback came in 1979, when the shah fled Iran and the Ayatollah 
Khomeini inaugurated Iran's Islamic Republic. In the same year, Carter and 
Brzezinski's onslaught, via the CIA-financed mujahideen, on the leftist regime 
in Afghanistan unleashed consequences that play out today in Afghanistan, the 
frontier provinces and Pakistan's heartland - none of them welcome to Empire.
Politically outmaneuvered and militarily checked in Iraq, the United States is 
now in the midst of rapid withdrawal. Iran is now hugely influential in 
Baghdad.  Just two U.S.-owned oil companies - Exxon and Occidental - now lease 
concessions on Iraq's gigantic reserves. Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are, so to 
speak, the crown jewels, when it comes to oil reserves. The Empire has 
effectively lost Iran and Iraq. What of Saudi Arabia? Already Yemen is shaky. 
Suppose fissures open up in the Kingdom itself!
I doubt, at such a juncture, that we would hear too much talk from Washington 
about "democracy" or orderly transitions. The Empire would send in the 101st 
Airborne, even as Osama bin Laden heads west from the Hindu Kush and the dollar 
plummets south.  That would be more than a tremor. It would be an earthquake. CP