A Curious Question Of Why?

OK, let me start off saying I’m not a middle east expert or even close, just an old midwestern farmboy, but I’ve been trying to keep an eye on what’s happening in the middle east and I must say, it doesn’t look good.

First Tunisia has a “popular” revolt and it’s government is overthrown. Next Egypt goes down like the Hindenburg. Now Libya is in revolt and the 30 year pretender Kadaffi is firing live rounds on his populace. This after he came to power through revolt. (I must admit there appears to be some symmetry in that.) Bahrain is dealing with uprisings as are Yemen and Jordan. And to add the cherry to the top this little crazy sunday, Iran is having riots as well.

The whole middle east seems to be preparing to explode. From the look of it, with the out layers being Iran and Libya, all of these countries are marginally friendly to the US and not overly aggressive to Israel. If I were to hazard a guess, I would guess that Iran was behind most of these uprisings. I believe they have seen some unrest within the people and have fomented these revolts through organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. They just didn’t expect the worm to turn on them. The revolt fever has come back and struck at home. Aquavelvajad and the mullahs are now facing a real challenge from pro western forces. Forces who don’t care to be ruled by the weird beards any more.

So what has allowed this to take place? My guess is that our taking Saddam down in Iraq and allowing for a democratic government to take hold has removed a tether that had formerly been on Iran. Prior to the fall of Saddam, Iraq and Iran seemed to be waging a war on who was to become the nominal leader in the middle east. Both had visions of grander. Seeing themselves as the leader of all islam. As they were involved in a shooting war with Iraq, Iran could not turn it’s focus outward. When we removed Saddam from the equation, this allowed the weird beards of Iran to think they had a free hand to take over leadership of all the islamic lands and spread jihad throughout the world. You can see this by the role played by the Muslim Brotherhood and who is backing them. You can already here them calling for war against Israel. In another move to try and start this, Iran is increasing the level of provocation by sending war ships through the Suez Canal. This is a clear attempt to goad Israel into doing something they could use as justification for an attack as well as a rallying point for all the muslims.

Watching all of this take place I have to wonder why it is that our current president was so quick to jump in and tell the Egyptian leaders they need to go and that we are on the side of the protesters, while we are curiously silent on what is going on in Iran. In Egypt the Iranian backed Muslim Brotherhood is clearly pulling strings behind the scenes, while publicly calling for war against Israel. 

On the other hand, in Iran we have a pro western uprising taking place, and for the second time in as many years we are about as outspoken as a mouse at a cat convention. I gotta as “Why”? Why is it that our administration is so quick to speak up for those who are clearly our enemies and so reticent to speak out and support those who would be our friends?