Arab Spring: Who gets credit?

The Libyan rebellion has been all over the news for weeks now in the United States. Just today they overtook the capital city of Tripoli (video). Gaddafi was a friend of the US (if only by name) up until recently. What does the United States do for its friends? We send them money. In 2009, our government took the dollars that you sent them, as required by law through taxes, and sent $2.5 million to Libya. $400,000 from that total were set aside just for Gaddafi and his "foundations."

Does this strike you as odd? Why was President Obama so quiet about Libya-anything up until he could see that Gaddafi would surely be ousted? Politico.com says that he was playing the game just right, and that he was just "fatigued" by the Egyptian revolution. The fact is that Obama doesn't like to do any heavy lifting. Time and again he opts for cheerleader-turned-leader, effectively claiming movements already in motion as his own.

So, surely, G.W. Bush was better, right? He didn't send your money to any dictators, especially Mubarak or Gaddafi...right? Well, that's not quite true. We've been sending Egypt an average of $2.1 billion each year since 1975. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of YOUR money. A further perusal of W's record in the Middle East shows that he restored full diplomatic ties to Gaddafi's Libya in 2006.

Okay, so both Bush and Obama have a bit of a tainted record when it comes to supporting dictators in the Middle East. But, which of the two deserves the credit for the revolutions in Egypt and Libya (with Syria likely to follow in this delightful "Arab Spring")? First, why am I even asking this question in this way? I'm already assuming that it's one of these two people. I'll tell you why: John Gibson (Fox News Radio host) told me to.

Gibson, whom I picked on earlier, claims that Bush 43's speech in Egypt in 2008 was the impetus for the revolutions we see happening now. Disagreements by callers were met with incredulous sneers and outright disbelief. He doesn't even know if this Libyan revolution is such a good thing just yet and he'd like to assign W the W. While no one in the Obama administration would like to admit it just yet, the U.S. did provide "support" for the rebels. But before we can go giving the "credit" to Obama, we should consider assigning that to the rebels, since they're the ones spilling their blood in this conflict.

As a parting note, I'm not too eager to declare this Arab Spring "wonderful" since the whole Egypt thing doesn't seem to be panning out too well. And, unfortunately, even in this early stage, the rebels of Libya seem to want to turn immediately to Sharia Law, that wonderful source of equality and civility. There is one certainty in all of this, which is uncertainty. To add to the complexities and unpredictability of wars and uprisings, Middle Eastern cultures are so different from those in the western world, that most of the talking heads get the whole thing completely wrong. The Arab Spring will likely turn into one of the hottest, muggiest summers that region has seen in some time.

-Matthew Nielsen
IVLG