Michael J. Totten's Blog, page 62

Egypt Bars Every Major Presidential Candidate from Elections

Egypt’s election commission has blocked ten presidential candidates from the upcoming election, including the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate.

I’d say the country’s dysfunction has reached comical levels except that 81 million human beings live there and have to put up with whatever happens.

Homs Shelled, UN to Send Observers

I hope no one seriously expected the cease-fire in Syria to actually hold. Both the Assad government and the Free Syrian Army found the prospect of a breather to be in their interest. Otherwise they would not have agreed to it.

The cease-fire barely had a chance, though. None of the outstanding issues that led to the conflict in the first place have been resolved. Assad wants to maintain his power and his enemies want regime-change. There’s no splitting that difference. The two sides are not g...

So Much for the Cease-fire

Activists claim four Syrian protesters were shot after Friday prayers.

It's Not Over in Syria

Kofi Annan is ordering Bashar al-Assad to withdraw his army from Syrian cities and return them to barracks, but Assad cannot do that. If he moves his men and his tanks out of occupied areas, he'll lose control and will have to kill thousands all over again just to take those areas back.

He can quietly sit on folks for a while, but then what? Reform and the scheduling of elections? Please. It's what Hillary Clinton demands, but it's not going to happen unless Assad first fless the country.

His...

The Butcher of Damascus Takes a Breather – For Now

UN envoy Kofi Annan's deadline for a ceasefire in Syria has passed and it's quiet there all of a sudden.

Don't expect it to last. Nothing has been resolved. I'm not sure what the Assad regime is planning right now, but long term peace and reform is not it.

The Lost City

Lebanon broke my heart.

I witnessed the country's rebirth during the Beirut Spring in 2005, when citizens mounted a peaceful revolution against Syria's suffocating military occupation, and I witnessed its whimpering end when Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah struck back.

While the Arab Spring of 2011 toppled tyrants in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and we have seen brave souls continue protesting against the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, Lebanon's Cedar Revolution was really the first, and it...

The Muslim Brotherhood Goes to Washington

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood sent a delegation to Washington DC last week. Few who read this blog will be shocked to learn that its officials pretended to be moderate even though they are not.

It was so easy. Some people in Washington want to be suckered. It feels good, for a while anyway.

Eric Trager lived in Cairo and knows the Brotherhood better than most. For those of you who may not yet be convinced, his new piece in The New Republic where he rips off their masks is required reading.

The Arab Spring Spreads to Non-Arab Lands

The Arab Spring has now begun to spread in unusual and unpredictable ways.

The long-simmering Tuareg war in the north of the West African country of Mali mushroomed in recent days, leading to a military coup in the capital Bamako and the seizure by rebels of the ancient trading city of Timbuktu. The rebels just declared independence as thousands streamed south toward safety out of the scorching Sahara.

This likely wouldn't have happened if Moammar Qaddafi was still in power in Libya.

Qaddafi...

On False Moderation

Everyone should read Paul Berman's most recent essay in The New Republic about how Islamist radicals are using the supposed crime of "blasphemy" to terrorize people in the Middle East and beyond.

In it he mentions Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia's "moderate" Islamist party Ennahda.

By now everyone has noticed the fog of euphemism that has crept over the word "moderate" when applied to Islamist movements and leaders. A "moderate" is someone such as Rachid Ghannouchi, the Islamist...

So Much for All That

I'm not sure if Kofi Annan's peace plan for Syria was a farce, a flop, or a ruse, but it was surely one of those three.

Barely 24 hours after Bashar al-Assad declared victory and pretended to agree to a ceasefire, the United States, along with dozens of other countries, is ramping up assistance to the so-called Free Syrian Army, starting with communications equipment and 100 million dollars for salaries.

Proxy war is a messy and sometimes nasty business, but it beats propping up a...