Interventionist Cherry-Picking

By Steve Hynd

I wish those neocons and neolibs who are so busy calling for American military intervention in Libya, be it a no-fly zone or arming the rebels, would explain why Bahrain is so very different. Is it the fact that it's our allies the Saudis who are shooting protesters there or is it that Bahrain is home to the US 5th Fleet that means we can ignore the humanitarian considerations that are seemingly so pressing in Libya?

Personally, I suspect it's that Libyan intervention calls have far more to do with ousting the long-term American boogieman, Gadaffi, and that their humanitarian concern is just a smokescreen because they know that after Iraq intervention just to depose a strongman they don't like is a non-flyer.

As Mark L Goldberg notes:

It is worth noting here just how bad the United States must look in the eyes of a protest movement seeking to shake off an oppressive political system. The United States seems unwilling or unable to convince Bahrain�s al-Khalifa family to open up the political system.  Meanwhile, the United States has stood by the monarch, even as Bahrain�s ruling family simply ignored the advice of the United States Defense Secretary.

You basically have a situation right now where one American ally is asking other American allies in the Gulf to use their American weapons to help suppress a revolt.

This can�t be good for America�s long term interests in the region.  Not at all.

Of course all the reasons not to reach for the military hammer on Libya apply to Bahrain too - with bells on. There's a sectarian Sunni-Shiite element to the crisis there, there's the usual caveats about intervention always escalating and Bahrain, although smaller, is far more central to an Arab world that would watch yet another Muslim nation being bombed by US warplanes (with inevitable "collateral damage"). I understand that the US has a difficult course to chart there, but at the very least there should be no more weapons sales and the US should be looking to impose sanctions if it is to be consistent. However it seems to me that for many of the "realists" in charge of US foreign policy consistency isn't important - no matter the long-term consequences. Only short-term stability is.