we’re failing the opposition in both Libya and Bahrain

The Libyan rebels just LOST THEIR LAST DEFENSIVE LINE in front of Benghazi. That’s bad enough, but the loss of Benghazi would be intolerable. But they’re badly outgunned there.

As for Bahrain, we’ve failed by either looking the other way or offering encouragement as the armies of Saudi Arabia and soon the U.A.E. have entered Bahrain to suppress a protest that the Bahraini regime can’t handle themselves. This latter case looks less violent, but it’s politically even worse because in this case I suspect a basic hope by Western governments that the Bahraini protests fail.

The analogy would be the Soviet troops entering Hungary and then Czechoslovakia to crush protests in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The Saudis and the U.A.E. are certainly no Soviet Union in military terms, but the effect is the same because the Bahraini populace won’t have a chance against those much better-equipped armies than their own.

There was also no real governmental enthusiasm in the West for the events in either Tunisia or Egypt. Which means: we’ve just missed a chance to empower an Arab populace that turned out to be young, progressive, and freedom-loving, not the screaming fanatics chopping off people’s hands and stoning adulteresses as the media prefers to emphasize.

It’s important to remember this: Arabs are people too. And not only are they people just like the rest of us, they also happen to be perhaps the world’s bravest and most admirable people at the moment. Would you want to live under most of the governments they’ve had?

So, what we’ll get is the Bahrainis stuck under some endless “reform” that changes nothing. The Saudi populace can forget about freedom for as long as oil is what drives the world economy. The Libyans may be ignored to the point that Qaddafi takes over and brutally cracks down on everyone in the East, and we’ll find some way to tell ourselves it was inevitable.

Tunisia and Egypt have a good chance, at least, but the other nations deserved it as well.

You don’t need any reminders about Qaddafi. But if you need a reminder about what the people are up against in Bahrain, recall this video from mid-February.