Let us now take a trip through Araby, the region where Professor Ditherton Wiggleroom once promised we’d be loved and respected again, after the recklessness of the Bush years. We’ll begin at its relatively calm western rim and make our way quickly east.
The Kingdom of Morocco remains relatively western and contentedly calm. It will probably remain so for as long as we continue to pretty much ignore it.
Algeria is probably no more a basketcase than it ever was, thanks in large part to Islamist exhaustion there after being decimated in a long, but kind of low-key, civil war. However, Algiers does continue to aid Iran in keeping the Assad regime afloat in Syria.
The Arab Spring began in Tunisia, the most westernized of all of North Africa, and after some initial scares, westernization is back, and it’s fabulous.
We helped a lot in Libya, which is now pretty much a failed state.
In Egypt we clung to the military strongman before abandoning him, and the country, to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. We supported the Muslim Brotherhood until we didn’t, and they were replaced by a new military strongman in what was really a coup, unless you ask John Kerry. See, we can’t call it a coup without having to eliminate Egypt’s military aid, so in a show of support for the new, non-coup-y regime, Professor Wiggleroom has severely reduced military aid to Cairo. The new military strongman doesn’t seem to want much to do with us.
Jordan remains quiet, which is best for all concerned, especially the Jordanians.
Syria features one of the most brutal and oppressive regimes in the world, fighting for its life against an increasingly Islamist enemy in a vicious civil war. We may or may not be providing weapons to the Islamists, while also providing legitimacy to the Assad regime by making them our partners, along with the Russians, in removing chemical weapons from the country. When not fighting a civil war, Syria is happy to act as a Russo-Iranian client state. For a while there they were merely an Iranian client state, until Wiggleroom invited the Russians back in kind of on accident.
We gave Iraq to the Iranians by default after botching the Status of Forces Agreement, probably Because Booooosh.
Yemen continues to do its own thing, mostly not good.
There are also lots of tiny oil-soaked sheikdoms dotted around the Persian Gulf, which continue to buy their way out of trouble.
Saudi Arabia lives in perpetual fear of its neighbor across the Gulf, Iran, which has historically had a much better military than the Saudis, and which also covets the Shi’ite, oil-rich bits of the Kingdom. Iran is also probably pursuing nukes. Despite all this, and despite a longstanding alliance with the United States, today the Saudis found it necessary to break off diplomatic relations with us, due to our confused and lackadaisical response to the Syrian Civil War.
WTF, over?
We lost the Saudis? The freaking Saudis, facing an existential threat, just broke off relations with their freaking guarantor?
Honestly, after Wiggleroom’s Fantastical Syrian Whoopty-Do, I honestly thought our standing in the Middle East had hit rock bottom.
But no.
We lost the freaking Saudis.
Outstanding. The only way Wiggleroom could possibly top this is if he ordered the Marines to take New Hampshire — and lost.
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