Trump 2.0 - Fuck diplomacy

 

Also...

Is this Jared's peace plan?

Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem has served as America’s de facto embassy to the Palestinians.

That era came to a close on Monday, when the consulate — an independent diplomatic mission in existence since 1844 — was subsumed into the operations of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem as part of President Trump’s 2017 recognition of the holy city as Israel’s capital.

[...]

[N]umerous U.S. diplomats and Palestinian officials have decried the closure as a slap in the face to the Palestinian Authority.

“In terms of our Palestinian contacts, it’s like we’ve stopped existing for them,” said one U.S. diplomat, who was not authorized to speak to journalists and asked not to be identified.

The diplomat struggled to find words to describe the situation of American envoys who arrived in Jerusalem with the aim of building ties to the Palestinian Authority, which officially cut ties to the United States after Trump’s announcement of the embassy’s move.

[...]

The State Department announced the closure of the consulate in a statement that insisted the decision was intended only to improve the “efficiency and effectiveness of our diplomatic engagements and operations,” and did not signal any change in policy.

[...]

The U.S. is not abandoning the consulate building, across from Independence Park in West Jerusalem. It said it would become home to a new Palestinian affairs unit.

But the new unit represents a significant downgrade in diplomatic terms. Karen Sasahara, a career Middle East expert who became consul general in August, learned two months later that her job was being eliminated, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the mission’s end.

[...]

Mike Hankey, Sasahara’s deputy, will be head of the new Palestinian affairs unit.

[...]

Among its responsibilities, the Jerusalem consulate has long submitted regular reports on Israeli construction and development of West Bank settlements directly to the State Department.

  LA Times

I guess we don't need to know that any more.

“The people working there understood their role as being part of the American effort to resolve the conflict, and I think that sense of mission is gone,” Walles said, describing the low morale among consulate workers.

Can't imagine why.

A former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Ned Walker, has been an outspoken advocate of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, but strongly objected to the consulate closing.

“To put it bluntly, it is a stupid move driven by an ambassador who represents a certain portion of the Israeli political scene — the settlers,” he said in an email to The Times. “It is true that when I cover one eye I can still see, but not as well as with two. Why we want to half-blind ourselves by cutting off the Palestinians makes no sense to me.”

[...]

The new U.S. Embassy is located in another consular building in Jerusalem, but it is not yet fully functioning as the United States’ main diplomatic mission in Israel. Although the United States held an opening ceremony last May, the embassy’s 800 employees remain at the former office in Tel Aviv.

[...]

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian diplomat and the authority’s chief negotiator, described the consulate’s closure as “the last nail in the coffin” of the Trump administration’s efforts toward peace.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Your nation's top diplomat...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo backed Trump's statement on Tuesday in his own remarks later in the day, describing the preservation of the U.S.-Saudi relationship as vital to protecting U.S. national security.

"It’s a mean, nasty world out there, the Middle East in particular," Pompeo said. "This is a long, historic commitment and one that is absolutely vital to American national security."

  The Hill

UPDATE 11/22 (Thanksgiving Day):

What happens when you dump career diplomats for idealogues?

German politicians have criticised Donald Trump’s new ambassador to Germany after he said he wanted to “empower” anti-establishment rightwing forces throughout Europe.

In an interview with the far-right news outlet Breitbart over the weekend, Richard Grenell, who has been in office for less than a month, said: “I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders.

[...]

In Berlin, the foreign ministry asked him to clarify the comments and politicians criticised him for a perceived breach of diplomatic protocol.

“In the past, Germany was fortunate to have had great US ambassadors who built bridges and did not do party politics,” said Metin Hakverdi‪, a Social Democrat delegate and member of the German-US parliamentary friendship group.

“As a member of the SPD, a left party with a long proud legacy of fighting, together with the United States, both Nazis and communists, I am irritated to hear from Ambassador Grenell about our allegedly failed policies.

“US Senator Chris Murphy said rightly that ambassadors are not supposed to ‘empower’ political parties. Ambassador Grenell is new on his post and I hope this irritation will not be repeated.”

  The Guardian

Well, the cat's out of the bag now. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Omid Nouripour, a Green MP and deputy chair of the German-US parliamentary friendship group, said: “ [...] At least the Russians make an effort not to be seen to be meddling in other countries’ affairs.”

[...]

A spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said on Monday that the government had asked Breitbart to confirm the authenticity of Grenell’s comments and that the US ambassador would be expected to “explain what he meant” during his first official visit to the foreign ministry on Thursday.

It's obvious what he meant. Perhaps what's lacking is a step-by-step instructional plan of how he intends to carry out his claim.

While the use of political appointees – candidates with little or no foreign or diplomatic experience to be an ambassador – is more common in America than in other countries, ambassadors tend to subscribe to an unwritten code of conduct according to which they must remain politically neutral.

[...]

In his Breitbart interview, Grenell did not voice support for the rightwing populist party Alternative für Deutschland, which has been a vocal critic of Merkel’s refugee policies and is the largest opposition group in the Bundestag.

Not specifically by name, maybe.

[H]e did express admiration for the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, whose conservative Austrian People’s party governs in a coalition with the far-right FPÖ. “Look, I think Sebastian Kurz is a rock star,” he said. “I’m a big fan.”

Still too much testosterone and not enough diplomacy

“We continue to seek areas to cooperate with China where we can, but where we can’t we’re prepared to certainly protect both U.S. and allied interest in the region,” Director of the Joint Staff Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told reporters at the Pentagon.

“I would just tell you that the United States military has had a lot of experience in the Western Pacific taking down small islands,” McKenzie said, when asked if the United States has the ability to “blow apart” one of China's disputed, man-made islands in the South China Sea.

He later clarified that he was referring to U.S. military operations during World War II.

  The Hill

There was no need for clarification.  My button is bigger than your button. The modern age of diplomacy has been going on much too long.

“It’s just a fact we had a lot of experience in the Second World War taking down small islands that are isolated, so that's a core competency of the U.S. military that we’ve done before. [You] shouldn't read anything more into that than a simple statement of historical fact,” he said.

Just stating the facts. There was no threat there. It's on you if you saw one.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

America First

And only. Now we go after allies. Working our way through the entire world, country by country.

Turkey on Sunday suspended non-immigrant visa services at all Turkish diplomatic facilities in the United States, in a tit-for-tat move amid escalating tensions between the NATO allies.

Just hours after the US mission to Turkey announced it was restricting visa services, saying that recent events had forced it to "reassess" Ankara's commitment to the security of US facilities and staff, the Turkish embassy in Washington, DC, hit back with an almost identical statement.

[...]

The escalation in diplomatic tensions comes a few days after the arrest of a US consulate employee in Istanbul for alleged links to Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Muslim leader blamed by Ankara for a failed coup attempt last year. Gulen denies involvement.

Washington said it was "deeply disturbed" by the employee's arrest.

[...]

"It's clear that this [suspension of visa services] is just one more ratcheting up of the war of words between the US and Turkey," Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman, reporting from Washington, DC, said.

  al Jazeera

Not that we should be allied with Turkey.

"It's a NATO ally, and there is a NATO base in Turkey which the US uses. As the US continues with its war against ISIL, it needs to have that presence in Turkey and it needs those close ties with this very important ally," [reporter Diane] Eastabrook added.

Uh-huh. We also have a base in Qatar, and Dolt 45 is busy alienating them, too.

What would happen if all our "allies" who get shived by the Dolt decide to shut down our bases? Or even capture them?

"This [diplomatic tension] has repercussions throughout Europe and the Middle East, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next few days," she added.

Yeah. Interesting. We're about to go into overload mode with all the "interesting" things brewing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Fixed It for You

The other thing Trump will do is ballyhoo on Twitter for months to come about how this meeting showed he did not collude with Russia to win the 2016 election, and what a great deal maker he is. At this point, to me, however, a collusion charge is not his biggest worry about the Russia special investigation. Even if he did collude (which wouldn't surprise me), he wouldn't do any jail time for it. He might get impeached for that (and that's not even guaranteed), but then Pence would just pardon him. And if Pence was also involved, Ryan would pardon him.

But the money laundering ... if Trump gets busted on that, they might not want to pardon him. He still won't do jail time, but he'll get a sentence. Come to think of it, that crooked business may be why he needed to be president. There was a New York investigation getting down to the nitty gritty when Trump threw his hat in the ring. If he were just a failed candidate when the shit hits that fan, he would likely do time behind bars.  As president, he'll skate.

Trump opened the meeting by raising the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; whether this was a fuzzy pro-forma statement or a real protest isn’t clear.

  WaPo

What do you think? This is the man who told the Russian ambassador to the US that he'd fired Comey so the heat about possible collusion would be going away now.

And, do we trust what Rex Tillerson says?  Hell, he's in the middle of an investigation himself for lying about climate change to ExxonMobil investors.

Putin is said to have denied any such interference.

Which is what he's been saying all along, and what did you expect he'd do?  Break down sobbing and admit it?

The Syria agreement is the most important “deliverable” from Friday’s meeting. Tillerson has been working on the details for weeks with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. The cease-fire in southwest Syria, negotiated with Jordan (and, unofficially, with Israel) was actually hatched about a week ago and kept on ice so that all sides could make sure it was being observed.

Not to mention so that Trump and Putin could get the publicity from it for themselves at the G20, each showing to their citizens what great deal makers they are.

Yes, I'm a cynic.  Shouldn't I be?

Friday’s most important development was Tillerson’s announcement that President Bashar al-Assad will eventually leave power and that there will be a political transition away from the Assad family.

Is there a date for that or is he just predicting the inevitable?

Assad will probably resist, as may Iran.

I see.  Predicting the inevitable. This is apparently the first Assad has heard of it.

Summits can sometimes be dangerous. Western politicians can make unwise concessions to autocratic leaders, as happened at Munich in 1938 and Yalta in 1945, with tragic consequences. Trump, embattled and unpopular though he is, doesn’t appear to have made any such large mistakes at Hamburg. Instead, this was a summit meeting that reminded us of the benefits of diplomacy.

What a gullible report. We are in nothing like the world was dealing with in 1938 and 1945. Trump and Putin both have something to be gained from appearing to be at odds while actually working together. This wonderful moment of diplomacy was never going to be anything else, hype notwithstanding.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

What do you want to bet she speaks Russian?  Her country of origin - Slovenia - was once a part of Yugoslavia, which was a Soviet satellite. If that doesn't get it, The Daily Mail says she speaks German, as does Putin.

Trump is laying the moves on the Argentinian First Lady.

Not even on the front row in this one!  Where's Putin?

Diplomatic Purchase

President Barack Obama's pick for ambassador to Norway [George Tsunis] seems to be spicing up the diplomatic relationship by sticking his foot in his mouth before even getting to the post.

[...]

"What do you think the appeal of the Progress Party was, according to the Norwegian voters?" asked Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Jan. 16.

"That is a very seminal question," Tsunis said. "Generally Norway has, and is very proud of being a very open, transparent, Democratic, parliamentary government. One of the byproducts of being such an open society and placing such a value on free speech is you get some fringe elements that have a microphone that spew their hatred and although I will tell you that Norway has been very quick to denounce them -- "

McCain interrupted, pointing out that the Progress Party is part of the center-right coalition government in Norway, with seven ministers.

"I stand corrected, and would like to leave my answer that it's a very, very open society," Tsunis responded.

[...]

In last week's hearing, Tsunis also referred to Norway's "president," despite the fact that the country is a constitutional monarchy.

Tsunis has been a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama and the Democratic party. Tsunis, the CEO of Chartwell Hotels, bundled over $500,000 for Obama's 2012 campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He also donated $300,000 to Democratic-leaning super PACs in 2012, according to FEC records. .

[...]

One European politics expert, Jytte Klausen of Brandeis University, said that it was not unusual for a nominee for ambassador to be ignorant about the country's politics.

  Huffington Post

Which is, sadly, probably true.

Among Other Things

The United Nations chief has said that the grounding of the Bolivian president's plane in Vienna on suspicion that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was aboard was “unfortunate”.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said on Tuesday that “it was important to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future.''

“A head of state and his or her aircraft enjoy immunity and inviolability.''

  alJazeera

Obviously, to the contrary, he does not.

Spain has acknowledged on Tuesday that a US request had led it to delay approving an overflight by Bolivia's president.

[...]

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo was asked by reporters whether the alert had come from the United States.

He replied: "Inter alia (among other things)."

I wonder what those might be.

The Bolivian government says the United States knew that Snowden was not on the plane and simply wanted to intimidate Morales because of his outspoken criticism of US policies.

Inter alia. THOSE things being, to let the world know that we don’t give a damn for international laws, and that we have ALL their teats in our wringer, and to let any would-be whistleblowers know that the world can’t protect them from the US.

It’s not a question of whether or not Snowden was on President Morales’ plane.  Even if he HAD been, the President of any country supposedly is, within his property, as Milktoast Ban says, inviolable. Heads of states and even their diplomats can even commit crimes and have immunity from prosecution.

In the United States, if a person with immunity is alleged to have committed a crime or faces a civil lawsuit, the Department of State alerts the government that the diplomat works for. The Department of State also asks the home country to waive immunity of the alleged offender so that the complaint can be moved to the courts. If immunity is not waived, prosecution cannot be undertaken. However, the Department of State still has the discretion to ask the diplomat to withdraw from her or his duties in the United States.

[...]

A group of diplomats and the office space in which they work are referred to as a mission. Creditors cannot sue missions individually to collect money they owe.

[...]

In the summer of 1994 U.S. diplomat Victor Marrero reportedly complained to the United Nations secretariat that foreign diplomats' debts in the United States were $5.3 million. The New Yorker later reported that a well-informed source had said the figure had risen "closer to $7 million."

[...]

Diplomats and their families have also been known to use diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution for criminal behavior. For example, in a 1983 case the New York City Police Department suspected a diplomat's son of 15 different rapes. The son was allowed to leave the United States without ever being taken to court because he claimed diplomatic immunity. If diplomatic immunity is used as a shield, the police cannot prosecute, no matter how serious the crime may be.

  The Free Dictionary

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Latin American Huff

“We don’t need a US embassy in Bolivia,” [Bolivian president Evo Morales] said. “My hand would not shake to close the US embassy. We have dignity, sovereignty. Without the United States, we are better politically, democratically.”

  Raw Story

Yes, but he won’t.

“A minister of one of these European governments personally told us by telephone that they were going to apologize because they were surprised, and that those who gave the order to aviation authorities in this country … were the CIA,” he said.

[...]

In a show of support, Presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Cristina Kirchner of Argentina, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Jose Mujica of Uruguay and Desi Bouterse of Suriname met with Morales in the central city of Cochabamba.

Sadly, it’s just a show.

Correa said the leaders would “take decisions and show that we won’t accept this sort of humiliation against any country of (Latin) America.”

“Imagine if this happened to a European head of state, if this had happened to the president of the United States,” [...] he said. “They think they can attack, crush, destroy international law.”

No. They KNOW they can.  And they'll get away with this, too, because there won't be any price to pay, and diplomacy only applies to whomever we say.  If the American people don’t rise up and do something about their government, no one is. And we’re not going to.

And What's With the Boxing Bit?

Jonathan Turley calls it embarrassing, a back-handed compliment, and labels the president "punch drunk."

It is insulting on so many levels but Obama appears entirely clueless.

[...]

This may silence those who want the President to forego the use of teleprompters. If this is his ad lib, we need to move back to the scripted material.

[...]

It may come as a bit of a surprise that countries like Denmark (that has been engaging in diplomacy since the pre-Roman Iron Age of 500 BC – 1 AD) are really not looking for an “Attaboy!” from the United States. In the late Middle Ages (before a single pilgrim saw a single rock at Plymouth), little Denmark controlled it own slice of Estonia as well as much of Germany and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein.

  Jonathan Turley

I'm telling you, they need to replace the filters on the White House air handlers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Not ONLY Arrogant

 Proof exists that the terrorists are winning. They have managed in the last several decades to pump stupid gas into the White House on a regular basis.

The president earlier got an up-close look into the isolated Stalinist state [of North Korea] when he climbed a clifftop observation post 25 metres from the demarcation line that has divided the Koreas for six decades.

After squinting through high-powered binoculars from behind a bulletproof screen over a border guarded by mines, barbed wire and tank traps, Mr Obama said he had stared into a "time warp".

He then turned towards a huge North Korean flag flapping in the stiff breeze at half-mast to mark the 100th day since Kim Jong-Il's death, and to a horizon dotted with rudimentary buildings peeking through the haze.

  News.Com.Au

Today's "Daily Twain" (right sidebar) seems nicely appropriate: 

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes. --Mark Twain

I don't intend to defend the government of North Korea, but let me make just a couple of points.

There aren't likely to be any large population centers or centers of industry on the heavily guarded, often battled border between South and North Korea, now are there? Just how powerful are those binoculars?

“If a country can’t feed its people effectively, if it can’t make anything of any use to anybody, if it has no exports other than weapons and even those aren’t ones that in any way would be considered state of the art.

“If it can’t deliver on any indicators of well-being… for its people… then you’d think you’d want to try something different,” Obama said in a highly undiplomatic and unusually frank public appearance. “There are certain things that just don’t work and what they are doing doesn’t work.”

  Raw Story`

And, not to put too fine a point on the weapons issue, but North Korea does have nuclear weapons – just how “state of the art” do nukes have to be to be effective? And they have a space program.

Maybe he should turn those binoculars onto the US.

 
 I can see Alaska from my porch.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

American Diplomacy

President #Compromise (who won’t answer to that name now that it’s campaign season, by the way) recently said that we are in lockstep with Israel on the issue of Iran, which he hopes to keep peaceful by means of diplomacy. He wasn’t talking about “normal” diplomacy. Like Condi Rice’s illucidation of the issue of exporting democracy to the Middle East when she couched it in terms of “American democracy”, I have to assume he’s talking about American diplomacy.

For an example of American diplomacy, here it is in action in Russia.

[W]hen the new US Ambassador to the Kremlin, Michael McFaul, arrived in Moscow, he met with leaders of the Russian opposition on his second day in town. As Eric Kraus, a Moscow-based fund manager, put it:

“One should first ask what the reaction would have been in the United States if the British ambassador to Washington began his mandate by throwing an open house for ‘Occupy Wall Street’ – it would have been considered a hostile act. Why is Russia any different? Russia is a sovereign state, not a protectorate, and the job of any ambassador is to facilitate state-to-state relations, not to become a player in domestic politics.”

  Justin Raimondo

I believe the answer is “American Exceptionalism.”

But of course the US is indeed involved in the domestic politics of practically every nation on earth, and it even has an official agency in charge of such meddling. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a “public-private” institution that receives direct grants of US tax dollars, which it then funnels abroad via its four main constituent parts: the National Democratic Institute (NDI), affiliated with the Democratic party, the International Republican Institute (IRI), a division of the GOP, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), sponsored and partially funded by the AFL-CIO, and the Center for International Private Enterprise, affiliated with the US Chamber of Commerce. Founded in 1984, NED played a key role in undermining the Nicaraguan government at a time when the US government was illegally funding the so-called “contras,” who were carrying out a terrorist campaign against the authorities in Managua.

[...]

In 1989, when Nicaragua’s Sandinista government was being challenged by the opposition — led by newspaper publisher Violeta Chamorro, and her United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO) — Congress passed a $9 million appropriation for the NED to get involved in the Nicaraguan election. It passed with one restriction, however: none of the money was to be used to help one particular party. In reality, however, almost all the funding went to the UNO. In tandem with the flood of millions of dollars into the opposition, the US unleashed the contras, inflicting unprecedented violence on civilians and wrecking the economy.

Forgive me if I don’t think the desire to fund the Contras was completely coincidental to the formation of NED.

US funding via NED [in 1985 to two French groups] – to the tune of $830,000 – was seen as an attempt to undermine Francois Mitterand’s socialist government.

Hmmmm….I think I can see why that might have been. After all, NED is the National Endowment for Democracy. Did France not have a democracy in 1985?

On the occasion of the NED’s twentieth anniversary, President George W. Bush proclaimed the US was launching a “global democratic revolution” – and there was no doubt its main target was the Middle East.

[...]

Gen. Wesley Clark related in an interview with Amy Goodman how, ten days after 9/11, a top General revealed to him how the decision to invade Iraq was made bereft of any link to al-Qaeda. Coming back to his informant a few weeks later, Clark said:

“’Are we still going to war with Iraq?’ And the General said ‘Oh, its worse than that.’ He reached over on his desk and picked up a piece of paper. He said, ‘I just got this … from upstairs from the Secretary of Defense’s office today. This is a memo that describes how we are going to take out 7 countries in 5 years. Starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon. Then Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Then finishing off Iran.’”

[...]

Egypt figures prominently in all this: it is “the prize,” as neocon theoretician and former LaRouchie Laurent Murawiec put it in an infamous presentation to the Defense Policy Board, in which he and his fellow neocons pushed not only the invasion of Iraq but also a US takeover of the Saudi oil fields and – eventually — “regime change” in Egypt. “The pivot of the Arab world is the most important one to transform in depth. Iraq may be described as the tactical pivot, the point of entry; Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot; but Egypt, with its mass, its history, its prestige and its potential, is where the future of the Arab world will be decided. Egypt, then, in the new Middle Eastern environment created by our war, can start being reshaped.”

[...]

[NED is] a conduit for funding the “color revolutions” that were sparked by US-funded activists in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. It is, in short, a weapon in the US arsenal designed to effect “regime change” in countries deemed insufficiently enthusiastic about becoming – or staying – a US protectorate.

[...]

It appears, though, that the Egyptian government – which has just elected a majority Muslim Brotherhood parliament – is having none of it: Cairo recently put NED activists, including the son of the US Secretary of Labor, on a “no fly” list, and announced it will prosecute a number of individuals, including 19 Americans, for engaging in illegal activities. Washington is outraged, and its amen corner is already mobilizing in support of the “Cairo 19.”

These are the people Hillary Clinton recently claimed did “nothing wrong.” They were “just trying to promote democracy.”

By the way, before we elevate Sam Lahood, son of US Labor Secretary and former GOP congressman Ray Lahood, to the status of a martyr for “democracy” and “liberalism,” let’s note that his former gig was serving as a censor for the US Occupation Authority in Iraq.

[...]

The penalty [in the US] for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) [which foreign contributions to electoral activities on American soil] is five years in prison and a $10,000 fine – roughly equivalent (except for the fine) to the penalty faced by the “Cairo 19.”

[...]

That’s the Americans’ signature stance in the world: one standard for me, and another for thee….

American Exceptionalism.

In this post, Raimondo offers a different take on the “Arab Spring” than I’ve heard elsewhere – elsewhere viewing it consistently as a bid for democracy by the citizens of dictatorships. When I think about the recent history of the US activities in the Middle East, it dawns on me that Raimondo may just be right, to wit:

In each and every instance, the target of the crowds in the streets has been a regime sporting the West’s imprimatur. Even Gadhafi had finally made his peace with those he once denounced as “imperialists,” and gained a degree of legitimacy in Western circles.

The Arab world has essentially been under occupation by the West since the fall of the Ottomans in the aftermath of World War I. The “anti-colonial” revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s ended in the consolidation of sclerotic regimes that oppressed their own people and – as the cold war petered out – wound up in the Western orbit. Indeed, as Mubarak and Gadhafi prepared their sons to succeed them, these regimes became indistinguishable from the monarchies traditionally backed by Washington and London.

Monarchies and dictatorships, which by the way, are sometimes quite frankly bought outright, circumventing the need for NED.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.