A Serious Obama Presents An Unserious Budget!

Kim loves the fact that Boehner has allowed House Members to earn their keep even when it meant shooting down one of his own plums. (See 1 below.)
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GW speeches are looking better each day. With all his faults, GW understood freedom was something all humans ultimately seek.

By freeing Iraq, GW set in motion a revolt that continues to shake the Middle East sheikdom's very pillars and before it is over they will all come crashing to the ground. Why? Because these politically and morally corrupt anachronisms have never served their citizens and their citizens are even tribally divided among themselves.

Aided by technology, the ability to keep the lid on closed autocratic societies has become virtually impossible.

Our unserious, quick change artist president is unable to keep up with the rapidity of change. His policies are being severely tested and it is increasingly evident Obama is totally unprepared. None of this was revealed to him by his teleprompter.

Meanwhile, Obama proceeds on the assumption voters continue stupid enough to buy his rhetoric and manipulative actions because he knows the liberal media and press will work overtime to portray him in a favorable light as the defender of fiscal sanity and portray Republicans as obstructionists.

Obama reminds me of the kid who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy because he is an orphan.

Obama's deficits now equal what our entire budgets were only some 5 years ago. GW was castigated by the liberal media and press yet, now not a peep from these same biased sources.

Put it another way. Our deficit equals more every second- yes, every second - than the annual income of the average worker.(See 2 below.)

Today I took Kim Strassel to hear Karl Rove, who was in town for a book signing. Rove was excellent, down to earth. I had read his book so his readings from it were not new to me but his off the cuff comments showed him to be what he is - a shrewd observer of the political scene and the three points he made about what Republicans must do in 2012, were a repeat of his recent WSJ article which I previously posted.

Spending the afternoon with Kim was interesting as always and I look forward to spending today with her as well. Very bright young lady and a fine example of the Wall Street Journal's outstanding talent pool. I met her boss, Paul Gigot, many years ago when I served on the "President's Commission on White House Fellowships" and he too is another excellent observer of the political scene.
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This from a dear, dear friend and fellow memo reader who knows what tyranny is all about because he and his family had to flee Castro, in the dark of night with nothing, and restart their medical lives in America. They did and became great successes. They are now retired having practiced as distinguished members of the psychiatric community.

No wonder they love this country and understand the threat to it from the likes of the Obama's in our midst!:

"Dick, I have sent the words of Salim Mansur to everybody I know including Obamistas not caring whether I offend them or not.

They are so concise, clear and true, that I cannot conceive anyone reading them and voting for Obama again.

Now my opinion.

I still feel nobody has dared to call Obama by his name: "Traitor to our Country." He is now trying to do as much as he can, no matter what, lie, mislead, use his infamous rhetoric (Castro's pupil ? ), to appear as repentant and willing to give in to the democratic wishes of the American people just to try to be re-elected. But if he does get elected, he will immediately start, this time hastily, to socialize, better word Communize America, circumvent our Constitution, spend our money wildly to brake our economy to the point of bankruptcy and continue to infringe and unleash his hatred for America and its people. In my experience, there are two kinds of people who are despicable: communists and radical Moslems. In Obama we have both in one person. Go figure! One last word, Islam is not a religion, it is a cult. And as such it should be treated."
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Public sector unions should be banned and , in fact, never should have been allowed.

In an answer to an audience question Rove even commented 'that it gave him heartburn to see Obama spend political capital in support of Wisconsin teachers striking and posed what kind of message did that send to their students.'

Obviously Obama can never stop campaigning in order to govern. He is hell bent to win re-election at all cost. He is the true personification of 'The What Me Worry Kid!" He is solely dedicated to his own ego!(See 3 and 3a below.)
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The domino effect has reached Libya! Is the Saudi family next? (See 4 below.)

What about Bahrain? (See 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)Congress Finally Earns Its Pay Unlike years past, the budget debates in the House were vigorous and democratic, not stage-managed by the leadership of the majority party.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Washington and Lincoln—those birthday boys—ought to be smiling.

The 112th House of Representatives spent the week debating how to fund the rest of fiscal 2011. In sharp contrast to his recent predecessors, Speaker John Boehner is sticking to his vow to make the chamber more open and accountable. His committee chairmen having presented a base spending bill, Mr. Boehner threw open the floor for full discussion. Some 600 amendments came pouring in.

"Chaos," "a headache," "turmoil," "craziness," "confused," "wild," "uncontrolled" are just a few of the words the Washington press corps has used to describe the ensuing late-night debates. There's a far better word for what happened: democracy. It has been eons since the nation's elected representatives have had to study harder, debate with such earnestness, or commit themselves so publicly. Yes, it is messy. Yes, it is unpredictable. But as this Presidents Day approaches, it's a fabulous thing to behold.

And about time. The Democrats' style of management—on ObamaCare, cap and trade, financial regulation, stimulus—was to secretly craft bills and ram through a vote, denying members a chance to read, to debate, to amend. They learned this from former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who infamously micro- managed his GOP majority from 2003-2005. The House had become a place where the leadership called all the shots and the majority saluted.

But this week the country witnessed the House coming together to argue over and exercise its foremost responsibility: power over the purse. And from the look of the amendments, both sides were eager to use that funding authority to put the Obama policy machine on notice.

There were amendments to prohibit funds for the mortgage-modification program (Darrell Issa, R., Calif.), for wasteful broadband grants (Jim Matheson, D., Utah), for further TSA full-body scanning machines (Rush Holt, D., N.J.), for the salaries of State Department envoys tasked with shutting Guantanamo Bay (Tim Huelskamp, R., Kan.). And amendments designed to cut off funding for IRS agents enforcing ObamaCare.

Americans got to see what happens when members of Congress exercise their collective knowledge of the federal government. Mr. Issa put forward amendments to prohibit the National Institutes of Health from spending money studying the impact of yoga on hot flashes in menopausal women. Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum offered to strike funding for the Department of Defense to sponsor Nascar race cars. Indiana Republican Todd Rokita proposed getting rid of money provided for dissertation research under a 1970 Housing Act.

Neglected questions were once again asked. Should we get rid of federal funding for the arts? Should the government be designating federal monuments? What's the role of NASA? And Congress finally got to air some dirty secrets.

One of this week's more symbolically rich cuts came from Arizona's Republican Jeff Flake, who won an amendment erasing $34 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, Pa. The center, despite serving no real purpose, had been protected for decades, via earmarks, by the late Defense appropriations chair John Murtha.

The nation witnessed Democrats—the members not in the majority—offer their own amendments, a courtesy Speaker Nancy Pelosi never extended. In the main, that meant seeing that nothing much has changed on that side of the aisle. Most Democratic amendments were to restore funds for even the most minor GOP cuts. Texas's Sheila Jackson Lee even went to the mat to continue funding for those road signs bragging about the stimulus.

Remarkably, voters saw Republicans disagree vehemently with each other. Just as remarkably, the world did not stop spinning. To the contrary, these arguments helped flesh out differences and proved it is possible for gentlemen to have honest disagreements. Nowhere was this more clear than in this week's vote to defund a second (duplicative) engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The engine is being developed in a town near Mr. Boehner's Ohio district, and the speaker is a supporter. Yet 100 Republicans joined 123 Democrats (and Defense Secretary Robert Gates) to oppose the second engine and save taxpayers $450 million this year and $3 billion in the long-run.

Mr. Boehner didn't have to allow that vote. Mrs. Pelosi wouldn't have. But in opening the House, Mr. Boehner has done far more than put reform above his own priorities. This week's exercise forced members to read the underlying spending bill; to understand the implications of hundreds of amendments; to remain on the floor for debate; and to go on record with votes for which voters will hold them accountable.

Some of these amendments are duplicates. Some weren't heard. Some failed. Even those that pass now must survive the Senate. But what isn't in doubt is that Congress, this week, earned its pay. Long may that last.
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2)A New Freedom Agenda
How the Obama Administration can catch up to the Arab world.

The city of Chicago is famous as the home of improv, so maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that a President from Chicago would devise his foreign policy on the fly. And so it has been, from the war in Afghanistan to the Guantanamo detainees to the trade agenda to the fall of the House of Mubarak. But now that the rest of Arabia appears to have caught the Tunisian freedom bug—and as a longstanding U.S. ally in Bahrain opens fire on peaceful demonstrators—maybe it's time for the Administration to do more than merely react to events.

Where to begin? We suggest dusting off a copy of George W. Bush's second inaugural address.

That speech, widely derided at the time as unrealistic and over-reaching if not outright utopian, had as its signature argument the line that "it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

But Mr. Bush also made an important distinction between "the rulers of outlaw regimes"—think of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or North Korea's Kim Jong Il—and "the leaders of governments with long habits of control." Toward the former, Mr. Bush warned, citing Lincoln, that their days were numbered. Toward the latter, he advised: "To serve your people you must learn to trust them. Start on this journey of progress and justice, and America will walk at your side."

Wherever he is now, Hosni Mubarak might well be wondering whether he wouldn't have been wiser to take Mr. Bush's advice, rather than doing everything he could to spurn and belittle the freedom agenda. Ditto for Tunisia's deposed dictator, Jordan's nervous king, Yemen's and Algeria's reviled presidents and perhaps also the dangerously out-of-touch House of Saud. As for Bahraini King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa and the rest of his ruling family, they may soon rue the day they lost whatever legitimate claims they had on their little kingdom by choosing repression over reform.

Then again, President Obama might also be wondering why he was so quick to junk his predecessor's calls for freedom now that it is again in vogue (minus, of course, the Bush name). Though the President offered a nod to democracy in his now-forgotten Cairo speech in June 2009, he offered no support for Iranian demonstrators after that month's fraudulent elections. He was also silent after Mr. Mubarak forbade international monitoring of last year's rigged parliamentary vote. On a visit to Manama in December, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described Bahrain as a "model partner" for the U.S. and praised the kingdom's "commitment . . . to the democratic path."

Now that the Administration has been conscripted into the freedom agenda, one place to start is for Mr. Obama to meet publicly with dissidents from places like Libya, Syria and Iran, as Mr. Bush did in Prague in 2007, to lend a Presidential seal of approval to their struggle. That doesn't mean forsaking democracy and human-rights activists in pro-American regimes. But it does emphasize the distinction between protest movements in totalitarian states—in which the U.S. has a clear interest in the overthrow of the regimes—and those in authoritarian systems, where the American interest is to press aggressively for political reforms.

In that latter respect, it behooves the Administration to warn families like the Al-Khalifas of the consequences the U.S. and the West will impose if the shooting doesn't stop. The decision this month by the Swiss government to freeze Mr. Mubarak's bank accounts is a particularly good lesson for authoritarians everywhere.

It would also help if the Administration could be more forthright in supporting Iran's Green movement, which has demonstrated in recent days that it remains capable of mounting large-scale protests in the teeth of the regime's apparatus of repression.

Such support need not be merely rhetorical. The State Department and Congress could fast-track the regulatory approvals needed to provide the Green movement with secure texting technology, so they can communicate without the prying eyes of the regime. The CIA could provide Iranian workers with a strike fund—hard cash smuggled into the country to allow Iran's workers to sustain a strike—thereby replicating the conditions that brought down the Shah.

The Administration could also assemble prominent exiled leaders of the Green movement to sign a declaration of principles against the regime. That declaration could in turn be used to launch a human-rights campaign in the U.S. and Europe to support the movement inside the country.

Beyond Iran, the Administration might consider reviving its moribund trade agenda in the Arab world. In 2003, the Bush Administration proposed a Middle East Free Trade Area Initiative and signed free-trade agreements with Oman, Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain. But the last time the U.S. signed any kind of trade agreement with Egypt was in 1999. The only kind of deal the Obama Administration has signed was a Trade and Investment Framework agreement with Libya last year. Could we not at least negotiate a free trade deal with Iraq?

We do not mean to suggest some economic determinism here. The case of Bahrain, in particular, shows that relatively enlightened economic policy is no substitute for a lack of political freedom. All the more so when sectarian differences between ruler (Sunni) and ruled (75% Shiite) are added to the mix. Bahrain ranks first in the Middle East and 10th in the world on the Heritage Foundation-Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, and its living standards are high. But as people become more prosperous, their frustrations with repressive governments usually grow.

***
Events in the Middle East are now unfolding at such a pace that none of these initiatives would likely have a direct impact in the short term. The influence of the U.S. cannot be decisive in what are, ultimately, domestic dramas. But that doesn't relieve the U.S. of the obligation to press its political values, and doing what it can to tilt the direction of these revolutionary upheavals in a genuinely liberal direction.

The Obama Administration has squandered its first years of Mideast efforts on a combination of symbolic gestures like the Cairo speech and pointless diplomacy with the likes of Iran and Syria. It's time it recognize that the real prize, and the best foundation for U.S. interests, is freedom.
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3) End Public Sector Unions...Period
By C. Edmund Wright

It's about time. I've been waiting for this debate to mature for 15 years.

The battles in Wisconsin and New Jersey over public sector union benefits are merely financial precursors to a much bigger ideological war that has been on the horizon now for years, if not decades. When you acknowledge the coming battle, you realize that Governors Walker and Christie -- courageously as they are behaving -- are only nibbling at the edges of the real issue.

And the real issue is whether public sector unions should even be allowed to exist. Frankly, when even a modicum of common sense is infused into the equation, the answer is a resounding no. And the foundational reason is simple. There is no one at the bargaining table representing the folks who are actually going to pay whatever is negotiated.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

Well let's see what went wrong: California, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Chicago, New York State, New York City, Wisconsin...on and on I could go including almost every city and state where government workers are unionized.

Oh, and have you seen pictures of Detroit lately?

The problem is that our country has been lulled to sleep over decades of hearing that government workers are dedicated and low paid public servants who trade good pay for security. And every time a union pay debate came up, it seemed like only cops and fire fighters and teachers were mentioned. No one stopped to think that most government workers are actually bureaucratic charmers like those we see at the DMV and other government offices -- and not "heroic teachers" or crime fighters.

But as long as the private sector was humming along, there was no reason for reality to permeate that myth in most peoples' minds. But the reality is that government workers long ago passed private sector workers in pay and benefits, and now the compensation is more like 150% or even double, factoring in all the benefits, including more vacation days than private sector workers enjoy. And of course, the inestimable value of job security remains intact and strengthened -- while all of us in the private sector deal daily with the risk-reward constraints of reality that are only getting riskier.

And along the way -- with a public school teacher-educated population that understands virtually nothing about economics -- the sheer idiocy of the concept of government unions escaped almost everybody. It's almost as if the union teachers were lying to their students about economics on purpose.

Consider: Unions exist primarily for the function of collective bargaining, where the union bosses will negotiate on behalf of all the workers with the management of a company over pay and benefits and other conditions. This built-in adversarial relationship along with the realities of a limited resource -- known as operating revenues -- do a pretty good job for the most part of keeping contracts in line.

The union bosses represent the workers. Management represents everybody else, including the stockholders, vendors, customers and potential customers of the company. In other words, management represents everyone whose interests are served by keeping payroll costs down.

In the case of a government workforce, those whose interests are served by keeping costs down would include all who pay taxes and fees to said government. In other words, the universe of folks represented by management is far larger than that represented by the union. This inherent tension is the invisible hand of reality that keeps collective bargaining in line.

However, public sector "collective bargaining" is a bad joke, given that there are only chairs on one side of the bargaining table. The bigger universe of interested parties have zero representation in the process. There is no natural force working to keep costs in line.

Moreover, quite often the very politicians who are "negotiating" with the public unions are politicians who have been financed by those same unions. At least Bernie Madoff ripped off his clients with some panache. No such style is even required in a public sector union negotiation when the folks in charge are bought and paid for Democrats.

Under any circumstances and in any economy, it is simply a matter of time before these costs reach a tipping point. We are at that time. There is simply no more money to give to these public sector unions -- period.

And that is why we are seeing what we are seeing in Madison this week and it is why we have seen the emergence of Chris Christie as a national phenomenon. And I welcome it. Things are finally so bad -- that they are good. And by good, I mean that folks now cannot help but pay attention to the issue of public sector unions.

I submit that the very existence of these unions has only been allowed to happen because it's the kind of issue an electorate is never forced to confront -- until they are forced to confront it. And now they are. There is, as Charles Krauthammer said, a bit of an earthquake in the country. People are sensing that the nation is spinning off a cliff.

And of course it is, and public sector unions are one huge reason why. This
conclusion is inescapable. And when you understand that, you understand that public sector unions cannot be allowed to exist. If they are, we will never turn back from the cliff.


3a)What's at Stake in Wisconsin's Budget Battle Who's in charge of our political system—voters or unions?
By JOHN FUND

This week President Obama was roundly criticized, even by many of his allies, for submitting a federal budget that actually increases our already crushing deficit. But that didn't stop him Thursday from jumping into Wisconsin's titanic budget battle. He accused the new Republican governor, Scott Walker, of launching an "assault" on unions with his emergency legislation aimed at cutting the state budget.

The real assault this week was led by Organizing for America, the successor to President's Obama's 2008 campaign organization. It helped fill buses of protesters who flooded the state capital of Madison and ran 15 phone banks urging people to call state legislators.

Mr. Walker's proposals are hardly revolutionary. Facing a $137 million budget deficit, he has decided to try to avoid laying off 5,500 state workers by proposing that they contribute 5.8% of their income towards their pensions and 12.6% towards health insurance. That's roughly the national average for public pension payments, and it is less than half the national average of what government workers contribute to health care. Mr. Walker also wants to limit the power of public-employee unions to negotiate contracts and work rules—something that 24 states already limit or ban.

The governor's move is in reaction to a 2009 law implemented by the then-Democratic legislature that expanded public unions' collective-bargaining rights and lifted existing limits on teacher raises.

Democratic reactions to these proposals have been over the top. In addition to the thousands of protesters who descended on the Capitol building on Thursday to intimidate legislators, so many teachers called in sick on Friday that school districts in Milwaukee, Madison and Janesville had to close.

Then there's the rhetoric. "This is about the clean government Wisconsin has enjoyed over the past century versus the corrupt government that Scott Walker proposes," thundered the liberal Madison Capital Times newspaper earlier this week. Democratic State Sen. Bob Jauch called Mr. Walker's move "the end of the democratic process" during the committee debate on Wednesday night.

But when it became obvious that the governor had the votes to pass it, Mr. Jauch and his 13 Democratic colleagues got on a bus and fled the state to deprive Republicans of a sufficient quorum to conduct any legislative business. They were later found at a Best Western Hotel in Rockford, Ill. Scot Ross, director of the liberal activist group One Wisconsin Now, endorsed the temper tantrum: "The senators have rightfully taken matters into their own hands."

Why are national liberal groups treating Wisconsin as if it were their last stand? Partly for reasons of symbolism. Historically, Wisconsin "embraced the organized labor movement more heartily than any other [state]," notes liberal activist Abe Sauer.

The Badger State became the first to pass a worker-compensation program in 1911, as well as the first to create unemployment compensation in 1932. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—the chief national union representing non-federal public employees—was founded in Madison in 1936. And in 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to grant public employees collective-bargaining rights, which influenced President John F. Kennedy's decision to grant federal employees the right to join unions three years later.

Labor historian Fred Siegel offers further reasons why unions are manning the barricades. Mr. Walker would require that public-employee unions be recertified annually by a majority vote of all their members, not merely by a majority of those that choose to cast ballots. In addition, he would end the government's practice of automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. For Wisconsin teachers, union dues total between $700 and $1,000 a year.

"Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits," Mr. Siegel told me. After New York City's Transport Workers Union lost the right to automatic dues collection in 2007 following an illegal strike, its income fell by more than 35% as many members stopped ponying up. New York City ended the dues collection ban after 18 months.

Myron Lieberman, a former Minnesota public school teacher who became a contract negotiator for the American Federation of Teachers, says that since the 1960s collective bargaining has so "greatly increased the political influence of unions" that they block the sorts of necessary change that other elements of society have had to accept.

The labor laws that Wisconsin unions are so bitterly defending were popular during an era of industrialization and centralization. But the labor organizations they protect have become much less popular, as the declining membership of many private-sector unions attests. Moreover, it's become abundantly clear that too many government workers enjoy wages, benefits and pensions that are out of line with the rest of the economy.

Mr. Walker's argument—that public workers shouldn't be living high off the hog at the expense of taxpayers—is being made in other states facing budget crises. But the left observed the impact of the tea party last year and seems determined to unleash a more aggressive version of its own by teaming up with union allies. Organizing for America is already coordinating protests against proposed reforms in Ohio, Michigan and Missouri.
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4)Cyrenaica rises up against Qaddafi's Tripolitania regime

Around two million Cyrenaican protesters, half of Libya's population who control half of the country and part of its oil resources, embarked Sunday, Feb. 20, on a full-scale revolt against Muammar Qaddafi and his affluent ruling Tripolitanian-dominated regime. Unlike the rights protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, in Libya, one half of the country is rising up against the other half, as well as fighting to overthrow a dictatorial ruler of 42 years.

Since last week, heavy battles have been fought in Benghazi, Al Bayda, Al Marj, Tobruk and at least two other two cities. In some places, military sources report protesters stormed army bases and seized large quantities of missiles, mortars, heavy machine guns and armored vehicles – and used them. The important Fadil Ben Omar Brigade command base in Benghazi was burnt to the ground.

Sources cite witnesses who spied Berber tribesmen among the insurgents, which bodes ill for Algerian and Morocco and their large Berber populations.

The reports of massacres and imported mercenaries, especially in Benghazi come mainly from opposition sources in West Europe and cannot be independently confirmed at this time. Neither could reports from the same sources Sunday night that Qaddafi's rule had collapsed and the revolt had spread.

At the same time, there is no doubt that Qaddafi will not scruple to use brutal measures in desperation to save his regime, if he has not already. Hospital sources describe hundreds of dead and injured.

He has meanwhile put Ahmed Gaddaf Al-Dam, his cousin and security chief, in charge of the army's effort to suppress the uprising in Benghazi. Most of the city appears to have fallen to the protesters, with the exception of its airport through which the ruler is pumping heavy reinforcements and sending them straight into battle.

So far, the Libyan Air Force and Navy have not been deployed. Helicopters sent in action to shoot into crowds are confirmed in only one place, Al Bayda.
Since Saturday afternoon, Qaddafi has not been seen or heard in public. According to some rumors, he has left Tripoli and made for the Saharan oasis town of Sebha, his tribal birthplace. So far, he has kept up the flow of military reinforcements to the six rebel cities because the towns of Tripolitania have been relatively quiet. But if Tripoli and its environs rise up too, he will be short of military strength to deal with trouble spots in both parts of the country.

Some Libyan would-be go-betweens proposed a ceasefire between Qaddafi and the protesters whereby the government would resign and the popular former prime minister Abdul Salam Jaloud be appointed caretaker prime minister until the crisis is resolved. But Jaloud declined the offer.

It is too early to determine in advance how the showdown between Qaddafi's army and the protesters-insurgents of Cyrenaica turns out. Before it is over, Libya's eastern provinces may be called on to sacrifice thousands more dead and wounded. If the Cyrenaicans do manage to hold on, they will be in a position to carve Libya in two and break away from Tripolitania and the Qaddafi regime.


4a)Could the Kingdom of Bahrain Become an Iranian Pearl Harbor?
By Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah

The Islamic Republic of Iran has reiterated in the past that its military
strategy is based on “asymmetric warfare“ – Tehran will not confront the
U.S. and its allies directly, given the superior military technology of the
West, but rather through subversion and terrorism. Bahrain is, in fact, the
ideal target for such an Iranian strategy. The actual stakes in the struggle
for Bahrain are far greater than one would think, given its small physical
size (760 sq. km.) and its tiny population (738,000).

When the U.S. entered the Second World War, Imperial Japan launched a
sea-borne airstrike against the headquarters and ships of the U.S. Pacific
Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Today, as is well known, the headquarters of
the U.S. Fifth Fleet is in Bahrain. Iran does not need to employ its air
force against the U.S. naval facility, but only to topple the pro-American
regime of the al-Khalifa family and replace it with a new Bahraini regime
backed by the Shi’a majority which seeks the immediate withdrawal of the
fleet. In 2005, Shi’a demonstrators marched in Manama, Bahrain’s capital,
showing their support for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Three years later in 2008, Shi’a demonstrators waved Hizbullah flags in
Manama and called for closing U.S. bases in Bahrain.

The recent events in Bahrain have underlined the very volatile situation in
which the small kingdom has been managing its affairs for the last two
decades.

Nothing could be as descriptive of its unique situation as the narrative of
the American analyst whose paper was leaked to the public through WikiLeaks:
“The Sunni ruling family of tiny, Shi’a-majority Bahrain have long
recognized that they needed outsiders – first the British, then the United
States – to protect them from predatory neighbors, Iran foremost among them.
Both Shahs and Ayatollahs have asserted claims to sovereignty over Bahrain
from time to time. While keeping close to their American protectors, Bahrain’s
rulers seek to avoid provoking Iran unnecessarily, and keep lines of
communication with Iranian leaders open.”

The Sunni al-Khalifa family took Bahrain in 1783 from another Arab clan that
acknowledged Persian overlordship. In 1971 the British colonizers left
Bahrain at a time when the last Shah of Iran asserted and then withdrew a
claim of sovereignty over the tiny island. After the Islamic revolution, the
Iranian regime claimed sovereignty over Bahrain from time to time. Tensions
between Bahrain and Iran developed again in February 2009 when Ali Akbar
Nateq-Nouri, an advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
said Iran had sovereignty over Bahrain. He called Bahrain Iran’s 14th
province (Saddam Hussein called Kuwait Iraq’s 19th province during the 1991
Gulf War). Bahrain halted natural gas negotiations with Iran in protest of
the comments and demanded an official apology. Former Iranian Foreign
Minister Manoucher Mottaki visited Bahrain at the time and presented an
official apology.

It should come as no surprise that Bahraini rulers view Iran with deep
suspicion and support fully the U.S. efforts to pressure and contain Iran.
According to another leaked WikiLeaks document of April 2008, on the eve of
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Bahrain in 2008, the king
reiterated that his number-one security concern was Iran. The king told the
American who prepared Rice’s visit that the purpose of the meeting was to
demonstrate that “we have an alliance that will not stand by and watch
countries fall to Iran one by one.”

Bahraini officials often tell their American counterparts that some Shi’a
oppositionists are backed by Iran. The king himself has claimed that members
of the opposition have received training in Lebanon with Hizbullah officers
(even though the Americans were unable to confirm this report). The last
known and proved Iranian involvement in Bahrain occurred in the mid-1990s
when followers of Ayatollah Shirazi, who had received money and weapons from
Iran, were rounded up and convicted of sedition (and later pardoned, while
some engage today in legal politics). The Bahraini government presented
evidence in Washington that the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards was
involved in a 1995 Shiite uprising.

Nevertheless, as neighbors, Iran and Bahrain have had a long relationship
centered largely around bilateral trade, though basic tourism and necessary
regional cooperation also play a part. Since the international community and
the United States in particular began to condemn Iran for its nuclear
program, Bahrain’s relations with the Islamic Republic have become
increasingly strained. Bahraini officials have publicly stated that Iran is
pursuing a nuclear weapons program in violation of its Non-Proliferation
Agreement obligation. Moreover, according to the WikiLeaks document
referring to Bahrain, dated August 2008, roughly 30% of the Bahraini Shi’a
follow clerics who look to more senior clerics in Iran for guidance. The
majority look to Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq and a few to the late Muhammad
Fadlallah and others in Lebanon. Bahrain’s most popular cleric is Sheikh Isa
Qassim, who has occasionally endorsed the Iranian regime’s doctrine of
“velayat-e-faqih” (guardianship of the jurist – the Supreme Leader).
According to the same WikiLeaks report, a number of Bahrain’s middle-aged
clerics studied in Qom during the years when Saddam Hussein obstructed study
in Iraq.

In other words, Bahrain rulers are practically sitting on a barrel of
explosives whose detonator lies in the hands of the leaders of Iran. Bahrain’s
precarious regime lies on a very unstable social fabric:

a. 60-70% of Bahrain’s 500,000 citizens are Shi’a, while the other
half-million residents are guest workers.

b. Shi’a are poorer than Sunni Bahrainis.

c. About 15% of Bahrainis are Persian and speak Persian at home and tend to
belong to the professional classes.

The protests of mid-February and the subsequent violent repression by the
authorities have underlined once more the deep grievances of the Shi’a
majority. The protesters’ demands have two main objectives: to force the
ruling Sunni monarchy to give up its control over top governmental posts and
all critical decisions, and address the claims that the Shi’a face
systematic discrimination and are effectively blocked from key roles in
public service and the military. Specifically, the protesters called for the
government to provide more jobs and better housing, free all political
detainees, and abolish the system that offers Bahraini citizenship to Sunnis
from around the Middle East.

As a measure of appeasement, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has ordered an
increase in food subsidies and social welfare payments, and a grant of 1,000
dinars ($2,653) to each Bahraini family. According to Bahraini newspapers,
more than 71% of the families entitled to this grant have utilized it. The
ruling family entrusted the management of the crisis to Crown Prince Salman,
who called for a dialogue with an opposition inspired by the Tunisian and
Egyptian models, which is not ready at this point to compromise before
satisfying its main demands.

No doubt this dire situation is not pleasant for the U.S. Due to their deep
interests in Bahrain and the Persian Gulf, the Americans have been
monitoring the domestic situation there for quite some time. Nevertheless,
the analysts seem to have been very condescending towards the Bahraini
monarchy to which it attributed a closer grip and control of the country,
together with a proclaimed policy of liberalization. On the one hand, the
Americans were very much aware of Bahrain’s deep social, political, ethnic,
and religious problems, but on the other hand, this did not trigger warnings
regarding the capabilities of the regime to deal with such dire crises as
the actual one. On the contrary, the Americans painted the rulers in a very
positive way and stressed their commitment to political reform and
reconciliation.

The December 2009 WikiLeaks document states as follows: “King Hamid
understands that Bahrain cannot prosper by repression….There is more
religious freedom in Bahrain than in most neighboring countries…two election
cycles have seen the integration of the Shi’a opposition into the political
process. While a Shi’a rejectionist fringe continues to boycott the process,
their influence remains limited as the mainstream Wifaq Party has shown an
ability to work with the government to achieve results for its constituents.
Discrimination against Shi’a persists, however, and the government has
sought to deflect criticism by engaging with Wifaq and focusing more public
spending on housing and social welfare projects. So long as Wifaq remains
convinced of the benefits of political participation, the long-term outlook
for Bahrain’s stability is good.” (!)

The protests in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, have created a
serious situation for the U.S. national security and for its economic
interests. According to a late 2009 WikiLeaks document, U.S. companies have
won major contracts between 2007-2009 that include Gulf Air’s purchase of 24
Boeing 787 Dreamliners, a $5 billion joint venture with Occidental Petroleum
to revitalize the Awali field, and well over $300 million in foreign
military sales.

Bahrain has been a faithful ally to the U.S., has developed very close
intelligence cooperation with the U.S., especially on issues of
counter-terrorism, cooperates in the military and naval fields, as well as
in the organization of an anti-Iranian Arab alliance. Under American aegis,
Bahrain has improved its stance on human rights and political freedoms,
although it seems not enough to prevent the outburst of protest that
occurred in mid-February 2011.

The U.S. has every reason to be worried if Bahrain tumbles under Iranian
hegemony. Indeed, all the ingredients are present for a potential change in
Bahrain. It is also obvious that only through the use of force can the
Bahraini regime survive. For how long? Certainly for as long as the U.S. is
willing to support the regime and ignore its actions against human rights,
and as long as there is no overt confrontation with Iran. Even more
worrisome for the U.S. is the fact that this Shi’a protest could very easily
expand to the neighboring eastern Saudi shore of Al-Ahsaa where most of the
population is also Shi’a. Such a situation and potential continued unrest
could create a serious challenge to the military presence of the U.S. in the
Gulf area, especially if it is exploited by Iranian agents interested in
provoking havoc in an “American preserve” at a time when Tehran itself is
feeling the weight of popular protest, encouraged openly by the Obama
Administration.

In view of the above, there is a clear possibility that the American naval
presence in Bahrain will become a target for potential Iranian terrorist
acts.

It should be stressed that Iran has already identified a situation of
American weakness in protecting its allies in the Middle East and the
Persian Gulf. Iran therefore is increasing its support to subversive
elements throughout the Persian Gulf and especially in Bahrain.

Finally, it seems that if Iran perceives a situation where the U.S. would
treat the king as it treated Mubarak earlier, this would definitely
encourage Iran to increase its offensive subversion in Bahrain and possibly
in eastern Saudi Arabia.

Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, a special analyst for the Middle East at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli
Military Intelligence.
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