Fareed Zakaria Considers What the Mideast Protests Reveal

[reACTIONary]

Putin warns that the Arab world could descend into chaos.

"I think it is overblown. I think what you have here is one of these periodic crises that take place. You will remember there have been these around the Koran burning and around the Danish cartoons, and they're all signs of a fundamental problem within Arab societies, a fundamental lack of tolerance and an extremism. But they have never really descended "into chaos" because, just remember, you're talking about a few hundred people, here and there. There may be a few places where it's worse and remember the crucial difference in the place like Libya is that the government is entirely on the side of the United States. It's trying to battle these extremists."



http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/14/qa-what-the-mideast-protests-reveal/?hpt=hp_t2

[leveymg]

1. The problem isn't the govenment - it's that there isn't one in E Libya, except militants who

we have been doing business with through Amb. Stevens since before the overthrow of Gadhafi, and have continued since to do business with in their Jihad against the Shi'ia regime in Syria.

[reACTIONary]

2. According to press reports...

... from Libya at least four arrests have been made in connection with the killings. According to a law enforcement official in Washington F.B.I. agents are also investigating the killings.

It sounds to me like Lybia has a government, that they are taking action, and are cooperating with us in furthering the investigation.

[Igel]

3. Now it does.

Wednesday, when they were reporting, the government was falling all over itself to say that there were armed militant groups all over the place and huge areas of the country weren't under the government's control. Of course the government-trained and paid security forces ran. Weak government.

When there needs to be a strong government, however, there is. When they need to have people arrested, people are arrested. When there needs to be chaos-fed lack of accountability, there is. Whatever is needed, is. No proof that those arrested are those who should be arrested, no good evidence that the 50+ they have named were named by the bad guys or were involved. But now that the government's strong because there's face to save; the security forces won't run any longer, because honor's involved. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting; we have a neat box with a picture on it. We want to believe, so we believe. It'll be interesting to see what happens when push comes to shove and verifiable proof of the government's strength and rigor are expected to surface.

Note that when the government wants Saif al-Islam transferred to government control, however, nothing happens. That's verifiable.

[reACTIONary]

4. I'm not sure I understand your point about Saif al-Islam...

... he is being held prisoner in Zintan, northwestern Libya. Isn't that the equivalent to being under government control? Libyan officials have refused to hand him over to The Hague. Is that what you are referring to? That doesn't indicate that Libya is without a functioning government.

They did delay his trial, because they want to interrogate Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi's former spy chief who has just been extradited to Libya.

Overall, it doesn't seem that they have a completely dysfunctional government, or that the government is inimical to our interests. But there does seem to be some a bit of militant chaos erupting here and there.