Obama promotes democracy in Yemen..........oops, not really

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/02/19/good-enough-obama-sees-single-candidate-election-in-yemen-as-model-for-middle-east/

After over a year of public protests and violent crackdowns, Yemen will finally see the ouster of US-backed dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. The protesters are well short of their goals, however, and many fear that the elections may short-circuit their protests.

That?s because the entire Saleh regime remains in place, and the election is a single candidate vote, which will replace Saleh with a new US-backed dictator, Major General Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

And while its just a formality since the US has been pushing for him for months now, President Obama today publicly endorsed Hadi, saying the imposition of a slightly younger military dictator in a rigged election will be ?a model for how peaceful transition in the Middle East can occur.?

Already some in the opposition are abandoning the protesters, with former military defector Gen. Ahmar urging voters to turn out and vote. The prospect of boycotts in southern Yemen and in Houthi controlled provinces remains, but for the political interests that jumped on the protest bandwagon, the negotiated settlement, even if it provides nothing that those protesters actually wanted, amounts to a victory.

 

Not surprising. This is just example #1,989,756 of western neocolonialism ****ing up everything as usual.

 

Better than CNN during the Iraq War.

 

Is it really that unreasonable to say that the "Arab Spring" changed almost nothing in places such as Egypt and Yemen, and the U.S. is at least partly to blame for this outcome?

 

Getting rid of Saleh is an important first step. And with Yemen's messed up politics, that's probably going to have to be enough, at least for the short term.

 

So why get rid of Saleh in the first place?

 

yeah why? i mean he actually helped out indy quite a bit despite his generally bumbling nature.

 

Even, I'd give you Yemen easily enough. But I'm not sure you can say the verdict is out on Egypt, if only because the situation there is so rapidly evolving.

 

It all goes back to Zbiggy and his book.
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