US Ready To Again Implement "The Mubarak Maneuver"

What is "The Mubarak Maneuver" you ask?

It is the implementation of a nifty 180 degree turn in policy where allies of the US who are publicly supported find themselves waking up one morning to find that the US considers them expendable.

We saw it by Mubarak.
Now, we see the US ready to dump Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh:

The United States, which long supported Yemen’s president, even in the face of recent widespread protests, has now quietly shifted positions and has concluded that he is unlikely to bring about the required reforms and must be eased out of office, according to American and Yemeni officials.

The Obama administration had maintained its support of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in private and refrained from directly criticizing him in public, even as his supporters fired on peaceful demonstrators, because he was considered a critical ally in fighting the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda. This position has fueled criticism of the United States in some quarters for hypocrisy for rushing to oust a repressive autocrat in Libya but not in strategic allies like Yemen and Bahrain.

It's not hard, under the circumstances, to make a case for Saleh's removal--but The Mubarak Maneuver is about more than just removing former allies: it's about how it is done--failing to address the will of the people.

The criticism of the United States for failing to publicly support Yemen’s protesters has been loudest here, where the protesters insist the United States’ only concern is counterterrorism.

“We are really very, very angry because America until now didn’t help us similar to what Mr. Obama said that Mubarak has to leave now,” said Tawakul Karman, a leader of the antigovernment youth movement. “Obama says he appreciated the courage and dignity of Tunisian people. He didn’t say that for Yemeni people.”

“We feel that we have been betrayed,” she said.

Hamza Alkamaly, 23, a prominent student leader, agreed. “We students lost our trust in the United States,” he said. “We thought the United States would help us in the first time because we are calling for our freedom.”

Apparently, they have not been watching how the Obama administration ignored protesters in Iran or said that Assad of Syria was a reformer.

For that matter, the first clue should have been Honduras--where the people staged a peaceful coup against a ruler who wanted to extend his term, contrary to what the Honduran Constitution allows for. Obama sided with President Zelaya and insisted that he be returned to office.

Walter Russell Mead gave a rundown just a year ago about how the Obama administration had managed to mistreat other allies--long before the wave of Mideast protests. Apparently, it is not just a matter of the Middle East or even dictators. All allies are treated equally:

[T]he pattern of poor relations with close allies is disturbing. Currently embroiled in a quarrel with Israel over Jewish housing construction in East Jerusalem, the administration recently angered the EU by refusing to attend a summit in Madrid, embarrassed Britain by seeming to side with Argentina over negotiations over the Falklands Islands, canceled an invitation to Afghanistan’s President Karzai, and cheesed off Brazil when President Obama made his last minute, ill-fated dash to Copenhagen to snatch the 2016 Olympics from Rio.

But when it comes to the Middle East, the Obama administration has it's own calculations--independent of what it did in Europe. It's not about dictators or the people they shoot. To the Obama administration, policy in the Middle East is all about Iran:

Last week, the decisions being made at the White House were about how firmly to back the protesters being shot in the streets in Syria and Yemen, or being beaten in Bahrain. For each of those, White House aides were performing a mostly silent calculation about whether the Iranians would benefit, or at least feel more breathing room.

Considering the spreading of protests in the Middle East, the Obama administration will have all kinds of opportunities to use the Mubarak maneuver in the future.

Or to learn from past mistakes.

Let's see which.

Technorati Tag: Yemen.