No Third Way in Egypt

Suppose there's a car parked outside a house.  The owner has left the country for a week and is out of touch.  There is a dog inside the car.  It is ferociously hot; the car is locked.  Some favor breaking a window to get the dog out.  Some are opposed to this destruction of property.  You suggest writing the owner's uncle a letter; perhaps the uncle knows where the owner is staying.

You advocate a useless step whose consequences are all too clear.  You protest that you favor neither letting the dog die, nor destroying the owner's property.  But your middle way is no way at all.

When it comes to what can actually happen, your suggestion amounts to letting the dog die.  Your choice is not a real choice and your preference is not a real preference.  You are simply expressing your distaste for a hard choice that, in fact, you have already made.

So it is with those who insist they favor neither SCAF not the Muslim Brotherhood.  This expresses their tastes; it is not a political position.  It would be too generous even to call it a preference: you do not prefer to write the uncle any more than I prefer to get to work by soaring through the air.  There is no third way in Egypt.  It's SCAF or, at least initially, the Brotherhood.  To say this is not to 'tell Egyptians' anything.  The reasons are obvious and known to all.  To pretend otherwise is either a cynical pretense or the most vigorous self-delusion.

Here are some of the reasons.  They all point to the same thing:  that SCAF is much too powerful to be overcome by anything but an alliance in which the Brotherhood would, at least for a good while, dominate.

First, the Army (and through it the other 'security services') have an economic power hardly ever matched.  Its economic interests, described as 'vast' and 'sprawling', may perhaps be rivaled in Pakistan and China - but then no one expects the Chinese or Pakistani peoples to be able to overcome their militaries.  It is rare indeed that an army has such extensive roles in fundamental economic sectors such as manufacturing and construction.

This economic power translates into great political power backed, ultimately, by the gun.  Elsewhere even the most powerful militaries face considerable obstacles to the exercise of sovereignty.  In China, the army appears largely to be subordinate the the Communist Party, and in any case central authority is limited by the vastness and diversity of the country.  In Pakistan, the army has great difficulty dealing with numerous armed insurgencies, and must face a constant menace from India.  In Egypt, with the politically unimportant exception of the Sinai, the population is tightly packed into very small, very manageable areas.  The army enjoys excellent relations with Israel, so it faces no external threat.  No force, anywhere in the country except the Sinai, can prevent the army from doing exactly as it pleases.

The army is also immune from international pressure.  The US cannot afford to withdraw its extensive support, both because of the influence it would lose in the Middle East and because of the economic damage withdrawal would cause in the US economy.  But at least as important as all of this put together, the army is deeply loved by a very large segment of the population.

This love is not admiration for military prowess. It is faith in an institution that regularly intervenes in politics - when, that is, it is not openly running the country.  The military's 'justice' system, the murder and torture it practices, these are well known and accepted.  Since it is believed that the army acts in the best interests of the nation, there is no effective way to criticize this adulation.  After all, what the army does is in the army's interests, and what serves the army, serves Egypt.

I am not aware of any comparably strong military ousted by civilian opposition.  Even in Turkey, the army's episodic interventions and pervasive influence run up against civilian restraint:  the electorate has strongly rejected military-backed candidates.  Moreover, as the Kurdish insurgency demonstrates, the Turkish army has far less physical control.  On the international scene, it has no faithful patron like the US, eager to finance it and overlook its transgressions.  Most decisively, its enormous 15 billion dollar economic kingdom is dwarfed by the Egyptian army's 60 billion dollar economic empire, four times the size and as much as ten times the share of national GDP.  Since the 1980s Turkey's army has even lost support from big business.  Its fall from power followed an Islamist electoral win accepted as legal by the opposition, who allowed the Islamists to govern within a mutually accepted institutional framework.

All the evidence suggests that an army as strong and popular as Egypt's could never be overthrown by a secular opposition functioning within a largely Islamist population - unless those secularists allowed the Islamists to govern.  This conclusion is not just a matter of comparisons.  The secular opposition has never shown the tiniest ability to challenge the army; for the most part it hasn't even shown the inclination to do so.  The political factions that explicitly reject both the army and the Brotherhood appear as rounding errors in any political poll or electoral contest.  The coup has not grown their strength into anything perceptible and they have no powerful backers.  "No to the Brotherhood and military rule" expresses a desire, but you would have to be a fantasist to advance this in good faith as a genuine political agenda.

There is, then, no third way.  Given this reality, to oppose the Moslem Brotherhood is to support the army.  It does not matter how vociferously someone protests that they 'oppose' army rule as well, or that they also criticize SCAF.  That person is supporting the army, because weakening the Brotherhood inevitably, predictably, does exactly that - and accomplishes nothing else.

Genuine opposition to both the army and the Brotherhood would require 'allying' with the Brotherhood against the army.  With the army out of the way, secularists could work at out-organizing the Brotherhood, which is no stronger than its popular support.  With the Brotherhood out of the way, the army is more powerful than ever:  there can be no change.  If Egypt is to have a political future, the army has to go.

In this context the term 'alliance' can mislead.  An alliance does not mean buying into an Islamist agenda.  It means two things: supporting the Brotherhood whenever the Brotherhood moves against the army, and accepting the Brotherhood's attempts to replace the old 'deep state' with its own administration.  Otherwise, any push against the army is bound to fail.

Is such an alliance impossible, now that the entire secular opposition has in fact supported the armed forces?  Not quite.  It's possible if the entire secular leadership, which had discredited itself beyond redemption, is replaced.  That is unlikely, but it is the only way forward.

Morayef, Morsi, and alliances in Egypt

Sounding quite put-upon, Heba Morayef (Human Rights Watch's Egypt director, Middle East and North Africa division) announces on twitter that she is

Getting v tired of all this “return of the police state” narrative. Police state was alive and kicking with Morsy’s blessing throughout.

...not just with Morsi's blessing, it seems.  Morsi was an ally:

In conclusion: Morsy chose to ally himself with the police as opposed to "pro-rev" forces calling for accountability & police reform.

Between the announcement and the 'conclusion' comes what I take to be the evidence.  It's odd.  An ally is normally one who helps you do things.  But Morsi is accused almost entirely of verbal crimes, if that:  some incidents are reported where no connection between Morsi and the incident is even alleged.  This apart, there is a failure to publicize a report on abuses, which of course hardly facilitated the abuses - nor has any report by anyone even slowed them down.  Mostly it's about 'endorsement'.  Morsi said this nice thing about the police! he said that nice thing! Well, I endorse the FSA in Syria; that hardly makes me an ally.  Not once is it even alleged that Morsi, as an ally might, made any substantive contribution to police abuse.

Sure, when a president endorses something, that's supposed to be different.  It puts the might of the state behind the thing endorsed.  Oh wait.  It was the might of the state that Morsi was supposed to be endorsing.  What could this mean?

For one thing, it means that Morsi stood at some distance from the power of the state.  The army and police were doing - and not doing - what they pleased.  It's quite a feat of self-deception, in the face of this virtually uncontested fact, to suppose that Morsi could have had any substantial responsibility for the conduct of the security forces, merely through statements and reports.

For another, to hold up Morsi's verbal activities with great indignation is at best posturing, at worst childish.  Adults know that when people say nice things, they sometimes don't mean it.  They realize this applies to politics as well.  Morsi had no power.  He was hoping to acquire some.  Meanwhile, he paid a high price to avoid confrontation with the police and army.  Why?  Because, to repeat what his critics studiously ignore, he had no power.*  He would have lost.

Has anyone in the know confirmed this diagnosis? Yes, very much so - the army and the police.  Not being children, they did not actually believe that Morsi thought them heroes of the revolution.  They did not believe he was sincere in his professed desire to get along with them.  They did not think that he bottled up criticism of them because he was on their side.  In fact, that's why they overthrew him.  They knew him for what he was, a man just out of their prisons, who was unlikely to look on them with deepest love.  They knew he belonged to a movement long dedicated to destroying their privileges and their sovereignty.  Though it is the security forces who most obviously qualify for the epithet Orwellian, Orwellian too is the cynical corruption of mind that manages to blind itself to such glaring realities.

One wonders what political effect Morayef can possibly expect her diatribe to have.

The army and police, after all, are genuine allies.  No doubt diligent research could discover nice things they had said about one another, but here there are more than verbal ties.  The police benefit the army by murdering and torturing people the army dislikes.   The army does some of the same for the police, but also lends its immense domestic prestige to their activities - not to mention the ever-present menace of massive armed force should anyone seriously challenge the alliance.  The army and police now enjoy almost hysterical popular support.  Foreign powers are spineless in their reaction to the coup.  Yet human rights advocacy didn't give SCAF so much as a flea-bite even before they reached this pinnacle of power.  So Morayef would have to be an almost pathological fantasist if she expected her words to help SCAF's victims.  It would be almost as crazy to suppose Morsi's words could have made any difference.

But words do, of course, at times matter.  Morayef is almost venerated in the West. (In 2013 she was nominated for Time's 100 most influential people in the world.)  Her words may be pointlessly ineffectual, but if they're not, they can only discredit Morsi in Western eyes.  So if the West ever does contemplate acquiring a spine, Morayef may play some small part in weakening international support for Morsi.  Weakening Morsi strengthens SCAF.  So the likeliest political effect of Morayef's words is to support the very murderers and torturers she contrives to smear Morsi with.

Words which help SCAF do not, of course, make for an alliance.  But if Morayef wanted to wax indignant about SCAF's allies, she might have let loose against real allies of SCAF, Respected Sirs such as El Baradei and Egypt's coup-sanctioned prime minister, Hazem Al Beblawi.  He played a major role in bringing hundreds of thousands to the army and police sponsored love-in that - again predictably - resulted in the army coup and the murder of many innocent people.   But El Baradei and Beblawi, who bring with them substantial support for the regime, don't attract Morayef's ire as much as a jailed president and his bloodied movement.

===========================

*  This is why it's so wrong-headed to speak of police abuse persisting 'under' Morsi.   It's a bit like saying that British police continued to abuse suspects 'under' Queen Elizabeth.

An image for the Egyptian opposition

I'm posting this image as a small reminder of just what sort of people the opposition has chosen to rule over Egypt.  Of course this is just a sample.  Many have, over the years, met similar fates.

Khaled Saïd after beating

By 'the opposition' I mean every last person who had a hand in overthrowing Morsi.  This includes all those who trumpet their hatred of military rule; all those who say the struggle is against both the Moslem Brotherhood and SCAF; all those who say they simply want to defend freedom or, incredibly, democracy; all those who say all sorts of nice things.  In short, I mean all those who fail to acknowledge that, for whatever reason, they've chosen murderers and torturers as their rulers.

All these people, indeed every adult Egyptian, knew the army and police hadn't changed. I'm not predicting the future.  For all I know, the army and police will change tomorrow and, just as some claim, step back from power, ushering in an era of freedom and democracy.  Maybe all will turn out to be peace and love.

What I do know beyond any doubt is that no one has any rational grounds for believing in these rosy prospects.  The opposition, the whole opposition, has made the same old bullies stronger than ever. The generals who swept Morsi aside with hardly more than a gesture have nothing to fear from a far more fragmented opposition.  Its endorsement of SCAF almost certainly enhanced the military's already wide and deep popular support.  The army and police have no conceivable reason for relinquishing power or changing their ways.  And to believe otherwise is to be in the grip of a delusion so outlandish that it must be willfully self-induced, a device to conceal the enormity of a shameful choice.

Too bad this won't reduce the flow of 'revolutionaries', 'socialists', liberals and earnest bloggers making excuses for what they've done.

A 'legitimate' coup in Egypt?

H.A. Hellyer tells us that the Egyptian army's coup had popular legitimacy:

"The most honest and accurate way to describe this was a popularly called-for, and thus popularly legitimate, coup."

He seems to connect this claim to crowds:

"... no other option was going to be acceptable to the crowds that came out onto the streets except his removal."

The notion of popular legitimacy seems very popular these days.  Maybe it has popular legitimacy.  But the kindest thing one can say about Hellyer's use of it is that he is an expert on the Middle East, not on legitimacy.

Here's the claim as I understand it.  There was a really huge crowd, which according to rough unofficial estimates had to be so very large that, while it wasn't actually a majority of the adult population, had to represent that majority.  It called for something.  Therefore that something was 'popularly legitimate'.

Apparently 'popularly legitimate' means that the something called for was ok.  'Legitimacy' has to have some force like that.  It's not just descriptive, like "real popular at that moment".  So we get

If it's endorsed by a huge crowd representing a majority, it's in some sense legitimate, ok.

As they say, what could possibly go wrong?  If it's endorsed, it's legitimate.  Doesn't matter what 'it' is.  Endorsement confers legitimacy on whatever it is that's endorsed.

Really?  So if the huge crowd endorsed slavery, or the torture and execution of dissidents, or ethnic cleansing, these endorsed items would have 'popular legitimacy'.  Absolutely, according to Hellyer's rule, and he's got a right to define the term as he likes.  But we can still ask if that has the slightest, tiniest tendency to make these things ok.

The examples are hardly far-fetched.  At many times and places, from the Confederate States of America (which itself would very likely have had 'popular legitimacy') to 19th century Ukraine and its pogroms, to 21st century Burma, it wouldn't be too hard to get the requisite huge crowd to endorse these things.  But why go that far?  The trouble with huge crowd endorsements is, it's never too clear exactly what's being endorsed.  What was endorsed in Egypt, on June 30th?

Not just any sort of leadership change, says Hellyer, but a coup.  Suppose he's right.  That means at a minimum that Egypt's military, embodied in SCAF, would take power, abrogate the constitution and depose the president.  You'd also pretty well have to expect that there would be a lot of arrests of the Islamists who had held 'power' (they didn't really, since the military, police and 'deep state' did pretty much as they pleased).  That's what happens in a coup and, as is so often the case, we'd have to expect that the police would be extensively involved.

Now it's beyond the slightest controversy that the Egyptian army and police have a record of murder and torture stretching back decades.  It's beyond controversy that their independence from oversight, well-nigh absolute before the fall of Mubarak, has only increased.  That also means, of course, that they haven't been subjected to any reform.  We might add that no force in Egypt has shown the slightest ability to restrain them.  From all this any even vaguely rational person would have the strongest reason to suspect that this 'popularly legitimate' coup would come with a good dose of torture and murder.  Unless the crowd was borderline insane or mentally deficient - which might possibly bear on the legitimacy thing - it would have to expect that the coup to include this spate of torture and murder just as firmly as it would have to expect that there would be troops moving through Cairo.

Well if I endorse a cancer treatment that I have every reason to expect includes excising a tumor, I can be understood to endorse excising the tumor.  Indeed dictators often justify their torture and murder using exactly this comparison.  But in the case of the coup, Hellyer tells us, endorsement confers 'popular legitimacy'.  So someone could certainly argue that the torture and murder had popular legitimacy as well.

Well, maybe something did go wrong after all.  Maybe, if we want a notion of popular legitimacy that makes something ok, we need to consider not just the endorsing but what's endorsed.  The notion will always have problems because what a huge crowd endorses is never entirely clear. But when Mubarak was overthrown, it wasn't a matter of huge crowds who'd already been told by the Ministry of Interior that it was open season on the headquarters of the governing party.  Though some common soldiers broke ranks, it wasn't a police and army love-in with Egyptian flags dropped from military helicopters.  In fact it wasn't a matter of one huge crowd celebrating on one security-forces-approved night.

It was a drawn-out desperate struggle in which young and old died in the streets under the fire of police snipers and agonized in army torture sessions.  So despite the chants of 'the people and the army, one hand', it's reasonable to conclude that the huge crowd wasn't endorsing the replacement of Mubarak by a murdering, torturing military junta: "down, down, with military rule".  On the contrary it seems the crowds were demanding an end to such practices and a measure of freedom - whatever that meant to whoever demanded it - for everyone, secularists and Islamists alike.  They weren't endorsing the destruction at gunpoint of a democratically elected though largely impotent government.

The different objectives of the crowds can't just be ignored when evaluating the legitimacy of their demands.  If Hellyer wants to argue that Morsi himself lacked popular legitimacy, he is welcome to do so.  But his argument for the coup - no, it wasn't just an 'analysis' - relies on an idea of popular legitimacy that would be disgusting if it weren't so absurd.  Maybe he should reconsider his whitewash.

Egypt - An Outsider's View

It's understood that societies exert pressure on their members in various general ways - the state through laws and penalties, the economic order through the demands of employment and unemployment, the society through various forms of persuasion, condemnation and sometimes illegal intimidation.  Of course there are also rewards and inducements of various kinds.  Egypt is no exception.

Egyptians in impressive numbers and with great courage, rebelled against an oppressive government.  What's happened?

The military and 'security establishment', semi-independent organs of capricious and brutal repression, escaped scott-free.  The entire power of the state detached itself from the state and did what it pleased.  In return, the popularity of these institutions, known for torture and murder, soared.  The 'revolutionaries', or more accurately the people dissatisfied with the old order, divided into a more or less liberal, secular opposition, Islamists of various kinds, and a tiny remnant of true left-wingers opposed to the army and police. (The division was rough and the parts themselves diverse, but a rough picture will do.)  Virtually all society's anger was channelled into intergroup dissension, and away from the army and police.

Where was the government in all this?  There was no government, but only a few officials and representatives who came to power in a disputed election, under a constitution decreed by some generals without the slightest hint of democratic procedure, and interpreted by those same judges who so often presided with equanimity over the injustices and oppression of the old régime.  They and the army destroyed every attempt by the Islamists, particularly the Moslem Brotherhood, to establish something like a state.  There was no legislature; the army through its cabinet posts loomed over the executive branch, and the judiciary led the way in making sure these constraints could not be overcome.

The opposition, largely spectators in this demeaning circus, developed an ideology in line with the increasingly contemptuous approach of the army and police to the efforts of the elected officials to govern.  This ideology had two main components.

The first was to pretend that the non-government was a government, and therefore responsible for the failure to govern.  The army, police and judges responsible for this failure were entirely exempted from responsibility for its consequences.

The second was to offer, with great pretense of sagacity, an absurd theory of democracy according to which the non-government, contrary to the most obvious appearances, was authoritarian.  It was authoritarian because democracy, it seemed, was not about majority rule, but about giving the minority some unspecified but large share of power.  Any attempt by the government to assert its authority against the security establishment, or to  populate state institutions with its own choices, was welcomed with pretentious horror - even the epithet 'fascist' was shamelessly attached to these quite normal attempts to govern.  Meanwhile people went hungry.  The opposition made no attempt to help them, but very occasionally used them as a stick to beat the 'government' down some more.

Why did this happen?  Whatever the whole story, part of it had to do with class.

The revolution was, according to the slogans, for freedom.  To its instigators, largely middle-class, that meant civil liberties and exemption from repressive social constraints.  As might be expected, their ideals amounted to classic liberalism.  To much of the rest of the population, freedom meant above all democracy.  Now, they thought, we get to decide how things run.  And most of this group were Islamist.  Their ideology was anti-liberal, all about social regimentation and at best indifferent to individual liberties.  But this was no ordinary confrontation of liberal and anti-liberal forces.  It intensified and festered from refusal to acknowledge a great big elephant in the room.

This elephant was deep-seated inequality of opportunity.  The liberals were fighting an oppressive social order from which they had largely enjoyed independence.  The anti-liberals represented those for whom there was no such escape.

The liberals realized with increasing clarity that what they really feared was not dictatorship but the imposition of an Islamic lifestyle.  Any other sort of freedom didn't really matter.  They could hardly have be clearer about their priorities:  had they really cared about civil liberties, they would never have come to embrace as saviors the murdering, torturing army and police.  As for democracy, they had discovered what they could not admit:  it was their enemy, the very instrument that sought to on them impose an Islamist lifestyle.  It was this discovery that engendered their absurd, pretentious notions of a democracy that had to be 'so much more' than vulgar majority rule.

The liberals did have one thing right:  democracy is indeed a tyranny of the majority, limited only by self-imposed constraints.  And the liberals may have had excellent reason to fight democracy in Egypt.  But, incredibly, they did not or could not recognize that their fight was only for the privileged few.  For the majority, that fight was already lost, and no political arrangements could reverse their defeat.

The most convenient way to see this is in its most prominent aspect, the position of women.  Middle-class or upper-middle class women in Egypt had some freedom.  They had homes and hangouts in which they could almost dress and do as they please, yet be treated with respect.  Of course this was worth a great deal, almost everything to them, and middle-class men had similar life-style concerns.  This was well worth fighting for, even if it meant promoting an absurd ideology and hoping for a puppet government under the paternal eye of the criminally repressive police and military.  In short it was worth re-establishing the old order.

But this agenda could make sense only to the less deprived segments of society.  For the rest, there was no escape.  The old order had not protected them and a new old order would not be able to do so.  They had to accept Islamic constraints.  For them, the liberal agenda was a pipe dream.

Everyone knew this, but no one said it.  Everyone had seen what was essentially an Islamist social order arise after decades of failed though persistently repressive secularist governments.  For most women, liberty had already been lost.  Not for them the good job with the good salary and the trips abroad.  They could never hope to defy the communities in which they lived.  The liberty defended so passionately by the opposition was a privilege to which they could not aspire.

That is why the revolution degenerated into a poisonous stalemate.  The liberals had a certain constituency that they could not in short order expand, because they had nothing to offer the lower orders of society.  The lower orders, for whom freedom was out of reach, wanted at least democracy, the power of collective self-determination.  Since this was only a threat to the better-off strata of society, they too could not expand their support.  The result was increasing and increasingly dangerous polarization, all to the benefit of the very repressive institutions whose excesses prompted the revolution in the first place.  The liberals might gain temporary advantage if people believe they can offer competent government, but they would be just as crippled in power as the Islamists:T the police and military will ensure the continuance of an order over which they so profitably preside.

Could things have gone differently?  Could they still?  The liberals could accept democracy.  Failing that, they could and can prevail only if they accept what the Islamists accepted many years ago - that the road to power had to lead through society itself.  The Islamists achieved what they achieved, social transformation and an electoral majority, by working with and for the poor in the slums.  They cared about the poor or at least catered to them, when no one else did, not in any useful way.  The liberals can win only if they travel that same long hard road. They can get behind the efforts of the left and the trade unions to improve the lot of 'the people'. Otherwise, they can content themselves with counter-revolution.

MANPADS for the Syrian opposition: a danger to commercial aviation?

Over and over again, experts (on something) tell us that "Anti-aircraft missiles could migrate out of Syria and threaten commercial aviation."  Yes they could.  How big is the threat of portable anti-aircraft systems, or MANPADS?

Sounds like it's pretty big:  "Since 1975, 40 civilian aircraft have been hit by MANPADS, causing at least 28 crashes and more than 800 deaths around the world...".  That comes out to about 21 deaths a year, but there's always the possibility of some catastrophic attack to make anyone regret being glib about the number.   Better to look at some unexpected facts relating to the statistic.

First, there are the circumstances of the attacks.  I haven't found a complete list of them. If the available summaries and examples are any indication, 'civilian aircraft' is correct but misleading.

With a lone exception to be discussed shortly, every single example in ABC's list comes from a war zone,  These include Vietnam in 1975 and Iraq in 2003, Rhodesia and Somalia as well as Georgia, the Congo and Angola during their civil wars.  Over a third were cargo, not passenger planes.  Flying in contemporary combat zones pretty well guarantees that potential attackers will already have MANPADS, so it's a little hard to see how supplying the Syrians will greatly increase the danger in these cases.

Second, there's the time of the attacks.

The vast majority of the attacks preceded 9-11.  Consider what that means.  At least into the early 1970s, if you wanted to take a couple of guns and a couple of pounds of weed on a US domestic flight, the smart thing to do was to put it  in your carry-on. No  chance you'd be searched.  Even when things got tighter, it happened quite gradually.  The distance between airport security before and after 9-11 is so vast that it makes no sense to base an assessment of current dangers on pre-9-11 experiences.

Since 9-11 there has been exactly one attack on a civilian airliner not in a war zone:  two MANPADS were fired at an Israeli passenger jet on takeoff from Mombasa Kenya.  No one was harmed; both missiles failed to hit their target.   No doubt Israeli passenger aircraft run extra danger of attacks. But they also have extra protection:  Israeli carriers such as El Al equip their planes with countermeasures. (These countermeasures are theoretically available for all commercial aircraft, but retrofitting is considered too expensive.)   So the Kenya example doesn't tell us much about some general danger to civilian passenger planes.

So we have one very atypical and atypically less alarming case of an attack on a passenger plane outside a war zone in the dozen years after 9-11.  Not one passenger outside a war zone has been injured. Nothing to be cavalier about, but airport security today is anything but cavalier.

Third, there's the crucial question:  how much would supplying the Syrian rebels with MANPADS increase the danger of attacks?  The answer seems to be: minimally at most.

The reason for this verdict has to do with the futility of restricting MANPADS proliferation, discussed in more detail here.  Consider the huge difference between MANPADS in a military role and  in a terrorist role.   A military role (such as neutralizing the Syrian air force) requires at least hundreds of weapons, and they need to be pretty advanced models.  A terrorist role requires one or two.

About 750,000 MANPADS are out there.  Some of the countries the West worries about most, like Iran, manufacture them.  Many more such countries possess them.  Thousands supposedly lie in the Libyan desert.   Perhaps more important, at least several dozen are in Syria already.  Dozens more are bound to appear even if the West doesn't deliver them.  So it seems very unlikely that supplying still more to the Syrian rebels is going to make much difference.  If terrorists want MANPADS, they can certainly get them.  In fact this suggests that, given current airport security and the absence of incidents, terrorists don't think a MANPADS attack is very practical.

All things considered, the danger of attacks on civilian passenger planes outside war zones is very small.   Against this small possibility there is now exceptional vigilance.  Potential terrorists already have ample sources of MANPADS; the availability of a few more won't substantially increase the threat.  So the civilian aircraft excuse is a terrible reason for not arming the Syrian rebels against Assad's air force.

When America deserts Syria

The_47th, a respected twitter contributor with great sources of inside information, asks:  "When Syrians thought USA won't let atrocities happen, when Amb. Ford drove 2 Hama http://youtu.be/oI5S1IVwUyo  .. But what do u do whn ur let dwn"

This is an attempt to answer the question.

Faith in America dies hard, and revives with every empty gesture, every new appointment, every rumour.  Many analysts have developed sources of inside information and, of course, an abiding interest in the workings of insider politics.  Their efforts naturally encourage placing great importance on at-the-top decision-making, but that inclination can mislead.  The public, big-picture evidence on US policy decisively outweighs any stirring of hope that inside information may have provoked.  It has done so all along.  Several abiding themes stand out.

First.  Where the US is concerned, one clear preoccupation never relents:  preventing the spread of advanced anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons.  These weapons would pose a much greater threat to Israel than the big anti-missile systems that get attention such as the S-300.  That's because Israel can easily destroy the big systems, but it cannot destroy the small ones.  And like it or not, keeping Israel safe and happy will always come higher than helping Syrians on the US policy agenda.

Second.  The US public does not support aid to the Syrian rebels and never will.  Current US attitudes are shaped by the defeats or humiliations in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia, and the non-successes of Iraq and Afghanistan.  These non-successes will look worse and worse as Iraq smoulders and Afghanistan collapses in the wake of a US pullout.  It does not matter that the US would have to practically provide the muck itself to get into a Syrian quagmire.  The public will always see a big quagmire risk and the politicians know it.  Always, always, US domestic politics trump foreign policy, and domestic politics will always tell against arming the rebels.

Third.  The US has no short-term or obvious vital interests in Syria.  The uncertainties of a post-Assad future offer no assurance that the next régime will be more tractable than Assad, and what if it was?  Israel wouldn't trust any Syrian régime nor fear it; there's no pressure from Israel to do anything.  Yes there is oil and there are oil pipelines in the region, but oil's political importance has fallen off a cliff with the proliferation of new sources, not least within the US itself.  Syria doesn't matter to the US.

The fourth obstacle to US aid derives in part from the first three.  Given lack of public support, lack of vital interests and domestic dislike for 'foreign adventures',  the US wouldn't dream of serious intervention in Syria without the UN stamp of approval.  (UN approval, even if obtained by lies or manipulation, has always been important to the US in ventures outside its recognized spheres of influence.)  But this, of course, will never come.

For these reasons the US will never deliver serious aid to the Syrian rebels.  Statements and conferences suggesting otherwise are mere bluff designed to contain the ambitions of Russia and Iran.  The US constantly finds fault with the Syrian opposition, not because it would help the opposition if these faults vanished, but because this is part of the bluff: Assad's supporters, hopefully, will see the US ready to step in just as soon as certain conditions are met.  It's  all posturing.  There are good long-term reasons why US prestige and political credibility require supporting the revolution:  the US will have little future in the Middle East otherwise.  But these long-term reasons have no chance at all of prevailing over short-sighted obsessions.

Why does the US trouble itself at all about Syria, and help keep a small arms flow going?  Because it does itself care about Iran, and wants to support its  Gulf State allies who care very much indeed about Iran.  But these allies are probably even more worried than the US about arms falling into the hands of Sunni radicals, so the help will remain modest.  The US role here is nearly superfluous; the Gulf States would supply some arms with or without US involvement.  And if the US thought its concern merited supplying advanced arms, it would have supplied them long ago.  Even if the prolonged fighting spreads extremism, the US and its allies prefer poorly-armed extremists fighting in Syria to well-armed apparent moderates they don't trust.

The US position, then, is almost set in stone, and it affects the stance of the European powers.  Only France and the UK have shown any interest in helping the Syrians.  But France will not act without powerful support, not least because many observant French Catholics side with the régime.  On top of that, the French Socialists have an unblemished record of cowardice and inertia, going back to the Algerian war.  In the UK, the government must deal with popular sentiment, strongly against intervention, and has no intention of moving without at least the French on board.  But neither government would do anything without at least NATO support, and that's not to be had without US commitment.

If  all this is correct, the diplomatic and lobbying efforts of the Syrian opposition need reorientation.  What follows are not specific suggestions; they merely try to indicate the priorities these efforts might require.

First, the US should be treated as a write-off.  It doesn't matter what statements they issue; what conferences they call  or attend; what officials they send where or what appointments are made.  The most the US will do is discretely back others' efforts, an executive initiative that, whatever the legalities, in practice does not require Congressional approval.  FSA attempts to look nice to the Americans are a waste of time.  Even if I overestimate the uselessness of the Americans, writing them off is as likely to move them as trying to please them.  Fear of losing influence is probably a stronger motivator than people begging you to exert it.

Second, and consequently, priority should go to getting help from Middle Eastern powers.  I  don't know enough about them to say how, but certainly the Gulf States and to a lesser extent Turkey are deeply concerned about Iran.  This is the first time Iran has been involved in aggressive military action in the area.  Presumably the Gulf States would regard their victory as a catastrophe.

Third, the best prospect for support outside the Middle East is France, which still has aspirations to matter in the Mediterranean.  It would help if the FSA made some showy gestures towards Christians.  Hollande's plummeting popularity might induce him to supply the rebels as a bid to get support of Sarkozy-style rightists.

Most important, perhaps, is a change of mindset.  The US, for all its money and power, has deservedly become the laughing-stock of the Middle East.  The EU has long been known for the fecklessness of its foreign policy.  The UN, for the first time since the Cold War, is hopelessly deadlocked in the Security Council, and its officials shame themselves in their efforts to please both sides in the conflict.  By comparison, there is change and therefore hope in the Middle East.  However frustrating it may be to deal with the grey old men of the Arab League and the beleaguered Turkish government, that's where the focus needs to be.  Western countries will never respond to the feeble direct pressure of Syrians anxious to please.  Only a resistance dismissive of empty Western gestures has any hope of attracting genuinely useful support.