US State Department’s Jeffery Feltman to stupid to recognize he is preaching a double standard

US Chutzpah on Bahrain
By As’ad AbuKhalil – 14 May, 2012 – Angry Corner

The State Department held a meeting with Bahraini activists in Washington, DC. During the meeting, the activists were lectured and hectored by a US official. They kept being told over and over again that the government can’t reform while the “youth are resorting to violence”.

The activists, of course, retorted that the US has no qualms in supporting an opposition in Syria, including elements that resort to car bombs, shelling, kidnapping, ransom kidnapping, and various kinds of shooting.

When I received an account of the meeting, I was most outraged. The US government really thinks that Arabs are dumb.

Jeffrey Feltman has been going around Arab media for a year now and offering what he thinks is the most shrewd and sharp observation on foreign policy. He keeps mentioning that Iran supported Arab uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia but not in Syria.

Feltman—not known for his intellect or knowledge—did not even notice that Arab viewers and readers would apply the same accusation of hypocrisy to the US position on Arab uprisings.

The notion that the Bahraini people don’t have the right to resort to violent methods (when they are directed solely at security forces) while the Syrian people and the Libyan people have that right (even if directed against civilians) is a manifestation of the hypocritical standards of the US government and its propaganda apparatus.

Of course, all Arab regimes rule through violent means and Arabs have the right to self-defense. But the right of self-defense does not—should not—include the right to resort to the terrorist methods of car bombs, ransom kidnappings, and shelling.

In its policies in Bahrain, the US government slams the Arabs in the face many times. First, it assumes that Arabs are idiots and that they won’t notice that the US is applying different standards for oppression in Syria and Bahrain. …more