pm friday night here in moscow review watching around the world thanks for choosing r.t. if your news these are our top stories the nato led coalition of grades its assault on colonel gadhafi to try and change the course of the libyan civil war which washington says moving forward stalemate interventions had little success so far while the human cost and financial price tag sky rockets and american unmanned predator drones are the latest addition to the nato libyan arsenal with a bit with a reputation for killing civilians in afghanistan pakistan. and the kremlin and the

un secretary general take a firm stance on libya meantime saying the coalition without overly according to its mandate moves currently in moscow for talks. plus russia's war on terror in the caucasus claims a high profile target after security forces kill a top al qaeda militant it's believed he was involved in most of the recent atrocities in the country. this is all seen just thirty seconds away from the latest cross-talk people of al is guest discuss whether double standards are at work in the treatment of libya by western governments compared to bahrain where the whole family remains in control despite unrest. wealthy british style.

markets finance scandals. find out what's really happening to the global economy in the cause a report on r.t. . can. start. to. follow and welcome to crossfire i'm peter lavelle we're told libya's khadafi must go but the royal family of bahrain must stay is this a double standard is freedom allowed for some well others are not worthy of the same and will the west later regret its differing approaches to the arab awakening . can. start. the process of different reactions towards the arab awakening i'm joined by hussein in pensacola he's the director of americans for democracy and human rights in

bahrain in san francisco we cross to stephen's illness he's a professor of politics and international studies at the university of san francisco and in new york we have matthew shaffer he is a writer for the national review online all right gentlemen this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want but before we start our discussion here let's take a look at some of the issues and reactions to the arab awakening. what is the state then while crossing all security interests revolutionary sandstones have brought to the streets across the arab world. so will the west somebody cater as in egypt and tunisia meanwhile in predominantly claim ruled by a sunni minority. usually silenced and the so to truth since of ened some points and all of this double standards home to the us feeds lead and saudi's neighbor grain striving toward so to them a nation years and acceptable as a transponder to the interests of the west while in libya is seen as

a priority that my neighbor really forevers and the un mandates under the un mandate we have an obligation to protect civilians from potential atrocities and we have succeeded that doesn't lessen the muse for intervention in the hands of the rebels manifest a goal lead to a double standard democratic rights of citizens and for greater political freedoms i'll support it in countries like egypt tunisia and libya but serious second dri in bakri oh yeah and well western military and security interests are at stake syria is just in the other example not immune to the revolutionary demonstrations conceiving a country and the u.s. state department is there are quick to condemn the violence as arab awakening can see is one who holds weight national interests all the rights of the people

themselves that is what crossed our artsy. ok stephen i know if you go to you first hear mr obama the us president said that the united states is going to intervene or some form of intervention into libya because of. the need to protect civilians and he said innocent people are were carpeted for killing hospitals and ambulances were attacked journalists were arrested and today is the day we're doing the program here the independent wrote about bahrain one doctor intensive care specialist after was held after she photographed weeping over a good protester. and another arrested in a feeder room while an operation an operation on a patient was going on i mean i seems like that's a very blatant double standard there and it's only going to get worse so i start out by asking what we're going to be great are different reactions to what is fundamentally the same phenomena. very much so the united states has

a clear double standard when it comes to human rights abuses by autocratic regimes we don't like autocratic regimes they're considered allies we seem to be willing to give them a free pass the repression in the rain has increased over the. past couple months it is becoming increasingly brutal police state and yet the united states stands by the monarchy the united states has refused to condemn the intervention by the neighboring family dictatorships to suppress what is at least as a legitimate a pro-democracy movement as we've seen in other arab states and matthew you know you think about that in new york. i think that we've heard the phrase double standard thrown around i think that what we're actually seeing is a relatively consistent set of standards applied to wildly differing circumstances

in libya there was an urgent call to action the arab league asked us to intervene. forces were moving towards benghazi and moammar gadhafi promised to raise the city and killed citizens in bahrain there are these abuses in their tragic and they're awful and they're evil there's not something that we can do we can stop a motorcade from going to particular city because these forces are in the same cities they're both in the nama. so there's just not the same urgent call for a response so when you think about that i mean they're they're different enough to have different reactions because fundamentally is the message of the united states supposedly supports democracy the right to protest and all other things that we would consider normal in a in a civil society you see that the reactions are different and and they are a double standard. that is a clear that will stand i think the u.s. policy toward iran is short sided it's going to fire back on the united states and

it's going to hurt the american interest in the region because basically it's going to radicalize the pro-democracy movement in the country because the people in bahrain think there's a green light from the united states to saudi arabia and the government of bahrain to crack down on peaceful protesters you know you cannot support peaceful protesters in libya or egypt or any other places and then just stand up and blind eye toward the legitimate grievances and brain i think is going to basically turn the people away from the legitimate causes and maybe radicalize them and that will hurt the american interest and bahrain you know it's even if i go back to i think it's really interesting if we look at the arab awakening starting in tunisia going all the way to today. my read of it is you know i don't see a fundamental american anti-americanism element in it all you see people striving for the right things i think we were on this program a degree for agreed to but look the more the different reactions are so stark

don't you think the region is going to say and looking at the younger generation saying oh it's just the west looking to find very new man in these new countries that have thrown off all dictators that were friends of the west. well said it's unfortunate because united states has been quite fortunate for the very reason you mention that there has not been a strong anti american orientation of these pro-democracy movements at least so far as long as united states is seen to support the bahraini regime is really going to hurt us now i don't think anybody is advocating military intervention in bahrain i mean i think i'm ambivalent about the military intervention in libya but the least we can call for more forcefully born into the repression we can sever. our cities or ties to that autocratic regime the early stretton to

weaken in the security assistance to that regime we can make it very clear that back on the repression is illegitimate we really need to be on the right side of history here in the history is moving more and more towards democracy and as long as the united states is seen to be on the wrong side or at least the wrong side in some cases that is going to really hurt our image and it's going to encourage more extremist elements that may not be that interested in democracy in math if i'm going to use saudi arabia on the right side of history. no certainly not. but just because somebody is wrong that it's meaningless not something that we can do to make them perfect again so i mean talking about for example you talked about how the protesters haven't sort of shown a strong anti-american element of course they haven't shown up i mean they they

want american intervention they want american help so there could be anti-american elements we haven't identified yet but more importantly first of all the us has strongly call for an end to the violence and human rights abuses president obama has been totally clear about that but in terms of going farther than that you know we have the fifth fleet station in bahrain saudi arabia is very powerful america's military is already stretched some of our geo political relations are already strained i don't think there's anything we can feasibly do to oust the khalifa is what they are sods. that is actually within our power right now and so condemn them intervene in libya to send a message but we can't go much further than that ok you say that i mean security is always brought up in these discussions here in looking at the right side of history you give it give it me give me your prognosis i mean if the crackdown continues continues in bahrain and it's seventy percent of the population that is they treated as a second class citizen here the longer this goes on them how much more disillusioned are they going to become and i'm talking about these oppressed people with the west

agree with united states and given the scheme of history and we never know how these things are turn out i think we've all learned out of the last few months just how safe are the fifth fleet be there if things turn radically against the royal family will be the fifth fleet still be welcome there. the u.s. administration not even listening to their own congress there are several members of congress yesterday issued statements and letters to the obama administration to immediately intervene and pain through diplomatic pressure. there were a few senators in the united states senate also issued such statement calling on the president and the state department to condemn the violence toward protesters i mean yes there is a general statement that we are against human rights violations but when it comes to the train hillary clinton made it clear that the. regime is strategic allies are important to our interests and other way. other way the message was to the people

of iran that basically we. told the government and what that is going to do to people of ohio right now looking for an ally they're looking toward the united states for help and what kind of help we're not advocating here military help we're basically advocating for political help to mediate into the situation to resolve it but if the united states is not helping the states is going to. be blind then they're going to look into some other ally and that will be guess who iran because the majority of the people in bahrain are shiite and when they look into iran iran is going to play this shoe ation and it's going to be very much difficult for the united states to maintain a secure base in the country where they are ignoring the majority of the people and the legitimate grievances of the country he's feeling can i go to you real quickly before the break i want to talk about iran on now and in the second part of the program is this opening the door to around. they've heard an odyssey moving is not

opening the door go to iran but they continued u.s. support for the regime in the ongoing repression i think very well could with some very upsetting is there some people in the ministration who are exaggerating and the iranian influence in the pro-democracy struggle as a rationalization for continued backing of the. right enough to jump in here and i'll let you finish when we come back from the break and after the break we'll continue our discussion on western policy in the arab world stay with r.t. . if. you want to. come to the. we're a russian republic plinths historic diversity with economic diversification we'll

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welcome back to crossfire i'm teetotal about to remind you we're talking about the arab revolution. ok. ok stephen to go back to you in san francisco before we went to the break we were talking about the iranian angle here i mean they must be very amused watching how the united states is tripping all over itself with former allies in the region here when iran for all intensive purposes been pretty consistent if you like it or not consistent you know what i was very disappointing to hear dennis ross speak at a conference i was advised that spoken out and the previous panel in washington d.c. where ross who's a has an important position in the administration as a. special advisor on the greater middle east before the a bomb them straighten he

was going on and on about how iran was manipulating the. crisis in bahrain etc etc not one word criticizing their repression and they remind me so much of the cold war when whenever any kind of you know left wing pro-democracy movement challenging right when you taters there was somehow this conspiracy that came from the civil union in cuba but you know this president kennedy reminded us those who make peaceful evolution impossible violent revolution inevitable and by supporting the continued repression it very well could drive some elements of the opposition into more around tickle hands so far the move is very nationalistic not for raining at all but this could change if the pro-democracy struggle sees around as they are an ally not the united states and the west matthew is it really just the case is they completely ok hussein and pensacola try to go

ahead with this stephen i completely agree with stephen look the only political association that's their member were not there with their leadership highly said i'm on yesterday that they cannot control the street from behind these you want them to have any more seen their parents their brothers their sisters they deny this that eventually they're going to have to become. violent they eventually have to face ballance with violent and that's will be that will not serve anyone especially will not serve the united states and system by the way you know matthew it's interesting is that it really does stories about saudi arabia and what it wants in every sense mubarak was overthrown in egypt the saudis probably feel pretty scared i mean it because it was a mubarak in the in the saudi royal family with the two pillars there and the saudis are are not going to budge i mean it seems like this marriage of tribal feudalism and modern capitalism is really beginning to fall apart it's breaking

here why doesn't the united states really make that clear to the saudis say we've really got to happen you have a new kind of relationship because the current regime that you have in the in the region is untenable. i'll borrow one of our president's favorite quotes and say the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice i mean we've seen that there are calls for a liberal democracy in the middle east i believe that the al assad on the wrong side of history and saudi arabia will be a democracy sometime in the future but if the u.s. like takes an aggressive posture will promote alienation and backlash but i just want to go back to one thing that stephen said and say that when he said that essentially the u.s. has a sort of hypocritical response because you know we're just supporting any dictatorship that will help us out i want to just sort of draw a parallel to the repression in belarus we're seeing certain similar things go on in bellerose and we're not refusing to intervene because we like the dictator look at shanker and belarus we're not intervening we're not doing anything because we

don't we simply don't have the capability so i really want to press steven and hussein we're going to survive the army isn't going to be lessened by any means supporting the dictatorship or not to support the tehachapi to condemn the violence we've made an example of qaddafi but we just simply don't have the ability to affect all the good we would like to see even. the intervention i'm talking about starting to stopping the security assistance to the regime providing them you know with the weapons of the instruments of repression and making very clear that we're going to sever these kinds of. you know economic and strategic ties or they continue doing this kind of thing i mean we we put sanctions on syria and libya appropriately. against their against their repression. for bargaining is misstating the. thing that. i think that the fact is we are

supporting by having the guy as the cans to use against the peaceful protests those numbers made in the united states there are weapons sold to the. rain aid for. every year equal to twenty million dollars we pay them eg annual rent to run their base so saying that we're not we don't have influence or we cannot change the situation on our hands are tied i think it's an accurate because we have a lot of say so and we have a lot of influence on the regime there because we basically for this they are in power because we are supporting them matthew one of the things i find very interesting is that the united states and many of the you could say the united states waffles from country to country and is it just because the united states wants to make sure there's an outcome that it can live with actually have an ally or new ally with a more democratic face or a new a new ally that will attempt to reform real or imagined i mean that's what the waffling is all about because united states is can say in principle we are going to

move forward in this direction and we're going to support protestors and democracy why can't we do that because we won't because we're looking after our interests first and foremost right. i think yes we are looking after our interests are also looking after geo political stability i mean if you want to talk about death repression horrible things i mean those things are as likely are more likely to result from war than they are from my repressive regime so i mean will you do something to massively destabilize the middle east make the al assad feel so threatened that they had to act out when i mean it is a dying ruling family that could you know cause a lot more death and destruction and repression on a short term basis then maintaining geo political stability and promoting democracy with soft power what do you think about that steven i mean i think that with. steven first go ahead i mean are you i mean. we're talking about soft power we're

talking about using the leverage the enormous leverage the united states has on countries like bahrain in terms of the security assistance and and economic relationship and that kind of thing but the thing is is that you know you put out you put a lid on a boiling pot that's where the danger comes from that's where the explosion happens that it's i see no no contradiction between america's security interest and supporting democracy in that part of the world because democracies are much more stable in the long term than dictatorships so when you have dictatorships that's when you get the much higher much greater likelihood of war instability and the like so i there's no contradiction and we really do need for a even putting aside the moral and legal questions for our own national security interest we need to support democracy and stop supporting dictatorships you say you

want to jump in there. yes look over as advising obama on. policy toward iran or the persian gulf countries i think is doing a big disservice because policy toward what i mean and rather we're somehow supporting dictators to their ship and bahrain or and d.c. countries serve our interest i think is going to backfire is going to hurt american interests and it's going to cause these rich cause these nations these people to turn into someone else that probably will not be an ally to us probably was going to hurt our existence and in that region so it's in the best interest of the obama administration and the united states of america to find new allies in these movements because these are genes these are autocratic regimes that been ruling these countries for over two hundred years not going to sustain in their current status matter you look like you were born there are a second hand go ahead. yeah i mean stephen hussein have both clarified that that

what they want to stop i mean first of all as pointed out still be a double standard relative to what we're doing libya so that's the talking point here. but more importantly i mean i'm not sure exactly is going on inside the administration what i would guess though is is sort of the abomination is sort of holding those cards things are bad in bahrain they're bad in saudi arabia but they could get a lot worse and so maybe the obama administration wants to maintain the ability to exercise that soft power in the future and i hate once again to be sort of the you can like the cynical skunk here but i mean democratic movements have to work out for the u.s. or for liberalism in iran in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine in the gaza strip for example so i'm not sure i do think it's kind of naive to say democracy is always furthers liberalism and u.s. interests particularly in the middle east steven go right ahead but those are those are those just told various analogies hamas won elections in and from

introductions and palestine as a reaction to the israeli occupation and to the corruption and autocratic rule of fatah. similarly ran the the the mullahs the reactionaries and of hijacking that revolution part because the u.s. backed the shah for so many years he was able to crush in marginalize the more democratic and moderate elements of the revolution so the ayatollah was rooted able to fill in the political vacuum and you know the longer we support the bahraini regime the more likely could end up in that scenario but the difference in bahrain for one thing about raney's i don't traditionally follow ayatollah as like what you find in iran does that do are much more the more quietest you know. that all those people he likes assignee and those and and in that tradition so again i don't think it's anything that. the idea of bahrain is somehow going to turn into this fundamentalist islamist. state i think there's

a real ignorance of bahraini politics i should quickly add there are divisions within the administration on this issue i know for a fact because it's been a real battle in fact about where the u.s. policy should be in bahrain and thus far the more hawkish elements secretary of state clinton's are going to defense of gates have ended up winning but i think this could change the american people as we did in terms of u.s. support for el salvador and your support for indonesia during the heart of the repression in those countries i think enough people raise enough of a fuss and this is reflected in capitol hill i think there is a chance of changing u.s. policy so i really really i so i really think there's a there's a hope in this administration for more in writing be the right joe i'm afraid we have to be have to hear from people would run out of time many thanks might actually san francisco new york and pensacola and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember a prostitute. just. can't

stand. and.