DO ARABS SECRETLY LOVE US? – AT 9:17 P.M. ET:  It's become increasingly clear that the whiner brigades who complained about every foreign-policy action that George W. Bush took were wildly wrong.  We were told that the Arabs hated us for intervening in the Mideast, but the Wall Street Journal powerfully argues that, in fact, they like the pax Americana, and are sending that message:

The Arab League's call this weekend for a no-fly zone over Libya is startling news and has sent diplomats scattering. We'll now see if the "international community" (to use the Obama Administration's favorite phrase) decides anything before Moammar Gadhafi's forces overrun the rebel stronghold in Benghazi. The odds favor Gadhafi.

But the 22-member league's decision also tells us a lot about Arab views of U.S. power. Throughout the Libyan crisis, we've heard from pundits and politicians that the Iraq war tarnished brand America beyond repair, and made U.S. leadership non grata in the Mideast. Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have insisted that the U.N., NATO, the Europeans, Arabs, anyone but Washington take the initiative on Libya.

The Arab League is begging them to reconsider this abdication. With the unsurprising exceptions of Iranian client Syria and Libya's neighbor Algeria, the group took the extraordinary step of calling publicly for American intervention in the affairs of an Arab state.

And...

The weekend decision confirmed what we've heard privately from Arab leaders for years about America's continued engagement in the Middle East. The only people who suffer from an "Iraq syndrome" are American liberals and the Western European chattering classes. The pro-Western Gulf or North African allied states have nothing to gain in seeing American influence or military power devalued in their region—either by others, or as is the current fad in Washington, through American self-abnegation.

That's a good dose of common sense.  No, the Arabs may not love us, but they respect our power, in a part of the world where power counts.  And they know how critical that power can be.

Now, they don't see it any longer.

For the proverbial "Arab street," the defeat of the Libyan uprising would be a dispiriting coda to this springtime of democratic revolutions. If he survives, Gadhafi will have taught other dictators that the next time young people demand accountable leadership, turn your guns on them and exploit American diffidence.

Did you ever think you'd see the day when our country behaves like this?  Well, of course we saw it in the late 70s, and we saw it when Congress disgracefully cut off aid to our South Vietnamese allies, basically forcing them into defeat.

Not by coincidence, Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf states on Monday sent military forces into Bahrain to help put down an uprising by the majority Shiites against the Sunni monarchy, which yesterday declared a state of emergency. The Saudis fear that the Bahrain contagion, perhaps fueled by Iran, will spread to them.

But their intervention also reflects a lack of confidence that America will assert itself in the region. Remarkably, the Saudis ignored U.S. advice not to intervene in Bahrain. They don't believe they can count on the U.S. to stop an imperial Iran. When the U.S. fails to lead, every nation recalibrates its interests and begins to look out for itself first.

Not exactly change we can believe in.  And look forward to this weekend, when the president, the first lady, and their two children are photographed seeing the sights in Rio.  Real inspiring to the people who thought Obama was a demigod, sent to save us.

March 16, 2011