John McCain - the quack doctor visits the Mideast.

I promise I'm quickly coming to the end of my contributions to the evil plot theory of Mideast history. There's a little more to go, however, and it more or less brings things up to date. And it concerns our present policies and our present leaders.

It also concerns the other enormous - or, since we're talking contemporary events, let's use contemporary language...ginormous - transformation going on in the region. This, of course, is what we called a while back The Arab Spring.

The state of play in the entire region, including North Africa, can be viewed - with some oversimplification, obviously - as a monumental struggle between two powerful and diametrically opposed worldviews. Since I'm in Beirut it's convenient to personify them as Syria vs Egypt.

Syria, in this schema, represents the process of state dissolution - also going on in Iraq and elsewhere - fuelled by a wave of sectarian warfare, part of a spreading civil war between Shia' and Sunni. In short, it represents the exponential growth of an anti-secular, rigidly religious worldview, which, by its very nature, has to battle all other worldviews for supremacy. This is the process I've been discussing in other posts, along with the suspicion around here that the whole thing is neither homegrown nor accidental.

Egypt represents the other pole in this bi-polar world. It represents the sudden and unexpected emergence of a vast secular movement demanding an end to both political and doctrinal dictatorship. It wasn't just the dictators in western suits that had to go during the Arab Spring, it was also the dictators in black and white hats, turbans, various shawls and other Deuteronimical accoutrements whose reach goes beyond this world into the next.

Using Syria and Egypt in this way does violence to the realities of both countries, and I'm well aware of it. The Syrian revolution started as a peaceful expression of exactly the same sentiments as in Egypt. Its descent into blood and intercommunal strife was the result of a cynical calculation by the regime that responding with violence would be politically beneficial. And, if we believe in the Grand Plot, was somehow part of  that process, as well. Meanwhile, Egypt, having successfully toppled its dictator, then went and elected a bunch of Islamists to run the place before coming to its senses a year later.

Nevertheless, as a snapshot of where we are today, the image is reasonably good. Syria is descending into the maw of chaos while in Egypt secular forces have come to their senses and realized that if they don't stand for their worldview no one else - and definitely not the Islamists - will do it for them.

Now, what of the US and its policies towards all these events? I had to lead with John McCain because his recent contribution to the debate was so utterly laughable that people are still doubled over in the streets around here. But our real concern has to be the Obama Administration and its policies on the ground. And here, the news is not good.

I well remember how, when Obama was first elected, we were all led to believe that here, finally, was an American leader that would be 'even-handed' in the Mideast. A guy who understood the issues, had listened to both sides, and could be relied on to enact reasonable policies. Hell, he even had long, intimate dinners with Palestinian academics...or, in the parlance of his enemies (John McCain), terrorists!

Well, the food may have been good, but it seems the discussions were for naught. US support for Israel - right, wrong or wronger - has only become more automatic. Dwight Eisenhower would not believe his eyes.

But I don't want to dwell on that aspect, at the moment. What we're interested in here is US response to what's going on TODAY in Syria and in Egypt, and what that can tell us about where the US sees its interests. And, incidentally, maybe another brick in the Plot Wall?

From here on, I'm basing myself not upon my own speculations, but upon the opinions of the people I've been talking to since I got to Beirut. And what's fascinating is how unanimous they are. My conversations have been with people who were on opposite sides during the Lebanese Civil War. Whose opinions on Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jews, Arabs, Christians, Muslims - the whole gamut - are diametrically opposed. And, yet, they all agree on the role of the US in Syria and Egypt, and the polarities they represent.

And they all start with the same, simple question: in a battle between secular democracy and religious fundamentalism you'd expect the US to be firmly in the secular camp, wouldn't you?

Wrong. Or, at least, the view from here certainly makes it seems so.

In Syria, the US has dithered for two full years. And while it dithered, the rebellion went from dream to nightmare. In Beirut, everyone asks me, 'why didn't Obama help the peaceful, secular forces and strengthen them when he could? Why did he say nothing while US allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey built an Islamist/jihadist force and positioned it to take over the revolt? Why was no effort made prevent this, and with it the almost certain dissolution of Syria as we know it?

Speaking as a 'representive' of the US government (for the purposes of discussion only!) I have no possible answer to these questions, other than 'it was a complicated situation that developed in unexpected ways, and the US (and here it comes again...the old excuse!) simply didn't understand or wasn't able to forsee developments.'

And some people here would actually accept that premise, IF. If it wasn't for Egypt. And here, the situation is really quite damning:

• Barack Obama is the first US President in decades who is supposed to 'understand' the Arab world.
• Barack Obama leads off with wonderful speeches to the Arabs about how the US will always support freedom and democracy in the region.
• The Arab Spring breaks out. Millions - nay, tens of millions - descend into the streets in the name of democracy. The US contribution: nil. Unless you consider that at every juncture unthinking US support of Israeli occupation and settlement further enflames the anti-secular forces and opens the secularists to the serious charge of being dupes of Israel and the US.
• A year after the Egyptian elections (i.e., right now) millions of people descend into the streets and force the Islamic government out in the name of, again, secularism, separation of church and state, and true democracy. In the wonderful words of an Egyptian I spoke with the other day: 'an umbrella of equity'. The US response: we back the Islamist minority against the secular majority!

To all appearances, when John McCain made his typically nuanced and subtle duck analogy, he was completely in lockstep with Administration policy. Obama's erstwhile rival might as well have been speaking as his Secretary of State, from the point of view of people here.

The conclusion, people here are  telling me, is clear: for the first time in modern Mideast history the US has the option to back a truly regional groundswell of secularism...and fails? This can only mean one thing; that secular democracy is inimical to US interests in the region. What serves US interests? Apparently - and here we're back to the Grand Nefarious Plot whether we like it or not - civil war, death and the dissolution of the map of the region as we have known it.