Shall it Be War for Uncle Sam or Peace for the Arab People?

[unhappycamper]

Bush 41 and 43: Have they and their predecessors ever done anything other than pursue American interests in the Middle East?

"Arab leaders confront an appalling dilemma: adhere to the military project of George Bush and risk exposing their countries to mortal danger or, for once, allow the interests of their own people to prevail … even if that means facing the wrath of Uncle Sam."

Shall it Be War for Uncle Sam or Peace for the Arab People?
By Tahar Selmi
Translated By Kate Brumback
August 6 to 12 Edition


How does one give the impression of moving forward while actually moving backward? In America's game of lucky charms - which is so difficult to get "attentive people" to swallow - in the Middle East, the U.S. is succeeding on every front.

For over half a century, Washington has used and abused this strange process and finds, every time, "gullible heads" to swallow it without faltering. Rogers, Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, Warren Christopher, Dennis Ross, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, to say nothing of the many special envoys who have taken turns traveling to the region over the decades, have been at the same time players and living witnesses to this misleading conjuring, carried out at regular intervals - less to resolve the problems of the Middle East than to satisfy the excessive appetites of the "States."

Isn't the plan for an international conference in Machrek , announced with great fanfare by the White House, is just another bluff intended to “bamboozle” Arab heads of state to secure their support in Iraq and their help in the war that is heating up so feverishly in the Persian Gulf.

If journeys to the Arab region by U.S. secretaries of state generally herald political and military upheaval, the one just made by Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates, heads of the State Department and Pentagon, respectively, portend deeper, more serious developments. The massive accumulation of war weaponry in the waters of the Gulf over the past few months offers a foretaste of this. Because three giant aircraft carriers and 200 warships in the vicinity cannot be there by sheer coincidence, and it is even less likely they were sent into this explosive region for tourism purposes.

Embroiled in a succession of scandals without end in his own country, bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan where rebellion has again risen to earlier levels, rushed by the passage of time which is growing short, George Walker Bush is plotting a great coup for the two or three months to come: to break into a thousand pieces the “Holy alliance” that unites the States and movements of the “Shiite crescent”: Iran, Syria, Hamas, Lebanese Hezbullah and the al-Qaeda organization, which is accused of being responsible for keeping his GIs in the quicksand of Mesopotamia. To do this, he needs the support of his Middle East allies, the famous “Moderate Trust," namely Egypt and Jordan, as well as the group of six Gulf monarchies, which have been called on to support his war effort, both financially and militarily. Seen from this angle, the significant deliveries of American weapons, which will cost Egyptian, Saudi and Jordanian taxpayers dearly, will only serve to protect the interests of the United States in the region.

While counting on American promises that are never kept, the Arab states of the Machrek have seen themselves dragged into one disastrous war after another that haven't been their own. They have paid dearly without getting anything in return, even in moral terms.


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