In an article for Tom Dispatch, Peter Van Buren (a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for many years) posed what he described as Six Critical Foreign Policy Questions That Won’t Be Raised in Presidential Debates. Question three was under the headline – What do we want from the Middle East?
The preamble to the specific question was this:
“Is it all about oil? Israel? Old-fashioned hegemony and containment? What is our goal in fighting an intensifying proxy war with Iran, newly expanded into cyberspace? Are we worried about a nuclear Iran, or just worried about a new nuclear club member in general? Will we continue the nineteenth century game of supporting thug dictators who support our policies in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Libya (until overwhelmed by events on the ground), and opposing the same actions by other thugs who disagree with us like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad? That kind of policy thinking did not work out too well in the long run in Central and South America, and history suggests that we should make up our mind on what America’s goals in the Middle East might actually be. No cheating now – having no policy is a policy of its own.”
Then the specific question:
“Candidates, can you define America’s predominant interest in the Middle East and sketch out a series of at least semi-sensical actions in support of it?”
In my view the honest answer (which won’t come from the lips of President Obama or Mitt Romney) is something like the following.
The U.S. has always had two predominant interests in the Middle East.
The first was guaranteeing the flow of oil at the lowest possible price even when that meant supporting corrupt and repressive Arab regimes which would do America’s bidding. (Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal, in my view the first and the last truly great Arab leader of modern times, was assassinated because he was no longer willing to be an American puppet, a fact he demonstrated by, among other things, defying Henry Kissinger with his support for Arafat and the PLO).
The second was to do with the fact that the Military Industrial Complex in all of its manifestations is the biggest single creator of jobs and wealth in America. It not only needed wars to guarantee the flow of tax dollars into its coffers, it also needed very wealthy Arab client states to buy its products. (In 2011 U.S. weapons sales reached a record high of $66 billion. America’s largest customer was Saudi Arabia, which purchased more than $33bn worth of weapons from the U.S. including dozens of F-15 fighter jets and missiles. The Obama administration proudly said that this deal alone would be a major stimulus to the U.S. economy and generate 75,000 new jobs. The United Arab Emirates and Oman also spent billions on buying American weapons).
In the last decade or two of the 20th century the U.S. has had a third predominant interest in the Middle East, It was having in power Arab regimes which were prepared to spend big amounts of the wealth of their countries on keeping the American economy going, and quite possibly preventing it from collapsing, by buying American debt. This purchase of U.S. debt instruments (paper promises) enabled Americans to go on living beyond their means and helped to create a national debt which is now approaching $17 trillion. (The other two major purchasers of American debt were Japan and China).
The second part of Van Buren’s specific question asked the candidates to outline some actions they would take to support American interests in the Middle East.
We know how the neo-cons (Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel right or wrong) would respond to that question if they were honest. They’d say, “We need more wars.”
Van Buren mentioned Israel only once and with a question mark. In my analysis Israel has been and continues to be a predominant American interest in the Middle East for two related reasons.
One is the ignorance of the vast majority of Americans. I mean ignorance in the sense that they have been conditioned to believe a version of history, Zionism’s version, which is a pack of propaganda lies. The consequence is that they, the vast majority of Americans, have no understanding of what the conflict is really all about, who the real victims are and why it is not in America’s own best interests to go on supporting Israel (the oppressor) right or wrong.
The related reason is that this ignorance has made it easy for the Zionist lobby, through its stooges in Congress, to call the shots for policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
I am in no .doubt that Obama, unlike Romney, is completely aware that the biggest real threat to America’s own best interests in the Middle East (and the whole of the wider Muslim world) is the Zionist state, on account of the anger and the despair provoked by a combination of its contempt for international law and arrogance of power, and America’s lack of will to call and hold the Zionist monster to account for its crimes.
If I was in the audience for the next for the next presidential debate, the question I would want to put to Obama and Romney is this: Do you believe it is in America’s own best interests to go on supporting Israel right or wrong?
If the answer was “No”, the follow-up question would have to be: In order to best protect America’s own interests, will you be prepared to take whatever action is necessary to require Israel to end its defiance of international law?
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Yes it is a good question.
What is America's interest in the Middle East?
Well it is control of oil and resources. We all know that but for the me the next question is why and for what purpose and to what result for the Middle Eastern people; and lastly; who next when ME goals are reached?
Without a doubt it is world domination and not by the American people but by the Neocons.
America imports far greater oil from Canada and South America than the entire Middle East. So, oil is not the carrot which attracts America to the Middle East. The truth comes from two Americans.
Former Democratic Senator Ernest Frederick Hollings wrote in Charleston dialy Post and Courier, May 6, 2004: “With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel. Led by Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Charles Krauthammer, for years there had been a domino school of thought that the way to guarantee Israel’s security is to spread democracy in the area.“
On September 10, 2002 – Philip Zelikow, the Zionist Jew Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, told a crowd at the University of Virginia: “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat and actually has been since 1990 – It’s the threat against Israel“.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/08/09/israeli-vultures-in-iraq/
But why would the US support 5.5 million people in the ME at the expense of the good will of billions of people and states worldwide? This defies reason.
American taxpayers send, in effect, every Israeli Jew (;it is a self-proclaimed Jewish state so I will leave out the Arab minority) a check for about $600. This is every year. American teachers are being fired left and right and yet each Israeli Jewish citizen receives about $600! American citizens are not the recipients of this largese, but citizens of a foreign country!
Now $600 is a nice little piece of "stimulus" or disposable income and this stimulus does help the Israeli economy, as does all the other exogenous monies.
My point is why does the US do this as a matter of policy and why do Americans allow this in the first place?
Israel has the 4th largest army in the world but only 6 million or so citizens. Hmmm....how do they afford this? How can this little state imprison the equivalent of about 40% of its own population in the West Bank and Gaza. It doesn't compute.
Israel is a show running at a deficit, bailed out every year by exogenous money, notably American money, public and private. Take away this exogenous money, and the show is over.
Why does the US do this? There is no rational answer so it must be trickery and propaganda. The 5.5 million Jews in Israel could easily fit in suburban New Jersey without a problem. Hell, NYC has more population than the State of Israel!! Why? Why?
@ Rehmat
It is not about ownership or possession of oil. It is about control of the oil. It doesn't matter if that oil stays in the ground or not. It matters who gets it (the US, friends and allies only). The US buys from friendly countries and it goes to war against those that want to use their resource against it. So of course the first thing this strategy would dictate is to buy, buy buy; from those happy to sell.
Here is my position on ersatz israel. The US doesn't give a shit about it. Not long term anyway. It is just using ersatz israel to cause chaos and division in the ME. If the value of israel were lost in this regard; it would be dropped like a hot stone. Yes some people in the administration would be pissed off because of that; but these people wouldn't see another sunrise if they stuck their head up.
The question is posed, "why do we provide knee-jerk financial, propaganda and UN diplomatic support for this deplorable little outlaw country of Israel?" The answer is simple, a staple method of all other organized crime: extortion, aka contingent campaign financing. From our distinguished ex-senatorial statesman William Fullbright to our 2008 Green Party presidential candidate, ex-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, anyone holding elective office who opposes AIPAC or tells the truth about Israel will be expelled from office at the next elective opportunity.
This is abundantly documented by Grant Smith as well as Walt & Merscheimer, and by two surveys of Congress that identified AIPAC as the 2nd most powerful lobby in Washington and the only lobby in the top ten concerned with our foreign policy. If Israel really was a vital strategic asset, would it need to rely on AIPAC extortion?
Indeed World Domination is the endgame. But there is also money to be made in chaos you can control. The Middle East and Israel are just a part of it and are seen by those Global Neocons as just an expedient part for the moment. The Neocons don't give a buggery about the "Zionist Cause" or Israel but have founded and fostered a fanaticism in their followers to fight the Neocons' "Cause". If ever the followers of Zionism were to see this and cease, who would the Neocons pick next as their prime fighters? And what would they do if they turned on them?
Alan - you say -> Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal, in my view the first and the last truly great Arab leader of modern times, was assassinated because he was no longer willing to be an American puppet, a fact he demonstrated by, among other things, defying Henry Kissinger with his support for Arafat and the PLO. <--
Do you have any evidence for that? Yes, Prince Faisal had just come back from the US, but that's not especially important, he had other reasons for hating the King.
Sadly, Saudi Arabia had Prince Faisal beheaded on 18 June 1975, less than 3 months after the killing (25 March 1975) so its impossible to know what he'd tell us now.
It all boils down to the fact that Americans have become so addicted to luxury, and a life of ease and comfort until they (although never able to admit it to themselves or anyone else) are quite willing to commit proxy murder by military "heroes" as a way of maintaining a life style totally at odds with the rest of the world. These “good people” love and care for their dogs and cats, rush them to the vet at the slightest hint of discomfort, pamper their over-fed grandchildren with Chinese made junk. attend church each Sunday, pay the hireling preacher his due, condemn those who don't, and, all around, consider themselves to be up-standing members of the greatest country that ever graced the earth with its presence.ence.
Hello my friend Rehmat; I could be wrong. It has happened before; though granted it was a long time ago and the circumstances remain hazy. I guess I am going to take my mum's word for it :-)
However... politicians have never been known for being truthful; and I am thinking, when they are addressing any zionist organisation they would be telling them exactly what they want to hear, regardless of the situation.
@Rehmat - the US wants to CONTROL the oil supplies in the middle east, even though it doesn't need the oil at the moment for its own use. It's about money; if you control the world's commerce through controlling the banks and the oil and gas supply to most of the world, you rule the world.
@maryam - YES, the Zionist-controlled mainstream media wants you to be fooled by such notion. however, the fact is - all American, Canadian and EU policies in the ME are based on one thing - how to maintain the Zionist entity as the REGIONAL BULLY.
"More than endorsement from within the region, what Israel has always been confident about is the patronage and protection of the US and most of Europe. On Syria, and in the ultimate analysis, on Iran, the Israeli political and military elites know that the centres of power in the West share its diabolical agenda. Indeed, it is Israel that determines the US’s position on critical issues pertaining to WANA. It is the tail that wags the dog," says Chandra Muzaffar Ph.D, a Malaysian historian, author and anti-wat activist.
http://rehmat1.com/2012/10/14/2010-when-assad-said-no-to-netanyahu-on-iran/