Jared Kushner is wreaking havoc in the Middle East

CJ 2.0:

I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to respond to your post # 48 without getting myself pinged, thread-banned or worse. I will do my best but please understand that there will be gaps in my arguments because the rules of DP and the I/P thread prevent me from voicing them.

I guess the first place to start is what is the US policy towards Israel, "Palestine" and the broader Middle East. The historical answer is empire (The Grand Area) and division for the mercantilist profit of US corporations and shareholders. By supporting a highly militarised and aggressive Israeli state the US has gained a willing local proxy to act as a regional superpower in order to enforce the American long-term exploitation of the Middle East.

But this proxy cooperation has not come without reciprocal demands from Israel. The cost of maintaining Israel as a well armed and willing proxy, in addition to billions of dollars of US taxpayer monies, is political and moral support for Israel. This particularly important for realising Israel's long-term project to annex occupied territories seized in 1947-49 and 1967 from those people who still live on those territories today, without Israel having to also annex and recognize the occupied peoples themselves. Israel wants the land but not the people who live on it and the US tacitly has supported that policy and shielded Israel from political and legal censure for at least the last fifty years. Many in the US have objected to this but such objections have been pushed aside due to the need to maintain empire and division in the Middle East.

The US-Saudi relationship is similar but reciprocal and is also compounded by the petro-dollar scheme forged during the Nixon years. The political cost of the US enjoying the monetary boon of petro-dollars was to guarantee Saudi security and at times to effectively become a proxy military force for Saudi interests. The fact that the Saudi Kingdom suffered from epidemic corruption, xenophobia, contradictory secular vs fundamentalist impulses and complete immorality made it difficult to explain to the US electorate why this arm of US foreign policy should be maintained. With the attacks of 9/11 and the discovery that 15 of the 19 attackers were in fact Saudis and with rumours of Saudi government complicity and possible French and Israeli foreknowledge of the attacks existing, US foreign policy in the Middle East was in jeopardy and maintaining empire and division was at risk. An enemy was needed to focus public fear and attention upon and to distract casual citizens from really examining US foreign policy. Thus the Global War on Terror was born to diffuse responsibility for the 9/11 attacks to a much wider group of terrorists than just the Saudi-dominated hijackers. Afghanistan and the Taliban, Iraq and the Ba'athists and of course Al-Qaeda were popularised as agents of death, chaos and terror and were all duly attacked in a very profitable and politically useful forever-war which served as a smoke screen for empire abroad and as an excuse to centralise power and erode liberties at home. Now, with the suppression of Al-Qaeda and the impending suppression of ISIL the US is casting around for a new enemy to demonise as an effective distracter from the policies of empire and division. Enter Iran.

This has been US policy since WWII and not even the much despised President Obama diverted from that course. He realised that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were costing the US more than the empire was worth ($4.79 trillion by the end of the Obama presidency). So he quit the wars and withdrew most troops while using drones and special forces to suppress terrorism, sew division and maintain empire.

The roots of the broken Middle East lies both in fractious Arab political intrigues and religious schisms but also in the US, Israeli and Saudi troika which has fuelled these divisions in order to stop the United Arab Republic, the Islamic Caliphate or any other political structure from uniting Arabs. This is essential to stop such structures from becoming powerful enough to effectively adopt economic nationalism as a countervailing force to US invisible empire and miltary/political hegemony.

Donald Trump has outsourced his responsibility to captain US foreign policy in the Middle East and Africa to a soft-junta of military officers, oil-men and financiers, and they are quite determined to maintain empire and division no matter the cost. The Palestinians, East Jerusalem, Yemen, Africa and soon Iran are just the next victims to be sacrificed on the gore-soaked altar to maintaining The Grand Area or invisible empire by dividing and ruling remotely.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

Evilroddy said:

CJ 2.0:


Cheers.
Evilroddy.

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And I do apologize on my end as you clearly have put a lot of thought and efforts into this and it does clearly reflect what I would expect is your genuine world view.

But I do believe that view is both broken and fundamentally based on false inputs. Your system does not account for the fact that the US did not really want Israel there and did nothing to support it until after Israel won in 1967, that the entire conflict with Israel was perpetuated on purpose by the Arab world, that the UAR or whatever you want to fixate on were instruments of soviet imperialism (as are many of the tropes embedded in your system of assessment and explanation), and that Israel is not the expansionist state you pretend it to be (nor even were it such a state would it even be in the top states in the region with expansionist and regional dominance ambitions).

Your entire worldview seems infested with the Chomsky view of the US as some imperialist aggressor, which is simply a relic of Soviet propaganda used to divert from the Soviets' actual imperial ambitions and which is now used to divert from Iranian and Russian imperial ambitions in the same way it was used by Nasser (which you seem to parrot).

And the reason I apologize is because I have had to deal with folks with this world view for years and it is exhausting and in my experience a meaningless exercise as the foundation points are so far removed from the topic at hand that we would really need to go back to first principles to unpack them all and get to any semblance of real discussion about the situation now.

To set out my position clearly and succinctly though, IMO the roots of the broken middle east stem from the lack of education, proper values, civil society, civil institutions and the historic cultural impacts of fatalistic Islam which dominated Arab culture for hundreds of years. Even without the western imperialists evicting the turkish imperialists or the wester imperialists being supplanted by the cold war powers, the middle east would today be nothing more than a series of failed, failing and totalitarian states because the societies there lack what is necessary to generate the institutions, intellectual foundation and culture for prosperity and success. The Iranians were closest to it, but the reactionaries managed to seize control almost 50 years ago and have cemented control over the persians as completely as Arab superstition, prejudice and fatalism have seized control of the Arab world. If anything the only hope to move forward is the large cultural and institutional changes that could only be brought about by external influences from countries like the US.

As for Israel, your position suggests a profound lack of understanding of Jewish history or motivations. It does not reflect the origins of political zionism, the philosophies of how zionism was to be implemented, the world view of those pioneers who led it or defended it from foreign attack, or the history, politics or economics of the massive population of Arab Jews (sephardic Jews) who were ethnically cleansed from be Muslim world and now reside in Israel, as hard-assed and determined as ever to maintain control of their own destiny in a region they understand all too well.

As for the 9-11 conspiracy stuff about Israel, well like I said that points to the deeper pathos I'm seeing come out of your world view which suggests it is fundamentally broken and irreconcilable through this sort of discussion. I do apologize but truly that suggests that while all of this may be good fun, I know right away that we're not going to get anywhere (similar to the obsessive focus of viewing everything as some expansion of the military-industrial complex or corporatist profit driven). Those who see things as being directed by larger powers interested in corporate control and money generally miss the very human causes of a great many things.

CJ 2.0:

The Americans do not have an appointed senate - an institution of "sober second thought" meant to constrain what they believe are inappropriate exercises of legislative power, but they do have a constitution which establishes a division of power. Where they want power concentrated it is concentrated through the constitution and where they want checks and balances they are established in the constitution. And nowhere in the constitution does it permit or suggest that an independent unelected body be responsible for formulating foreign policy.

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Divisions of power and the system of checks and balances have weakened in the United States since the beginning of the 20th Century. The Executive Branch has exponentially expanded its power and the legislative branch has abrogated its powers and responsibility. The judiciary has been compromised by money and influence in its lower levels and paralysed by ideology and a struggle between judicial traditionalism vs. judicial activism at its upper levels. School textbooks may still teach that division of powers exist and that there are effective checks and balances built into the US state but that is no longer completely true. Take the recent tax reform bill that passed the Senate. Its contents was a closely guarded secret until about 24 hours before the vote. There was no way that any check or balance could have read, analysed and challenged this fundamental reform in less than 24 hours. And this was not the exception, it was the rule. Patriot Acts, Financial bailouts, military expenditures, etc are passed without due diligence and consideration by the Congress routinely. The AUMF cost America $4.79 trillion dollars and handed the presidency the power to make war without further congressional approval. Where were the checks and balances then? Who debated the expense and the hundreds of thousands of lives to be lost as part of a system of checks and balances? The answer is committees controlled by political oligarchs.

You are right about democracy's possible and imminent death but the constitution has nothing to protect it. Democracy, liberties and rights are taken and guarded by political activism and in extreme situations by uprising and force of arms. They are not guaranteed by the hollow and abstract worship of old words on ancient parchment. The US Constitution is a set of rules and ideals but few believe in these rules and ideals anymore and fewer understand that it is each citizen's responsibility, duty and sacred honour to safeguard those ideals regardless of peril to their freedom, property or life and regardless of whether the citizen is a humble plumber, a rich banker, a connected congressperson, a revered judge, a mighty general or the president himself. The US Constitution is a reminder to the US people that it is the responsibility of each citizen to be the aegis of liberty and civic responsibility. Parchment makes a lousy shield but a determined citizenry, defending their inalienable rights and solemn civic responsibilities can turn any blow which a would-be tyrant can deliver. Thus the only remaining ("albethey" extra-constitutional) checks to ballooning executive power, congressional oligarchy and an imperial presidency are institutional friction, public awareness and public outcry/activism. Liberty lives on the street and not in the repositories and archives of the state.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

CJ 2.0:

Well then. I must therefore conclude that our mutual role in this debate has come to an end. Farewell sir and we shall agree to disagree.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.