- Joined
- May 30, 2017
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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.
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.
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