The Middle East and the United States

The Middle East and the United States:

An Unpleasant Tale of Irony, Hypocrisy , and Misunderstanding.

By Toufic Haddad

Senior Editor

s president Clinton eagerly pursues the "evil villain" of Saddam Hussien in search of the mythical popularity potion that will secure his re election, one must not loose focus of the larger issues at hand in the Middle East.
Surely the issues of the Kurds is a topic that merits discussion and attention. Their history of mistreatment and injustice has been all too painfully documented. And yes, Saddam Hussien is a totalitarian despot which the world (and the Iraqis) would rather see without But it is the height of hypocrisy for the West and America to suddenly find an interest in the Kurds, especially after systematically ignoring them for so long. Many of the problems now facing America in regards to the Iraqi situation are direct consequences of the unfinished business left over from the 1991 Gulf War; a war which America started with zeal, but ended rather poorly. The resulting morass, (which we are knee deep in, although we cannot admit this to ourselves), will continue until America cures itself of the perennial ills which plague its foreign policy in the Middle East: amnesia and misunderstanding.
Every since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist block, the United States has frantically searched for a replacement to this power vacuum. Political enemies serve an intrinsic function in all governments. "The good guy /bad guy" mentality of the cold war sustained enough popular support amongst the public to give U.S. foreign policy makers a carte-blanche in the world arena. Hence for example, American support of Afghani rebels against the Soviet invasion, was advertised as supporting the resistance against communism, and protecting the libertarian rights of the Afghani people. When in fact, Russia advertised the very same military campaign into Afghanistan as an attempt to protect the Afghani people from the influence of Capitalism. The myth of "Communism vs.. Capitalism" satisfied the imperial aspirations of both participants. And as much as both of these sides "hated" each other, they were so intimately bound together in each others foreign policies, that the semblance of their mythical presences needed to be preserved if their international aspirations were to succeed.
Enter Islam and the Middle East. With an unflattering history between the West and the Middle East, (beginning with the crusades, and continuing up until the most recent bombings of Iraq), the Middle East has fit the dastardly role of the West's arch enemy, to an Oscar award winning T. All one needs to observe is the contemporary impressions of Middle Eastern leaders in the media: Saddam Hussien; that vile, merciless, power-hungry mongrel whom George Bush compared to Hitler. Moammar Qadafi; that desert weasel, and mercurial supporter of terrorism. The Ayatollah Khomeni: the fundamentalist crazed Muslim cleric, leader of fanatics eager to kill and destroy everything that the West represents. All these figures are easy targets of the Western media, eager to find an enemy to replace the feeble and crumbling Russians.
But to criticize America for searching for an enemy is not entirely fair . Surely, the West fits into an equally skewed image from the Middle Eastern perspective. However the hypocrisy of the situation begins to be revealed when one understands what America has done, and is doing in the Middle East. To begin with, the question of Palestine, surely an intrinsic issue for the resolution of the Middle Eastern imbroglio, has been all but dropped from the U.S foreign policy stage. The "historic handshake" between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, brokered by the soidisant peacemaker himself, Bill Clinton, is all but defunct. The "Peace Process" is dead, in case you didn't know! But of course the American public doesn't know too much about it because that would be accepting too much blame for an unfair and poorly negotiated treaty.
The election last May of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud party, was a devastating blow to the peace process. Since his election, Netanyahu has systematically and quite bluntly said no to a whole series of issues imperative to a solution if one is to be reached: No to the concept of a Palestinian state. No to any Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem. No to the end of illegal settlements on the West Bank and Gaza strip. No to the right of return of Palestinians in the diaspora, and no to greater access to the natural resources (water) of the West Bank region. How can one talk of peace, without talking of justice? And since justice is an issue that the Israeli prime minister is unwilling to talk about, I see no possibility for any resolution to a large part of the Middle Eastern problem. "Peace" has become a hollow word used by politicians who do not care about anything but poll results and getting re-elected.
What, pray tell is president Clinton doing all this time? Instead of pressuring Netanyahu to abide by the 1993 Oslo peace accords, he has decided to take an "arm-chair" stance on these issues. It is too risky in an election year, for an incumbent president to threaten the Jewish vote. Instead of attempting to resuscitate the sickly peace process, president Clinton is willing to watch it die so that his sizeable lead over the pathetic Bob Dole be preserved. Politics as usual at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.
This is only the beginning of the large list of unfortunate scenarios that has surfaced due to the United States relation to the Middle East. Over this past summer, the U.S government passed a law that promised to impose sanctions on any government that was willing to invest in Iran and Libya. The reason for this was that it was designed to deter investment in these countries as they supposedly support terrorist activity. Now, irrespective of what Iran and Libya do, or do not do, since when does the United States get to dictate the economic investment of other countries? This law is virtually equivalent to believing that Iran and Libya should not exist. Of course it is the U.S which gets to dictate what they deem "acceptable" or not. The Middle East, as well as other Western powers are rightly calling into question the propriety of such laws as well U.S attempted regulation of other worldly activity.
The ironies of the Middle Eastern situation are too innumerable to be counted, but some deserve mention for their striking effrontery.
#1 The evil Saddam Hussien himself, was once supported by the American government during the Iraq Iran war.
#2 The American government and American companies sold him arms and materials to help produce the bombs and dangerous weapons we are so desperately trying to destroy right now.
#3 Despite all the hoopla about American concerns for civil liberties, human rights and democracy, I know of not one American policy which is designed to support human right abuses, feminist equality, and free speech in the Middle East, let alone the world. In fact, America has allied itself with some of the most gross human rights abusers in the region, and the world (Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey,) and shamelessly has the audacity to condemn other governments (Iraq, Iran, Syria) for their history of human rights.
The fact remains that unless America remembers the principle for which it was created, and unless America acts to implement that ideology both here and overseas, then it does not have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of governments over seas. The tragedy of this whole affair is that American foreign policy depends not upon understanding the Middle East nor its people, but on making them subservient to their personal interests: keeping the flow of oil going. Hence , in the 1990 Gulf War we see an international coalition immediately rallied up to get Saddam out of Kuwait and off of its valuable oil reserves. However little attention was previously paid to either the Hutu and Tutsi massacres in Rwanda, the Serbian invasion and ethnic cleansing of Bosnia, or the historic Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian persecution of Kurds. On top of this, the persistent U.S penchant to flex its "military muscle" only angers those involved in the Middle East and the world, and does not resolve anything. America has come to rely on the block-head mentality that violence can ultimately solve anything. And since the U.S. has the strongest military in the world, America can rely on that to get their way. But for how long can this last?
Tragically, recent outburst of terrorism are beginning to voice the animosity that many Americans and foreigners feel about these various American policies. The U.S government cannot sustain this approach to the international community, and especially to the Middle East much longer. Unfortunately, it is the innocent citizens that end up becomming the victims of injustices on both sides. Politicians rarely physically experience much of the bloodshed and tragedy they inflict. Perhaps if they did, they would not be so willing to fire 40 tomahawk missles at Southern Iraq as they most recently did. Perhaps if the U.S did not indoctrinate its people with the myth of an "Islamic Invasion", then people would be able to see the beneficial and historically rich sides of the Islamic religion. And finally, if U.S politicians would take a little time to actually undertsand some of the people of the Middle East then they would be more willing to support justice, rather than their own private interests.