NEW MIDDLE EAST:
AGAINST the mounting death toll and bloodbath in Lebanon, American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has attempted to justify her country’s explicit complicity in the Israeli crimes against humanity. She has attributed the mayhem to the birth-pangs of a new Middle East.
“The Conflict was bloodier than anyone anticipated, but it just might set the stage for a new order in the Middle East.”
AMERICAN ULTERIOR MOTIVES:
Those US strategic goals in the Middle East are:
1) The reconfiguration of the political map of the region to prevent the possibility of any challenge to US supremacy in the Middle East,
2) The tightening of its stranglehold on the oil and gas resources of the Middle East,
3) The strengthening of the security of Israel as a US outpost in the region. The invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 were meant to serve these strategic goals more than anything else.
4) By now the US has pliant states almost everywhere in the Middle East, with the exception of Syria and Iran which have not yet fallen in line with US demands relating to Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. This is the real reason for US hostility towards these two states. Similarly, non-state actors like Hamas and Hezbollah, which are resisting Israeli acts of aggression thus deviating from the path dictated by Washington, are like thorns in Washington’s eyes.
PAX AMERICANA:
The mere fact that Bush and his associates are getting geared up for a brand new Middle East, after serious reverses in their abortive flirtation with democracy is indicative that democracy will not have a place of pride in the latest new Middle East; at best, it would occupy a corner on the back shelf. And Israel would be the vassal in it keeping the regional states in its and Washington’s thrall.
The new ME of American-Israeli ‘vision’ has no room in it for a genuine democracy, such as the one Hamas is entitled to practise on the basis of its overwhelming popular mandate from the Palestinian people; the US would rather have a corrupt and pliable regime run by a discredited PLO in its place.
“We are working very hard for a new Middle East that is a free democratic Middle East where people can realise a better way of life, a more prosperous, better educated way of life … but there’s no question of redrawing the maps,”