[Marxism] Bloody reality bears no relation to the delusions of this President

[Anon Anon <inprekorr@xxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Fisk: Bloody reality bears no relation to the
delusions of this President 

As a bomb explodes in Beirut and Israel kills 19 in
Gaza raids, Bush takes his Middle East peace mission
to Saudi Arabia (and signs off $20bn weapons deal with
repressive regime) 

Published: 16 January 2008 
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3342174.ece

Twixt silken sheets ? in a bedroom whose walls are
also covered in silk ? and in the very palace of King
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President George Bush awakes
this morning to confront a Middle East which bears no
relation to the policies of his administration nor the
warning which he has been relaying constantly to the
kings and emirs and oligarchs of the Gulf: that Iran
rather than Israel is their enemy. 

The President sat chummily beside the all-too-friendly
monarch yesterday, enthroned in what looked
suspiciously like the kind of casual blue cardigan he
might wear on his own Texan ranch; he had even
received a jangling gold " Order of Merit" ? it looked
a bit like the Lord Chancellor's chain, though it was
not disclosed which particular merit earned Mr Bush
this kingly reward. Could it be the hypocritical merit
of supplying yet more billions worth of weapons to the
Kingdom, to be used against the Saudi regime's
imaginary enemies. 

It was illusory, of course, like all the words that
the Arabs have heard from the Americans these past
seven days, ever since the fading President began his
tourist jaunt around the Middle East. 

You wouldn't think it though, watching this
preposterous man, prancing around arm-in-arm with the
King, in what was presumably meant to be a dance,
wielding a massive glinting curved Saudi sword, a
latter-day Saladin, who would have appalled the
Kurdish leader who once destroyed the Crusaders in
what is now referred to by Mr Bush as "the disputed
West Bank". 

Is this how lame-duck American presidents are supposed
to behave? Certainly, the denizens of the Middle East,
watching this outrageous performance will all be
asking this question. Ever since the 1979 Iranian
revolution, a Muslim Cold War has been raging within
the Middle East ? but is this how Mr Bush thinks one
should fight for the soul of Islam? 

Already by dusk last night, the US President's world
was exploding in Beirut when a massive car bomb blew
up next to a 4x4 vehicle carrying American embassy
employees, killing four Lebanese and apparently badly
wounding a US embassy driver. And while Mr Bush was
relaxing in the Saudi royal ranch at Al Janadriyah,
Israeli forces killed 19 Palestinians in the Gaza
Strip, most of them members of Hamas, one of them the
son of Mahmoud Zahar, a leader of the movement. He
later claimed that Israel would not have staged the
attack ? on the day an Israeli was also killed by a
Palestinian rocket ? if it had not been encouraged to
do so by George Bush. 

The difference between reality and the dream-world of
the US government could hardly have been more savagely
illustrated. After promising the Palestinians a
"sovereign and contiguous state" before the end of the
year, and pledging "security" to Israel ? though not,
Arabs noted, security for "Palestine" ? Mr Bush had
arrived in the Gulf to terrify the kings and oligarchs
of the oil-soaked kingdoms of the danger of Iranian
aggression. As usual, he came armed with the usual
American offers of vast weapons sales to protect these
largely undemocratic and police state regimes from
potentially the most powerful nation in the " axis of
evil". 

It was a potent ? even weird ? example of the US
President's perambulation of the Arab Middle East, a
return to the "policy by fear" which Washington has
regularly visited upon Gulf leaders. He agreed to
furnish the Saudis with at least £41m of arms, a
figure set to rise to more than £10bn in weaponry to
the Gulf potentates under a deal announced last year ?
all of which is supposed to shield them from the
supposed territorial ambitions of Iran's crackpot
President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As usual, Washington
promised the Israelis that their "qualitative edge" in
advanced weapons would be maintained, just in case the
Saudis ? who have never gone to war with anyone except
Saddam Hussein after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait ?
decided to launch a suicidal attack on America's only
real ally in the Middle East. 

This, of course, was not how the whole shooting match
was presented to the Arabs. Mr Bush could be seen
ostentatiously kissing the cheeks of King Abdullah and
holding hands with the autocratic monarch whose
Wahhabi Muslim state had only recently showed its
"mercy" to a Saudi woman who was charged with adultery
after being raped seven times in the desert outside
Riyadh. The Saudis, needless to say, are well aware
that Mr Bush's reign is ending amid chaos in Pakistan,
a disastrous guerrilla war against Western forces in
Afghanistan, fierce fighting in Gaza, near civil war
in Lebanon and the hell-disaster of Iraq. 

The bomb in Beirut, just before five in the evening,
must still have come as a rude shock to the
luxuriating President who has such close ties with the
Saudi regime ? despite the fact that the majority of
hijackers in the crimes against humanity of 11
September 2001 came from the kingdom ? that he allowed
its junior princes to fly home from the United States
immediately after the attacks. Two trips to Mr Bush's
Texas ranch by King Abdullah was apparently enough to
earn the US President a night in the Saudi king's
palace-farm, surrounded by groomed lawns and grassy
hills. 

Heard across many miles of the Lebanese capital, the
bomb devastated buildings in a narrow street in the
east of the city through which the vehicle was
passing, just as the US ambassador ? on a different
route into the city ? was travelling to a central
Beirut hotel reception before leaving for Washington.
A State Department spokesman, however, insisted that
no US citizens had been hurt. The American SUV had
taken an obscure laneway close to the Karantina bridge
to travel north of Beirut along the bank of the city's
only river when it was struck, leading local Lebanese
military officials to ask themselves if the bomber had
inside knowledge of the route they were taking. 

There was talk that this was a "dummy" convoy staged
to distract potential bombers from the journey which
Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman was taking to a reception
at a downtown hotel. A carpet manufacturer's factory
was smashed by the blast which tore down roofs and
smashed windows more than half a mile from the scene. 

For Arab leaders, Mr Bush's message to the Gulf
leaders was wearily familiar. In the 1980s, when the
Reagan administration was supporting Saddam Hussein's
invasion of Iran, Washington spent its time warning
Gulf leaders of the danger of Iranian aggression. Once
Saddam invaded Kuwait, America's emphasis changed: It
was now Iraq which posed the greatest danger to their
kingdoms. But once the emirate was liberated, the
oil-wealthy monarchs were told that ? yet again ? it
was Iran that was their enemy. 

Arabs are no more taken in by this topsy-turvy
"good-versus-evil" narrative than they are by
Washington's promises to help create a Palestinian
state by the end of the year, scarcely a day before
Israel publicly admitted to plans for yet more houses
for settlers on Arab land amid Jewish colonies
illegally built on Palestinian territory. 

Yet to understand the nature of this extraordinary
relationship with the Gulf monarchs, it is necessary
to recall that ever since the President's father
promised a weapons-free "oasis of peace" in the Gulf,
Washington ? along with Britain, France and Russia ?
has been pouring arms into the region. 

Over the past decade, the Gulf Arabs have squandered
billions of their oil dollars on American weapons. The
statistics tell their own story. In 1998 and 1999
alone, Gulf Arab military spending came to £40bn.
Between 1997 and 2005, the sheikhs of the United Arab
Emirates ? Mr Bush's hosts before he continued to
Riyadh ? signed arms contracts worth £9bn with Western
nations. Between 1991 and 1993 ? when Iraq was the
"enemy" ? the US Military Training Mission was
administering more than £14bn in Saudi arms
procurements and £12bn in new US weapons acquisitions.
By this time, the Saudis already possessed 72 American
F-15 fighter-bombers and 114 British Tornados. 

How little has changed in the past 17 years. On 17 May
1991, for example, George Bush Snr said there were now
"real reasons to be optimistic" about a peace in the
Middle East. "We are going to continue to work in the
[peace] process," he said then. "We are not going to
abandon it." 

James Baker, who was the American Secretary of State,
warned on 23 May 1991 that the continued building of
Jewish settlements on Palestinian land " hindered" a
future Middle East peace, just as the present
Secretary of State said last week. At the time, the
Israelis were reassured by Dick Cheney that the US
would safeguard their "security". 

The West may have a short memory. The Arabs, who
happen to live in the piece of real estate which we
call the Middle East and who are not stupid, have not.
They understand all too well what George W Bush now
stands for. After advocating "democracy" in the region
? a policy which gained electoral victories for Shia
in Iraq, for Hamas in Gaza and a substantial gain in
political power for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt ?
it seems to have dawned on Washington that something
might be slightly wrong with Bush's priorities.
Instead of advocating a "New Middle East", Mr Bush,
lying amid his silken sheets in the Saudi king's
palace, is now pursuing a return to the "Old Middle
East", a place of secret policemen, torture chambers ?
to which prisoners can be usefully " renditioned " ?
and dictatorial "moderate" presidents and monarchs.
And which of the Gulf despots is going to object to that?


      
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