generalspeaking

At What Cost?

What's that contemporary wisdom - that the United States is urgently engaged in bringing peace to the Middle East? Why yes, of course, they most certainly are. It's called shuttle diplomacy, as President Obama assigns high-ranking members of his administration to badger and cajole, threaten and sweet-talk the Israelis and the Palestinians into serious talks to finally bring to an end the conflict - very long in the tooth - between the two. But it's not just the 'two'; it is, in fact, Israel and the Muslim nations of the geography.

So of course there's the little fact of what lurks in the background. Saudi Arabia grimly insisting as the region's elder statesman and confidant of all the U.S. administrations, that Israel must submit to pre-conditions that will most certainly result in its absorption into the greater Muslim world. The dissolution of the Jewish state, the triumph of the landscape returned to Islam, for it is an unspeakable affront to Islam that a Jewish state squats on Muslim geography.

Also handily overlooked is the monumentally determined, aggressive and dedicated part Saudi money has played in installing mosques and madrassas and Muslim centres across the Middle East, through Europe and into Australia and North America. From which centres and mosques and madrassas have sprung the hissing dragon that begets countless other malevolent dragons intent on installing Islamist Sharia wherever they creep.

Yet here is the Obama administration heralding a great opportunity for the creation of new jobs in the jobless-recession-recovery United States. That old military-industrial complex evincing its presence yet again. Under an administration that has stated it will be a different one, engaged with all the world, no longer presenting as an officious bully, but one that dedicates itself to peace. Working hard on nuclear non-proliferation and extending a hand of friendship to the Muslim world.

It is to crow with triumph: Saudi Arabia is committing to a $60-billion package of technologically advanced weaponry. All that money that the U.S. treasury has funnelled into Saudi Arabia over the decades to bring petroleum products into America to enable a storied way of life is finally - some of it, in any event - to be returned to America. Of course it might be worth asking why Saudi Arabia requires a naval and air package of that magnitude to begin with.

But just think: this is yet another way in which the Democratic-led government of the United States will be enabled to demonstrate that it has brought countless manufacturing jobs back to the country, groaning under the weight of its unemployment figures. This is politics at its rawest, most opportune, least ethical, but what of it? Everything appears to be fair when a politician is battling for continued control. Those are high stakes.

American elites whose values are such that they do not wish to have them compromised warn that an arms-transfer agreement of this magnitude will simply raise the militarization of the Gulf States in particular and the Middle East generally. Hardly a matter to be ignored, particularly in light of the fact of the Obama administration's dedication to peace and harmony.

Hypocrisy, misidentification of priorities, morals gone suddenly bankrupt? Take your pick.

Labels: Conflict, Middle East, Technology, Traditions, United States

posted by Pieface @ Friday, September 17, 2010