I would like to be shown the mandate given to the United States to interfere in the affairs of each and every Arab country, and I would like to know which international body issued this mandate, the date of its issuance, and whether it has a specific term or whether it is indefinite. The U.S. administration expressed a stance regarding the youths' revolution in Tunisia, and another on the revolution of rage in Egypt. One million youths and then another million called for the downfall of the regime, and President Obama said ‘immediately'. But then he changed his mind, and the U.S. Secretary of State said that change should be peaceful and gradual. Then when their ally was ousted, the administration went back to saying that Hosni Mubarak must leave, as though it had any role in his departure. In Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and Syria, the administration criticized the killing of protesters, and defended the latter. However, it was clear that the administration was not interested in those protesters but rather in its own interests, which differ from our interests. If we take Yemen as an example, President Ali Abdullah Saleh is a reliable ally against al-Qaeda. For this reason, the United States does not want him to step down, and is defending the opposition and its right to peaceful assembly while supporting the president using all other means. I am not against all U.S. policies by default. I support the Yemeni President and every other president against al-Qaeda, and I also support the United States and the international coalition against Muammar Gaddafi. I hope that airstrikes against his forces will continue to protect the Libyans from the killing machine that he leads, and to guarantee his ultimate ouster. However, I look and find the United States deciding what reforms are good for Syria or Jordan, and how it wants Egyptian policies to be shaped after Mubarak, while seeking to spread democracy in all Arab countries, provided that Islamists do not rule, or even not participate if possible. This is of course an Israeli condition, because Arab Islamists, be they the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah, refuse to recognize Israel. This is while U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, is tailored to fit Israel alone. Perhaps we would not have been in this quagmire, were it not for the absolute American bias in favor of the fascist occupation state that murders women and children, using American funds and weapons. I am writing critically while being aware that the U.S. policy as pursued by the Obama administration is much better than the policy pursued by his predecessor George W. Bush. Under Bush's tenure, the neoconservative war cabal destroyed Iraq on deliberately falsified grounds, related to WMDs and alleged ties with al-Qaeda, while the causes were and still are Israeli and oil-related. While I understand that U.S. foreign policy aims to serve U.S. interests, I do not understand why these interests should be served at our expense. In the clearest possible terms, all Arab countries are undemocratic. But the U.S. position vis-à-vis these countries does not revolve around spreading democracy, as George W. Bush once claimed. Instead, the U.S. seeks to stop democracy in Arab countries dead in its tracks, because a truly democratic Arab country would not serve the interests of the United States and Israel. There is no clearer proof of these U.S. goals than the fact that although the Arab countries are undemocratic, once again, the successive U.S. administrations held alliances with some of the regimes to the point of being complicit with them, for the sole reason that these countries signed peace treaties with Israel or established ties with them. This is while the U.S came on other regimes to the point of occupying their countries or threatening to topple these regimes, only because they refused to obey orders. The United States has engaged in a new form of colonialism in all our countries, different from the old European colonialism: Military boots disappeared to make way for ‘remote controlled' hegemony, by means of collaborators, spies and international banks. While the responsibility of the United States for this since 1967 and Lyndon Johnson is great, the responsibility of the Arab regimes is even greater, because they all chose to repress their peoples to stay in power, whether they went along with U.S. policies or opposed them. These regimes bear the primary responsibility for denying Arab peoples their right to democracy and decent living, while the United States bears the subsequent responsibility of allying itself with regimes that it knows for certain are dictatorial. Today, we hope that the Arab revolutions of anger will bring about democratic change, with a U.S. administration that shows goodwill towards Arabs and Muslims, so perhaps luck will smile on us all in every country. [email protected]
