The English guard's cheeks grew red at the gate of King's College in Britain's historic Cambridge University, and he held back his anger when the American tourist asked him: “Was this college built before the war?" Then he could not restrain himself from answering sarcastically and maliciously: “No Madam, it was built before America". Ignorance of history is the most shameful weakness among Americans in general, and their leading elite in particular. This is why American officials commit deadly mistakes in their approach to international issues, especially in the Middle East, where most of them resort to a “guidebook" to deal with developments of the situation in any of its countries, provided by administrative staff members who themselves had perhaps never heard of these countries before. This is what happened during the invasion of Afghanistan, which came as an imbalanced reaction to Al-Qaeda's attacks, with the aim of establishing a “new order", without taking any heed to the failed Soviet experience in the not-so-distant past, or to the similar British experience further in the past. This is also what happened later in Iraq after its unjustified invasion, where a series of arrogant, improvised and vain decisions led to a catastrophe for the US Army, which drove it to a hasty withdrawal and to turning over Mesopotamia to Iran, historically an enemy of the United States. It was therefore no wonder for US Vice President Biden to make a mistake in estimating the size of Syria, considering it to be five times larger than Libya. Nor was it any wonder for his competitor for the post, Paul Ryan, not to have noticed, as he not only knows nothing about the size of Syria and of Libya, but perhaps does not even know, like the majority of his country's citizens, where they are located on the map. It is also no wonder for the entire world to be absent, as if it did not exist, from the debates between the candidates to the presidency, Obama and Romney – with the exception of the incident of the attack against the United States consulate in Benghazi, albeit from a purely American perspective completely unrelated to the situation in Libya itself. Yet the most blatant ignorance is embodied in the American stance on the main issue in the Arab region: the Palestinian issue. Indeed, Washington has adopted, continues and will continue until further notice to adopt Israel's obstinate stance on peace, without even bothering to add any touchups to conceal its unlimited commitment to Israel's security and the fact that it stands against anything that the Hebrew State considers to represent a threat to its superiority. This is why the US opposes the Palestinian Authority's efforts to obtain recognition at the United Nations of an independent Palestinian state, and considers them to undermine a “peace process" that does not exist in the first place, blatantly making light of the reality that there can be no permanent peace in the region without fairly addressing the demands of the Palestinians. Such commitment to Israel's choices reflects on what is happening in Syria today, where circles affiliated with the US Administration, or close to its thinking, justify Washington's failure to exercise any effective pressure to hasten the departure of the Assad regime with its fear of extremists, whose contribution to the Syrian uprising they claim to be on the rise. Moreover, they do not hesitate, despite all of the killing and destruction taking place, to restrict their concern to the fate of the regime's chemical and biological arsenal, because it could fall into hands that would threaten Israel. These same circles promote the notion that Washington is adopting a “spectator" strategy as long as it does not have “essential interests" in Syria, and that it prefers to let the crises of the Middle East play out on their own until a new balance of power arises that it can deal with. And although such a justification is neither true nor reflects the reality of the United States' constant interference in favor of its Israeli ally, the mere fact of promoting it means that the US Administration suffers from, in addition to ignorance, vile opportunism.
