Washington sets the Arab world ablaze

Political observers and Middle East experts have been terrified by the intensity and speed of the Obama administration’s both stated and covert operations in the Arab World. In observing the events, the question that they raise is, “Is the administration following the Bush administration’s blueprint for the Arabs?” The Washington Post (November 24, 2011) reported that Washington is intensifying its proxy fight in Somalia and that it has used drones to carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries. Indeed, the intensity of Washington’s militaristic involvement has induced the right-wing Washington Times (May 16, 2011) to proudly declare that Obama’s strategy for the region resembles the Bush Doctrine.

The depth and scope of Washington’s involvement in Arab affairs only remotely relates to economic interests and more likely amounts to a fanatical obsession. Recently, retired General Wesley Clark was quoted (Salon.com, Nov. 26, 11) saying that a memo issued by the Secretary of Defense office in 2001 declared, “ we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years—we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.” General Clark attributed this obsession to a desire to “destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.”

However, Andrew J. Shapiro, Assistant Secretary of State, in a speech at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, made it clear that ensuring Israel’s superiority over the Arab states is the driving factor for Washington’s scheme in the region. He stated, “As a result of the Obama administration’s commitment, our security relationship with Israel is broader, deeper and more intense than ever before. . . . To ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge, we are closely analyzing the changes in the region and assessing the impact on Israel’s security.”

Shapiro spelled out three elements of Washington’s policy toward the region: commitment to Israel’s qualitative military edge is a commitment to the U.S. national security; Israel’s regional enemies, the Arab States and Iran, are not allowed to be strong; and the rapid change that is sweeping the region is a threat to Israel as it adds “a new degree of uncertainty to our efforts to ensure Israel’s security” and therefore must be interrupted, outwitted, and emasculated.

While weakening the Arab States and Iran was once a priority of the Bush administration, the Obama administration has made a qualitative change to Washington’s policy toward the region. Practically, this policy constitutes more of a menace to the Arab future than the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916 which fragmented the region and for decades paralyzed its progress.

Since the Reagan administration, successive administrations have viewed the conflict between the Arab States and Israel primarily from the Christian Zionists’ perspective. The latter, while considering Israel to be God’s Kingdom on earth, views the establishment of Israel only as a necessary step for the eventual Second Coming of the Messiah.

Under the Obama administration, there has been a shift in orientation. Washington insiders speculate that the Obama administration increasingly views the security and existence of Israel strictly in terms of a purely Zionist perspective; Israel is a fulfillment of God’s infallible promise to the chosen people, the Jews. This exceptional perspective has been a turning point in Washington’s thinking; Israel is no longer considered an intermediate stage for accelerating the Second Coming of Jesus, but an ultimate divine goal that demands safeguarding at any expense. This thinking frees the Obama administration from limitations imposed by traditional American perceptions of national interests and long sanctioned diplomatic traditions in dealing with other countries.

This newly founded thinking is in line with the traditional neoconservative ideology, which has been promoted by Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz and strategized by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, among others. This conviction, in totality, was difficult to sell to previous administrations. In the Obama administration, however, it has quietly become the guiding vision, especially among senior members in the State Department and the White House. Accordingly, the administration has embarked on strategic initiatives to at once effectively mold the ongoing trends in the region while deepening its instability and chaos. These include:

• Building a secret empire of drone and missile bases in the region (New York Times, November 5, 2011). This will allow Washington to act on a timely basis to eliminate any possible threat to Israel and Arab authoritarian regimes.
• Outsourcing war. In its quest to avoid costly war and public resentment of endless foreign ventures, Washington has recently relied on traditional Arab autocratic regimes to finance its war and emasculate the Arab Spring. These regimes have used their seemingly unlimited oil money to finance and fuel insurgents in other Arab authoritarian regimes, mainly Libya and Syria, paralyze Iraqi institutions and democratic transformation, suppress peaceful popular uprisings in Bahrain, co-opt the youth revolution in Yemen, and obstruct the revolutions in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.
• Perpetuating regional instability while recycling Arab Oil revenue. The Wall Street Journal (November 11, 2011) reported that Washington has drawn up plans to provide key Arab autocratic regimes in the “Gulf with thousands of advanced ‘bunker-buster’ bombs and other munitions,” to be used against Iran. Furthermore, Washington has established missile shields in Turkey and other parts of the region to initiate an attack against Iran.
• Reliance on religious extremists to preempt the Arab Spring (Guardian, November 14). The patriotic and progressive message of the Arab Spring in the early days alarmed Washington and Arab authoritarian regimes. Both have found in religious extremists a reliable ally in their quest to defeat the Arabs’ patriotic and progressive movements. For political strategists in Washington, fueling religious extremism and fever not only steers the Arab Spring into a desired direction but also deepens chaos and schism in the Arab World, thereby keeping it backward and in a perpetual state of fragmentation.

While several individuals and agencies are assigned to carry out the above design, it is Jeffery Feltman and Andrew J. Shapiro who have worked tirelessly to draw religious groups and Arab autocratic regimes into coordinating with Washington and other western governments in order to drain the Arab Spring’s genuine progressive and democratic intent. This gamble, however, is risky and may prove to be disastrous to American national interests. What is certain is that the scheme inaugurates the dawn of a dark era in the Arab World where the voices of tolerance and liberty are outlawed and subjugation of the populace is prized.

Abbas Syed Jasim is a professor at a university in the United States.