{"id":179798,"date":"2018-11-30T06:54:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T06:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=179798"},"modified":"2018-12-02T07:11:02","modified_gmt":"2018-12-02T07:11:02","slug":"middle-east-dictators-always-end-up-bringing-their-western-allies-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=179798","title":{"rendered":"Middle East dictators always end up bringing their western allies down"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2013 And now they’ve got their coils in the White House<\/h1>\n

Robert Fisk \u2013 The Independent Nov 29, 2018<\/h1>\n

Middle East dictators, we like to believe, live in heaven. They have palaces, servants, vast and wealthy families, millions of obedient people and loyal armies who constantly express their love for their leader, not to mention huge secret police forces to ensure they don\u2019t forget this, and masses of weapons to defend themselves, supplied, usually, by us.<\/span><\/p>\n

These tyrants \u2013 autocrats or \u201cstrongmen\u201d if they happen to be our allies \u2013 exist, we suppose, in a kind of nirvana. Their lawns, like their people, are well-manicured, their roses clipped, their rivers unsullied, their patriotism unchallenged. They wish to be eternal.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this is our Hollywood version of the Middle East. Having not suffered our own dictators for a generation, we suffer from mirages the moment we step into the sand. Real dictators in the Middle East don\u2019t behave or think like this. It is power and the risks of power and the love of ownership<\/em> that obsesses them. The possession of untold wealth or an entire nation, and their own form of patriotism \u2013 and the challenges they have to face to sustain this way of life: that is the attraction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their countries — and their countries\u2019 histories \u2013 are their personal property, to dispose of as they wish. They may lock up their opponents by the tens of thousands or drop barrel bombs upon them or chop up an unruly journalist. But they know \u2013 and it is true \u2013 that there must be residual support for the beloved dictator from all those millions who swear that they will sacrifice themselves \u2013 \u201cour blood, our soul\u201d \u2013 rather than allow harm to come to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

How else would the majority of Egyptians go on supporting their field marshal-president when he has abandoned all forms of freedom? How else could the Syrian government survive if its army had not fought on for its country \u2013 and saved the regime \u2013 after tens of thousands of deaths? Attribute this to patriarchy, tribalism, minority fears or \u2013 in the case of Egypt \u2013 infantilism. Or straightforward love of country. But dictators cannot survive without some measure of genuine fealty from their populations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Hosni<\/a>This provides the thrill of power, the excitement of domination \u2013 or \u201cresponsibility\u201d, as they would call it. It is about personal gratification. The people are not just loyal. The dictator is their father. Did not Mubarak, in his very last speech as president in 2011, address Egyptians as \u201cMy children! My children!\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

Within his personal mental asylum, the American president managed to blurt out this essential truth earlier this month when he mixed up the real and incinerated Californian town of Paradise with a mythical place of his own imagination called Pleasure. Twice he said it \u2013 an easy and obvious mistake for a man who is himself captivated by power and assumed popularity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump, like his dangerous Middle Eastern allies, doesn\u2019t want to live in heaven. He craves the pleasures of leadership. He enjoys risk. He believes not in history or morality. He believes in himself. That is why a lot of Arab despots rather like Trump. They have much in common.<\/span><\/p>\n

Except for understanding. And here\u2019s the problem. Arab dictators, delusional though they may be, have got us taped. They see through our lies and our arms sales and our lust for oil and our fraudulent desire that Jeffersonian democracy embrace the Muslim world. But we simply do not comprehend the Middle East. We do not spot even the most obvious clues to the behaviour of these Arab gauleiters. We roar with laughter at their sword dances and fake elections and talk of equality and liberalism, when we should be terrified.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me give you a particularly grizzly example of this. Take what appeared to us to be the weird behaviour of the Saudi consul in Istanbul in the days\u00a0following\u00a0the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. We all watched the extraordinary footage of Mohammad al-Otaibi as he took Reuters on a tour of his six-storey building. During this apparently bizarre performance, the consul opened up cupboards, filing cabinets and panels covering air-conditioning units to show Jamal was not there. But how on earth, we asked ourselves, could they have conceivably hidden the journalist in a cupboard, as the consul seemed to suggest? What a nincompoop the poor chap must be! What a charade.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t think it was a charade at all. Otaibi did not take part in Jamal\u2019s murder. But he may well have known the Saudi goons had dismembered the journalist. And in his truly unconscious way \u2013 confronting a real crime \u2013 Otaibi performed a very natural act to prove his own innocence: he showed us that not a single chopped-up limb, not a leg, foot, arm, stomach or bone fragment or piece of skull, was left inside the embassy.<\/span><\/p>\n

We \u2013 still unaware of Jamal\u2019s terrible dissected fate \u2013 thought: well, you couldn\u2019t store an entire body in a filing cabinet. What\u2019s this guy Otaibi playing at? But, of course, you could hide a severed hand or a skull in a cabinet. And the consul showed us \u2013 truthfully — that no bits of Jamal\u00a0were still lying around the diplomatic premises. We thought Otaibi\u2019s antics with the cupboards and the air-conditioning panel were funny rather than suspicious. Apparently, we still do. In fact these antics were very serious indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

I point out this salient fact because we allowed our natural racism towards the Arabs to overcome any serious line of enquiry. By wrongly assuming that the consular official was a fool, we missed the significance of his actions \u2013 which is exactly what we do when we frame our foreign policy in the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Arabs comprehend our world rather well. They are not stupid. They watch CNN and Fox with the same irreverence, ironically, as a western liberal or leftist, and they know that the simplest Hollywood themes will appeal to the Americans: fear of Islamist \u201cterror\u201d, political stability and low oil prices, and fortunes in cash that may be bestowed upon western nations in return for political support and military power.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is we who do not understand them but we who choose to paint the backcloth to their politics. They may lock up and torture the innocent but they are also \u201cmoderates\u201d fighting \u201cIslamist\u00a0extremism\u201d \u2013 this of the Saudis, who gave us 15 of the 19 killers involved in 9\/11, for heaven\u2019s sake.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank goodness we\u2019ve got these vicious men on our side. Needless to say, if we back the wrong side in the Arab world and call for the overthrow of the local \u201cstrongman\u201d, then the Russians can step in to support the erring dictator — whom they will also dub a \u201cmoderate\u201d fighting \u201cIslamist\u00a0extremism\u201d, who will also be preserving the world from terror. Vladimir Putin is a ruthless and cynical enough man to know just how far to take this performance.<\/span><\/p>\n

But we are not. Our political leaders climb into the old Bush rhetoric bath about the expansionist evils of Iran \u2013 without once, ever, mentioning Shiism, which is what the Sunni Arab world is trying to destroy. US defence secretary Michael Pompeo \u2013 and can we please, just once, drop the \u201cMike\u201d bit? \u2013 has accused Iran of being \u201cthe world\u2019s largest state sponsor of terror\u201d and a \u201cmafia\u201d. Trump tweets of Iran\u2019s \u201cdemented words of violence and death\u201d. Yet who was it who first demanded that America should \u201ccut off the head of the [Iranian] snake\u201d as long ago as 2008? According to leaked US diplomatic memos, it was King Abdullah \u2013 the brother of the present King Salman, father of America\u2019s dodgiest best friend, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. And along with Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s repeated and demented comparison of Iran with Nazi Germany \u2013 a follow-up to the crown prince\u2019s description of Iran\u2019s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei as \u201cthe new Hitler of the Middle East\u201d \u2013 our regional war map has been pretty well sketched out.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Prince<\/a>

Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Who is responsible for the Syrian civil war? Iran. Who is responsible for the Yemen war? Iran. Who is responsible for sectarianism in the Middle East? Iran. Who threatens Israel? Iran. Only three and a half years ago, the Saudis launched their bombing campaign and military adventure against the Houthis \u2013 \u201cIranian-backed\u201d, as we like to say \u2013\u00a0in Yemen. This was the creation of Mohammad bin Salman, who was then Saudi defence minister. It had two codenames: Operation Decisive Storm and Operation Restoring Hope. It proved neither decisive not did it give hope to anyone. It merely killed tens of thousands \u2013 let\u2019s not get involved in the wretched statistics scorecard yet once more \u2013 yet the western powers which gave its military and logistics support to the Saudis in this awful conflict shrugged their shoulders. Iran was to blame.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even when Mohammad bin Salman jailed many of his fellow princes and business colleagues in a luxury Riyadh hotel and kidnapped the Lebanese prime minister, we smiled. Good chap, our MbS. Opening up the Saudi oil market, letting women drive. Our kind of guy. We\u2019ll leave out for now Tom Friedman\u2019s grovelling articles in The<\/em> New York Times<\/em>. Then came the demise of Jamal Khashoggi \u2013 of whom more has been written than of all the dead of Yemen \u2013 but even then, we\u2019re still behind the Saudis in their Sunni war. We couldn\u2019t blame Iran for this murder, so the world itself must be to blame. Isn\u2019t that what Trump said? The world might be \u201caccountable\u201d for the chopping up of Jamal, he said, because \u201cit is a very vicious place\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Vain are our leaders in their failure to remember the entanglement of their fates with Middle Eastern history. Suez destroyed Anthony Eden. The Iranian hostage crisis destroyed President Jimmy Carter. Irangate almost did for Ronald Reagan. George Bush Sr\u2019s \u201cnew order\u201d in the Middle East may have doomed his subsequent election. George W Bush\u2019s invasion of Iraq has besmirched his political reputation forever.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same goes for Tony Blair \u2013 although it is instructive to remember that it was Lebanon and Israel which caused Blair\u2019s downfall. His refusal to accept an early ceasefire during Israel\u2019s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon after more than 1,000 civilians had been killed \u2013 in support of George W\u2019s plan to give the Israelis more time to destroy Hezbollah (Iran again, of course!) \u2013 finally destroyed the Blair premiership. The Syrian war provoked the ocean of Muslim immigrants who fled to Europe and probably \u2013 and very sadly \u2013 ultimately finished off the political career of Angela Merkel. And how much did her version of the murder of the US ambassador in Libya lead to Hilary Clinton\u2019s downfall?<\/span><\/p>\n

So I have a prediction. If the Trump regime collapses \u2013 for regime it is \u2013 I suspect it will not be his frolics with the Russians which destroy it. Nor his corruption, nor his domestic lies. Nor his misogyny. Nor his anti-immigrant racism. Nor his obvious mental instability, though this clearly connects him to his friends in the Arab world. The Middle East has already got its coils into the White House. Trump is a friend of a highly dangerous state called Saudi Arabia. He has adopted Israeli foreign policy as his own, including the ownership of Jerusalem and wholehearted support for Israel\u2019s illegal colonisation of Palestinian Arab land. He has torn up a solemn treaty with Iran. He has joined the Sunni side in its sectarian war with the Shias of the Middle East, in Iran, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Bahrain and, of course, in Saudi Arabia itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many countries have gone to war on behalf of other nations. Britain drew the sword for Poland in 1939, albeit a little late in the day. But to actively seek participation in someone else\u2019s sectarian war for no other reason than to continue to sell weapons to a wealthy and unstable autocracy, to amalgamate your own country\u2019s foreign policy with that of the most militarily powerful state in the Middle East — to the point of depriving an entire people of a share in its capital city \u2013 and to wilfully ignore the long and lucrative support that our Gulf \u201callies\u201d have given to the most frightful of our cult enemies \u2013 those who have indeed struck in the streets of London and New York \u2013 is beyond the usual lexicon. It is beyond shameful. Beyond wicked. Were it not for the insanity of the man responsible, the word \u201cdepravity\u201d comes to mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crystal balls are dangerous objects in the Middle East. Mine have been broken several times. But there\u2019s no reason why Donald Trump should be immune from the fate of so many of his predecessors. It\u2019s no longer good enough to say merely: \u201cWatch out.\u201d\u00a0We all do that by nature these days. But the Arabs and Muslims who live in territory which many of the American supporters call the holy land\u00a0may well decide his future; after all, he thinks he can decide theirs.<\/span><\/p>\n

The world is indeed a vicious place \u2013 but the Middle East is its most treacherous.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world is indeed a vicious place \u2013 but the Middle East is its most treacherous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Inside_the_White_House_and_Washingtons_Beltway"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179800,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179798\/revisions\/179800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}