Redux: Who Is America To Tell Nations Who Their Enemy Is?

The United States has an obnoxious habit of dictating to people what their concerns should be. As if the entire world should look through Washington’s lens.

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Of course, interests and national concerns are determined due to myriad factors. Sometimes they are concurrently with other nations, like the U.S. but often they diverge due to regional matters, national history and domestic realities.

So it is hubris and impertinent for the U.S. government to tell other people who they should conduct their affairs. But that is part of the mandate of maintaining an empire: seeking to subdue or suborn other nations into like minded objectives for one’s own gains. This is often seen in the Middle East where a pro-Israel American elite wants to incessantly lecture to Arabs that contrary to all evidence that their real threat is Saddam Hussein or today Iran.

So no nation in the Middle East occupied the land of three Arab countries, or even one, expect Israel. No nation brutally represses millions of Arabs expect Israel. And no nation kills on average one Arab civilian every other day in occupied Palestine expect Israel. No regional nation has launched wars on Arab people and Arab nations expect Israel.

But Iran is the threat?! Which is to say that Israel and America view Iran as a threat to their unwarranted hegemony and that the Arabs should duly accept their paradigm. The client regimes, or protectorates, will abide but the Arab people dissent.

Israel is above and beyond the most detested nation in the region and rightly seen as a threat to the well-being of Arabs. Bomb Iran?! You think Arabs will support this? Ask the Arab people: bomb Iran or bomb Israel?

So the United States has been preaching to the Lebanese that their enemy is Syria and Hezbollah. But opinion polls show that Lebanese consider Israel and America to be the #1 and #2 threats, respectively. Syria is one of the most popular countries and Hezbollah maintains a strong well of support. And the sectarian divide is not salient when it comes to hostility toward Israel.

And the United States wants to tell the Turks that Iran is their enemy. But opinion polls in Turkey follow the Lebanese line.

And the United States lectures the Egyptian military that they should no longer worry about defense against Israel, but concentrate on matters of America’s concern.

Instead of dictating to people, who you do not even care to hear their side, what they should fear perhaps America should consider why it is so disliked and why its murderous client Israel is still considered the number one threat to Arabs.

Redux: The United States is just too modest and restrained in its public pronouncements:

“It’s first and foremost in the interests of the region to persuade Iran not to pursue nuclear weapons.” - Secretary Clinton in her recent visit to the Persian Gulf.

Hillary Clinton is so kind to go on a listening tour of the region and demonstrate such humility and deep knowledge about what the real people in the region are concerned about.

Because, of course, if you ask the average Arab what is their primary political interest it is not Palestine, American imperialism, or the domestic economic stagnation and political repression and corruption, it is the worry that Iran may acquire nuclear weapons and hurt America's and Israel's feelings. And, of course, Arabs are not opposed to Israel's arsenal of hundreds of nukes. If anything supportive and find them quite amusing. That Clinton sure is astute.