Showing posts with label colonialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colonialism. Show all posts

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Behind U.S. Foreign Policy, Part 2

As described in Part 1, the “Cold War” ended after the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989 and the Soviet Union succumbed to economic difficulties. As the chimera of Communism was largely abandoned during the early 1990’s, the United States declared itself the winner of the Cold War and sole leader and policeman of the world. The focus of American politicians turned from “containing godless Communism” to the dream of running the planet without interference from powerful rivals, to the tremendous profit of U.S. businesses.

In a way, the U.S. had replaced the British Empire, which in 1900 had dominated the globe, and on whose colonies the sun never set. The British insistence on fighting Germany in the Second World War (among other causes) put an end to that. The days in which Great Powers would boast of the colonies they grabbed from militarily weaker peoples were also gone. As fashions changed, “colonialism” had become a bad word. The U.S. colonized economically, with backup military force, rather than by labeling foreign lands their own.

But there was one great exception to the end of old-fashioned colonialism: Motivated by the promises of Zionism that a Jewish state would be established in Palestine, Jews from America and Europe and elsewhere poured into Palestine, and in May 1948, when the British mandate for governance of Palestine expired, the Jewish colonists declared that the Jewish religious state of Israel had come into existence on land it did not own.

For many hundreds of years there had been very few Jews in Palestine, which was almost exclusively Arab. The flood of Jewish Europeans, Americans, Russians, etc., soon created a wildfire in the region. In order to take the land from its Arab owners and inhabitants the Zionists used terror tactics whose ferocity rivals anything of which 21st Century “terrorists” are accused. Those stories need to be told here, but not today.

The barbaric behavior of the Hebrew colonists aggravated the effects of their theft of farms and orchards and homes and towns, and as Palestinians were driven from their property into refugee camps war broke out not only between the Zionists and the Palestinians but also between “Israel” and the adjacent Arab states.

The increasingly powerful Zionist lobby in the United States made sure that in Israel’s wars with Arab states Israel always possessed such superior military equipment that its victory was a foregone conclusion. This, of course, was camouflaged by the Zionists and the Americans, who have always tried to create an image of “poor little Israel” fighting against vastly superior Arab forces – a fabrication enhanced by the fact that maps of the nations around Israel make some of those countries appear comparatively large because they include huge expanses of desert. Nevertheless, Israel's big advantage did not depend on territory but on an American-endowed military. The Arabs know this. They've known it for years. Is it any surprise that they blame the U.S. equally with Israel for Israel's aggression, land-theft, and atrocities?

The new focus of American foreign policy was in the making – the growing emphasis on financial, military, and political support of Israel. After years of propaganda and astute use of money and pressure on politicians, Israel and its supporters now appear to be the dominant force forming American policy toward other nations.

As early as 1973 the devastating consequences of the U.S. putting Israel’s welfare above its own were felt in the Arab Oil Embargo, when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries announced that they would no longer ship petroleum to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt (i.e., to the United States and its allies in Western Europe). Typical of Zionist-dominated “nothink”, Americans parked in long gas lines did not blame Israel or the irrational U.S. support for Israel for their misery, but accepted the Zionist teaching that this was another reason to hate those nasty Arabs they’d seen for years snarling in Hollywood-made movies.

The latest and most devastating consequence of U.S. support for Israel was the 9/11 destruction of the twin towers. It doesn’t matter how often the perpetrators of such acts, and their backers, loudly proclaim that they are motivated by support of the oppressed Palestinians and vengeance against the U.S./Israel axis . . . the American media will find something else to blame. G.W. Bush has explained it to us clearly again and again: These are “evildoers”. They love “evil”. Period.

It is my opinion, expressed in many ways in this blog, that Washington has let itself be placed in bondage to Israel and the Israel Lobby to the extent that American national interests are being routinely sacrificed for the benefit of a foreign power. To me it seems the most important American issue of our time.