Hillary Clinton: ‘We came, we saw and he died’

The above is the famous joke from Hillary Clinton often quoted to describe how callous and cavalier the Americans are of the lives of Arabs in the Middle East. They came, they saw and they executed Saddam Hussein and many more Arab leaders as if it was a natural thing to do, a fun thing. The hypocrisy of the American and western policies in the Middle East is best described by Jeffrey Sachs in his article, ‘Let the Middle East govern itself’ published in the Today paper this morning. No one, I mean no Afro Asians, would bother about what I say. They would even pooh poof it as nonsensical and hysterical if I were to write what Sachs had written. It is best that it comes from a western intellectual to say the truth.
 
Basically what Sachs said was that all the wars of intervention in the Middle East were never about democracy or human rights. It was all about oil, about control of a real estate and transit to Asia. All the Arab leaders and parties are dispensable and would be disposed off when they turned against American and western interests, meaning too ‘nationalistic, anti Israel, Islamist and dangerous to America’s oil interests’. The Americans have been supporting practically every group and party in the region and also in their destruction.
 
Sachs quoted the Sykes-Picot Agreement between the British and French that ‘ formed a lasting pattern of destructive outside meddling. With America’s subsequent emergence as a global power, it treated the Middle East in the same way, relentlessly installing, toppling, bribing or manipulating the region’s govts, all the while mouthing democratic rhetoric.’ These few sentences summarized the ugly intentions of the Americans and the West in the Middle East. The Americans would only install a regime that is acceptable to them. Period.
The invasion of Iraq has led to its ‘destruction as a functioning society in an ongoing civil war, fuelled by outside powers, that has caused economic ruin and collapsing living standards’ and the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Not to dismiss or ridicule the beheading of the two American journalists, how could the lives of two Americans be more precious than the hundreds of thousands of death inflicted by the Americans on the Arab nations in the Middle East? The hypocrisy must stop here.
 
But no, the Americans are hell bent to topple another Arab leader in Bashar Assad. ‘More than 190,000 Syrians are dead and millions have been displaced as a result of an insurrection supported by the US and its allies.’
 
Everything in the Middle East is about brute force. And as Sachs said, the rise of ISIS, another creature that Hillary Clinton has been credited as the grandmother, America intervenes again with more bombings, and violence rule the day. How does this relate to the article by Thomas Friedman that the Russians and the Islamic States were all about violence and brute force when the real culprit of violence and brute force is none other than the Americans and the West?
 
Sachs was calling for an end to American and western hypocrisy in the Middle East, to leave the Arab states alone to deal with their problems and find their own status quo. As a consoling gesture to the Americans he said, ‘There is enough hatred, corruption and arms in the region to keep it in crisis for years to come.’ He knew that this is what the Ameicans and the West would want to see, a region in perpetual conflict, dysfunctional economies and govts, and not able to become a threat to Israel and American/western oil interests in the region.
 
How much more explicit does it takes to understand what is going on in the Middle East? Is it about democracy, human rights and about America and the West helping to keep peace? Don’t be naïve.

Kopi Level - Green