Skip to main content

America's evaporating influence in the Middle East

Patrick Cockburn is a well known and respected commentator and writer on the Middle East.    Writing in The Independent in "American influence on the Middle East is past its peak – someone should tell them" he suggests that US influence in the Middle East is waning - but that the Americans don't understand that to be the case.

"A problem for the White House is that American voters have not taken on board the extent to which US influence has been reduced. For all the rhetoric about the Iraq war being a strategic disaster, the American political and military elite has also failed to appreciate the extent and consequences of failure. It is extraordinary to discover, according to recent revelations, that as late as 2010 Vice-President Joe Biden was under the impression that he could blithely decide who would be president of Iraq. Biden's grip on Iraqi geography appears to be as shaky as his understanding of its politics. On one occasion in Baghdad, he lauded all the good things the US had done for Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, having apparently mistaken it for Basra in southern Iraq.

The killing of the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and the burning of the US Consulate in Benghazi could have been a worse political disaster for President Barack Obama than it turned out to be. It highlighted that the rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi were not quite as they had been presented by the US government and media during the war past year. The US State Department appears to have had an unhealthy belief in its own propaganda, not seeing that its consulate in Benghazi was in one of the most dangerous places in the world. The assault did not come out of a blue sky. Fighters had shot at the convoy of the British ambassador, Sir Dominic Asquith, in Benghazi a few weeks earlier. In July last year, the rebels' own commander, Abdel Fatah Younis, was abducted and murdered by men nominally under his command in revenge for repressive actions he had carried out before he defected from Gaddafi's forces."



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wow!.....some "visitor" to Ferryland in Newfoundland

Post a Comment
Read more