The recent refusal of the Egyptian Government to allow the Gaza Freedom March to cross into Gaza from Egypt has, again led to the question - it does arise from time to time - of what the West, particularly the US, is playing at in so generously supporting the regime of a despot's government.
It's a question posed by Seaumas Milne - a Guardian columnist and Associate Editor - in his piece in Comment is Free in The Guardian:
"From the wider international perspective, it is precisely this western embrace of repressive and unrepresentative regimes such as Egypt's, along with unwavering backing for Israel's occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land, that is at the heart of the crisis in the Middle East and Muslim world.
Decades of oil-hungry backing for despots, from Iran to Oman, Egypt to Saudi Arabia, along with the failure of Arab nationalism to complete the decolonisation of the region, fuelled first the rise of Islamism and then the eruption of al-Qaida-style terror more than a decade ago. But, far from addressing the natural hostility to foreign control of the area and its resources at the centre of the conflict, the disastrous US-led response was to expand the western presence still further, with new and yet more destructive invasions and occupations, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. And the Bush administration's brief flirtation with democratisation in client states such as Egypt was quickly abandoned once it became clear who was likely to be elected.
The poisonous logic of this imperial quagmire is now leading inexorably to the spread of war under Barack Obama."
Read this worthwhile, and thought-provoking piece, in full, here.
It's a question posed by Seaumas Milne - a Guardian columnist and Associate Editor - in his piece in Comment is Free in The Guardian:
"From the wider international perspective, it is precisely this western embrace of repressive and unrepresentative regimes such as Egypt's, along with unwavering backing for Israel's occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land, that is at the heart of the crisis in the Middle East and Muslim world.
Decades of oil-hungry backing for despots, from Iran to Oman, Egypt to Saudi Arabia, along with the failure of Arab nationalism to complete the decolonisation of the region, fuelled first the rise of Islamism and then the eruption of al-Qaida-style terror more than a decade ago. But, far from addressing the natural hostility to foreign control of the area and its resources at the centre of the conflict, the disastrous US-led response was to expand the western presence still further, with new and yet more destructive invasions and occupations, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. And the Bush administration's brief flirtation with democratisation in client states such as Egypt was quickly abandoned once it became clear who was likely to be elected.
The poisonous logic of this imperial quagmire is now leading inexorably to the spread of war under Barack Obama."
Read this worthwhile, and thought-provoking piece, in full, here.
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