So far, congressional and media reaction to the proposed deal has consisted of predictable and superficial Saudi-bashing. (Saudi Arabia is the only country equally despised by left and right alike, by Michael Moore as much as by Fox News.) Some of this is justified; much of it, as Sameer Lalwani argues in the Washington Note, is not. Lalwani points out that Saudi Arabia cooperated with the U.S. on Iraq, has taken strides to combat jihadists, is moving toward economic reform and is acting constructively to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. But the problems with the arms deal run far deeper than simply the question of the reliability of the Saudis. Until those problems are openly discussed, America's Middle East policy will continue to run in circles, even after George W. Bush is no longer president.
The new "hard-headed" plan, just like the old "idealistic" plan, is almost entirely based on wishful thinking. Just as Bush and his neocon brain trust convinced themselves that Iraqis would put flowers in the barrels of U.S. guns, so they have now convinced themselves that the U.S. can happily ride the tiger of an ever-more-divided and ever-more-heavily-armed Middle East, pulling on the tiger's fur when it veers too far in one direction. This is not just delusional, but dangerous.
It's dangerous because Bush is not simply paying off shaky allies to try to get them to stop making trouble in Iraq (a bargain that has rarely worked, as Rachel Stohl noted in Foreign Policy in Focus) but playing the far more explosive game of divide and conquer. Bush claims to be supporting "moderates" against "extremists," but in fact he is strong-arming Sunni states to line up against Shia Iran and Hezbollah. As Brian Whitaker noted in the Guardian, this gives a free hand to the harsh regimes in Cairo and Riyadh to persecute their Shiite minorities. Worse, it opens the door to a poisonous regional sectarianism, which will only encourage a threatened Tehran to pursue nuclear weapons.
Moreover, the "moderate-extremist" distinction exists only in Bush's mind. By insisting on acting as if it were a reality, and refusing to talk to "extremists" (except in Iraq, where the stakes are too high for such moral niceties, and yesterday's "terrorists" have become today's "valued allies in the fight against al-Qaida"), he is making it impossible for America to achieve its policy goal of a stable Middle East. Sunni regimes may fear the threat posed by Islamist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, but the uncomfortable truth is that most of their people respect the "extremists" for standing up to America and Israel. The Shia militant group Hezbollah is supported by large numbers of Sunnis across the Middle East, just as the Sunni militant group Hamas is by many Shiites. Moreover, these groups, which America refuses to talk to because they have engaged in acts of terrorism, are deeply embedded in the fabric of their societies -- which is why they cannot be destroyed, short of quasi-genocidal means that the world no longer deems acceptable. Whether the United States likes it or not, these guerrilla groups are a fact of life and cannot be bludgeoned into surrender -- not by military means, as Israel has discovered, and certainly not by loading up Egypt and Saudi Arabia with shiny new jet planes and high-tech equipment.
The answer to Hamas and Hezbollah is not to try to smash them out of existence, but to remove the conditions that have allowed them to appeal to so many. This is not appeasement, but simple realism. As the veteran Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein recently noted in Haaretz, there will be no peace between Israelis and Palestinians unless Hamas is part of the equation. After the fallacy of Bush's wishful, moralistic thinking was exposed in Baghdad, one might have hoped that America's foreign policy establishment would have rejected it in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Yet the Bush administration keeps on making the self-destructive mistake of equating Hamas and Hezbollah with al-Qaida, to nary a murmur from Democrats or the media.
Perhaps the least-noticed part of Bush's proposed arms deal, though, is simply that it will keep the U.S. deeply enmeshed in the Middle East, a more or less shadowy, more or less active military presence and power broker. As the events of the past 10 years prove, this is a stance that America should be moving away from, not embracing. As William M. Arkin points out in the Washington Post, the deal will "once again renew the cycle of American penetration into the heart of Islam, one of Osama bin Laden's original and most compelling rallying points."
Ever since the Carter Doctrine, it has been an article of faith for both parties that America must control the Middle East so as to have access to its oil. And that fundamental strategic orientation remains unchanged today. Of course, unless and until the U.S. figures out how to free itself from dependence on petroleum byproducts, we'll need Mideast oil to keep our country running. But as we should have learned by now, there are wiser ways to maintain access to vital resources in the Middle East than sending in gunboats -- or hiring local bullies.
The first step is to acknowledge reality. Instead of demonizing Iran and risking a catastrophic war that plays into the hands of its hard-liners, we should accept that Iran is going to be a major regional player, and start working out ways of minimizing tensions between it and its neighbors. Such a realistic, non-hysterical approach, if part of a unified strategy for addressing all the major issues in the region, and which would include Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and of course Iraq, would safeguard our access to Middle Eastern oil far more effectively than a surge of 200,000 troops.
Bush's plan will probably be heavily modified, even eviscerated, by Congress. But if history is a guide, the debate will take place within narrow parameters, mostly having to do with arms falling into the wrong hands and threatening Israel. Until the American establishment is willing to explore the deeper reasons why Bush's Middle East policy, of which this arms sale is a sadly characteristic part, has been a disaster, the U.S. is likely to keep repeating its tragic errors.
About the writer
Gary Kamiya is a writer at large for Salon.
Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)
Salon Directory (browse by topic)