On Tue, 4 Mar 2003, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
> As for Israel's repellent effect, tell me three things the U.S. has
> wanted from Arab countries under its thumb that it has not gotten.
Lower oil prices and better strategic cooperation.
The 1973 oil embargo was entirely caused by our aid to Israel -- specifically our emergency airlift in the midst of the war. It never would have happened without it. That was a big geostrategic minus. Yes, it's true, that by a decade later, developments that we didn't foresee mitigated it. But there is no doubt that that was something we didn't want to have happen.
Secondly, our one central problem in the middle east is that we don't have any permanent bases there. From the importance of the area, we should have something there the size of Okinawa. And the reason we don't is Israel. It doesn't give us any bases we can use, and it makes it impossible to get bases elsewhere except on a haphazard and half-ass basis.
All the contortions and weirdnesses and anxiety of our middle eastern policy flow from this simple fact. We can't operate there the way we normally do because we don't have a solid outpost like we have in every other strategic sector in the world. So every time there is a crisis -- which is often -- we are forced into one Rube-Goldberg scheme after another, the cumulative result of which is a deep yearning for one mad final solution after another. (Permanent bases in Saudi Arabia was one such 10 years ago. Permanent bases in Iraq is one now).
And the reason for this central strategic problem is Israel. It's so hated, and we're so hated by association, that no government there can publicly own up to its alliance with us. In an alternate universe where Israel wasn't our ally -- or where Israel wasn't hated, which is the goal which we should actually be moving toward -- there is no doubt that several of these poor countries would have leapt at the chance to be our base, just like they do everywhere else in the world.
Michael