This too I find simply fantastic! How can somebody think that the actual goal of U.S. dominance is to win the hearts and minds of the people. It as soft headed as thinking that the goal of the U.S. is to establish democracy.
If this is a relevant question to ask of the Middle East why isn't it a relevant question to ask of Latin America? The U.S. foreign policy makers are not so illogical as to believe that the general population of Latin America can be won over to U.S. policies. This is because the Latin American population want to control Latin American resources for its own needs and not for the profits of U.S. corporations. Thus unless the democracy is a "business controlled democracy" or a "death squad democracy" the U.S. is opposed to democracy in Latiin America. A "democracy" where the population as a whole is marginalized.
The worse thing that could happen from the U.S. rulers point of view is that all Middle Eastern regimes would be transformed into states which are responsive to their own people instead of U.S. needs. The same analysis that applies to Latin America also applies to the Middle East. The U.S. wants a comprador class in power in the oil rich regimes, a class that is responsive to U.S. corporate needs and U.S. foreign policy. In order to keep such a comprador class in power it must have military regimes to enforce U.S. policy or to act as U.S. airbases. Israel, Turkey, and Iran under the Shah served this purpose.
I simply don't see why we must analyze U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East as motivated by different factors than U.S. foreign policy in the rest of the world? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060330/e8e94db9/attachment.htm>