John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN CONSORTIUM
NEWS
The US Just Blackmailed Sudan
Washington has proven that it is willing to make people
suffer, and even starve, if governments don’t acquiesce to normalization with
Israel
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/26/the-angry-arab-the-us-just-blackmailed-sudan/
An excellent article with a nice historical perspective,
I especially like this insight: “Those peace treaties will require a solid U.S. commitment to support Arab despots at all cost to preserve those treaties.”
Yes, indeed, democracy is so important for the United States.
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Response to a comment:
But the truth is, by a hundred different measures, the
United States and Israel are not truly two countries.
Israel is a privileged American imperial colony in a strategically-important region.
It floats on a sea of American government and private subsidies, and it receives privileges no other country does, even the oldest allies.
Privileges like high-level technical and military sharing, extraordinary access to the highest American officials, free trade, periodic special additional financial packages and loans, very large American government contracts in communications and security, plus many other supports. And Israel freely interferes in America’s lawmaking without ever receiving any criticism.
The lore about a people returning to the promised land serves some hard-nosed realpolitik, including putting in place a contingent of defenders, highly motivated ones, representing a situation a bit like imperial Britain's use of the Gurkhas.
It bestows on American politicians and elites a sense of their own benevolence and feeling good about their treatment of Jews, treatment which was in the past in fact terrible, both within American society and in its unwillingness to accept Jewish refugees.
One of the great ironies of modern Israel is that it has effectively served to suppress democracy throughout the region, and, as the article’s author so rightly points out, the new agreements will require more support for the absolute monarchs of the Gulf States.
All of Israel’s friends in the region are absolute monarchs or tyrants, serious ones. After thirty years of a dictator in Egypt, that country’s brief precious experiment with democratic government was ended with a coup, undoubtedly facilitated by the CIA. Now, Egypt’s people have as their leader a Field Marshal who packs his dingy prisons full.
