Representative Press Blog

A Rogue State is Killing Hope In the Middle East

and gemi_serban writes, "Does the US exploit the middle east for its natural resources? Yes.

Does the US support corrupt and oppressive regimes because it serves their national interests? Yes."

and policy-makers working for the U.S. have installed such regimes and they have killed off people who opposed such oppressive regimes

and you should take a closer look at the claim that these actions "serve national interests." Special interests will always claim that their interests are the nation's interest even when they are not. The reality is that the special interests that actually make U.S. foreign policies are not working in the interest of the American people.

gemi_serban writes, "Should the US be doing so? Debatable."

Unfortunately the debate rarely happens, in the mainstream basically it never happens, because the effective public forum is dominated by rich and powerful special interests.

gemi_serban writes, "Is the US to blame for poverty and oppression in the middle east? NO!!

Gemi, U.S. policy makers bare an enormous amount of responsibility for the poverty and oppression in the Middle East. You don't realize what it does to societies when their best men are killed off? Syriana was at its best in depicting this element of U.S. foreign policy, the role of killing off the best hopes for countries in the Middle East. In Syriana, the CIA kills off the progressive prince, you don't understand how that undermines his countries attempts at progress? These things have been done to the countries of the Middle East. We will never know how many progressive activists and future activists, the kinds of people you are pretending didn't exist in the Middle East, have been murdered by CIA actions: U.S. policy makers have killed of attempts at progress:

Take Afghanistan for example:

In August 1979, three months before the Soviet intervention, a classified State Department Report stated:

"the United States's larger interests ... would be served by the
demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this
might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.
... the overthrow of the D.R.A. [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan]
would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that
the Soviets' view of the socialist course of history as being
inevitable is not accurate." (Amongst the "Embassy Documents", op. cit., vol. 30 -- Department of State Report, 16 August 1979.) http://members.aol.com/bblum6/afghan.htm

In Iran, for example, the 1953 coup to oust Mossedeq has been admitted to by the U.S. officially so there is no point in denying it: "In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”" - Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright March 17, 2000 Note that while acknowledging it, the U.S. never apologized for it. Do you have any idea how many Iranians suffered under the Shah? Israel's Mossad and the America's CIA worked with the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, which was ruthless, it tortured and killed many Iranians.

In Iraq, for example, we will never know how many progressive political activists killed off, how many were put on lists by the CIA and handed over by the CIA to the Ba'ath party to be killed. And the CIA was behind putting the Ba'ath party into power in the first place.

Would you have wanted to be one of the Iraqis on the lists that the CIA handed over to the Ba'ath part to be shot? The CIA actively supported the 1963 coup that brought the Ba'ath party to power and the CIA made lists of people it labeled as communists and gave these lists to "the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen". The people on these CIA lists were "jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions." ... the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business." US diplomat James Akins served in the Baghdad Embassy at the time. Mr. Akins said, "I knew all the Ba'ath Party leaders and I liked them ... Sure, some people were rounded up and shot but these were mostly communists so that didn't bother us".

What if they were Jews that were rounded up and shot? What if it was Jews whose names we handed over to be killed? You can't see that the actions of these U.S. officials is the same as the Nazis or Nazi collaborators? If someone was talking about people that handed over the names of Jews to be rounded up and shot by the Nazis would you say it is just "liberal propaganda"? http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/01/syriana-isnt-disgusting-leftist.html

Osama bin Laden quotes author William Blum, author of Rogue State, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire and Killing Hope to explain the motive for the attacks on the U.S. Bin Laden said My message to you is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end them.