Kamiya on Middle East strategy

Gary Kamiya has some useful commentary on the current state of the Cheney-Bush administration's Middle Eastern policy, with particular reference to the recently-announced new round of arms sales, Bush's tangled arms deal Salon 08/14/07.

He makes a couple of key points well:

It is self-contradictory to try to roll back Iran while simultaneously propping up the Shia regime in Iraq: One action undoes the other.

And Washington's larger strategy of trying to create a stable Mideast NATO made up of moderate Sunni states that are fearful of both Iran and militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas depends on a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis - which the Bush administration, despite loud lip service of late, is completely incapable of achieving. The Bush administration is too in thrall to its neoconservative, pro-Israel ideology to be an honest broker.

And we should never lose sight of the fact that, whatever else our Middle East policies are about, they are also about oil:

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.

Tags: bush administration