United States foreign policies are marked by intermittent failures, often accomplishing the opposite of what is intended — Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are examples. A difference between U.S. policies in the Middle East and State Department walkthroughs in other regions is that the Middle East policies have been consistent failures, worse than adversaries relish.
Immediately after World War II, Cold War competition with the Soviet Union drove U.S. policies, mildly favored Israel, and tended toward achieving a balance of power between the Zionist state and Arab world. Israel’s victory in the 1967 six-day war changed the status quo. Warsaw Pact nations had supplied arms to Egypt, ostensibly for defensive purposes, and Israel’s rapid offensive angered them. The Soviet bloc severing of relations with Israel led Washington to believe the Arab world had allied with the Soviet Union and motivated Uncle Sam to elevate relations with the victorious nation. Each year, the commitment to advance Israel’s supremacy and slaughter of the Palestinian people grew. Each year, the democratic appearance and humanistic values of the American system deteriorated. Each year, the American system, established in 1789, tended toward destruction of its political and social fabrics.
President Jimmy Carter added a Middle East foreign policy directive by claiming the Soviet Union posed a grave threat to the free movement of Middle Eastern oil through the Persian Gulf. Safeguarding the oil flow was of vital interest to the United States of America. Framed in other words, the U.S. had another mission ─ prevent Iran from threatening Arab kingdoms and disturbing the flow of oil.
One approach to examining policies is to compare results with intentions. Dr. Michael S. Bell, professor at the National Defense University Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, has given a sensible definition of the policies: 1) protection of the American homeland from terrorist attacks; 2) peace between countries in the region; 3) nonproliferation of nuclear weapons; and 4) the free flow of energy and commerce to the global economy.
Protection of the American homeland from terrorist attacks
Protection from terrorist attacks did not occur, not in the homeland, at American military bases, and in American embassies. The American people remain unformed why Sept 11, 2001 and other terrorist attacks occurred.
The errors started with President Ronald Reagan allowing the CIA to shuffle funds to Pakistan intelligence, who used the funds to finance Saudi construction engineer, Osama bin Laden, to construct roads and bases in Afghanistan that eventually became training grounds for al-Qaeda militants. The road led through several nations. Along its path, al-Qaeda recruited others to form new terrorist organizations and attack American facilities in several countries. In Afghanistan, the CIA paved the road to the 9/11 terrorist attack on American soil.
Hidden from public knowledge is that America’s support for Israel contributed to Obama bin Laden‘s arguments with the United States. The al-Qaeda leader revealed his attitude in the opening sentences of a “Letter to America.” Bin Laden’s words are unpleasant and offensive but taking notice and reading them was a prerequisite for devising a strategy that defeated terrorism and protected Americans. The letter’s opening statements.
Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
a) You attacked us in Palestine:
(i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.
(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon.
The letter appeared in 1998, but before that date bin Laden had signaled his displeasure with America. Ignoring the reasons for his threats was a grave policy mistake and proved fatal. Policy errors manufactured additional policy errors.
By stationing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, President George H. W. Bush aroused Radical Islamists in the Desert Kingdom to join forces with Osama bin Laden. On December 29, 1992, a bomb exploded at the Gold Mohur hotel in Aden, Yemen, where U.S. troops had been staying while on route to Somalia.
Intelligence and strategy failures by President Bill Clinton elevated al-Qaeda to an international enterprise. President Clinton’s aggressive policy in Somalia created a mistrust of American power among East Africans and an anarchy that eventually led to emergence of The Islamic Courts Union ( ICU), who preached Shariah as law and ruled parts of Somalia at various times. After being defeated, the ICU evolved into Al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda look alike in East Africa.
- On Friday, February 26, 1993, Kuwaiti Ramzi Yousef and Jordanian Eyad Ismoil parked a yellow Ryder van in the public parking garage beneath the World Trade Center. Later in the day, the van exploded, killing six people and injuring 1,042.
- In June 1996, an enormous truck bomb detonated in the Khobar Towers residential complex for Air Force personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen Americans and wounding 372.
- Truck bomb explosions occurred on 7 August 1998 at U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, and killed hundreds of people. The attacks were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, under direction from Osama bin Laden.
- Al-Qaeda associates bombed the U.S. Navy warship, USS Cole, in October 2000 and killed 17 sailors. Al-Qaeda in Yemen, soon to become al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was born.
No intelligence failures can possibly compare to those that enabled foreign terrorists to enter the United States, request one-way flying lessons, take planes up with no concern about being able to land them, book flight tickets, walk through airport inspections, seize commercial planes in mid-flight, and fly them into public buildings. No terrorist action has been as serious as those that occurred on September 11, 2001.
Guided by a tendency to assist Radical Islam in its endeavors, the George Bush administration provided a route for al-Qaeda to mature into ISIS. The invasion of Iraq and disposal of a Saddam Hussein regime, which had prevented al-Qaeda elements from establishing themselves, exposed Iraq’s porous borders to Radical Islamic fighters. Founded in October 2004, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) emerged from a transnational terrorist group, created and led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His cohorts entered through Jordan, while al-Qaeda members forced out of Waziristan in Pakistan found a safe haven in Iraq. Fighters trained in the deserts of Saudi Arabia hopped planes to Istanbul and Damascus and worked their way across Syria into Iraq. Disturbed by the U.S. invasion and military tactics, Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai, later known as Al Baghdadi, founder of the Islamic Caliphate, transformed himself from a fun loving soccer player into a hardened militant and helped to found Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah (JJASJ) and countered the U.S. military in Iraq.
After previous disastrous policies prepared the framework for ISIS to establish its caliphate, and spawn “look-alikes” in Yemen and throughout North Africa, President Barack Obama approached the dangerous situation with confusion. Not wanting to betray his French ally, Obama brought his country into the Libyan civil war and enabled Radical Islamists a safe haven in the new Libya
Since the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi, a leader who constrained al-Qaeda, militants from Libya have flowed east, through friendly Turkey into Syria and Iraq to join ISIS. Weapons captured from Gadhafi’s stockpiles have flowed west to equip al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Militants trained in post-Gadhafi Libya attacked tourists at beaches and museums in Tunisia; Boko Haram spreads havoc throughout northern Nigeria and parts of Chad.
The al-Qaeda that the U.S. helped create committed the greatest single act of foreign destruction to American soil. The Afghanistan the U.S. helped establish became the Afghanistan the U.S. was forced to combat and could not destroy. The Israel that the U.S. nourished and fortified contributed to the development of international terrorism and to the U.S. failure in containing it, a common thread through all U.S. Middle East policy failures. The American people sat silently as its State Department and Israel brought terrorism to American shores.
Peace between countries in the region
Instead of bringing a pledged peace and stability to the Middle East, the U.S. has brought constant violence and mayhem. Except for Iraq’s wars against Iran and Kuwait, and some skirmishes in Yemen, the Middle East Arab nations have not attacked one another. The United States has been twice at war with Iraq and has engaged Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Patron Israel has fought wars with Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt and has had continuous strife with the Palestinians, which have exploded into intense battles in Gaza. The U.S. invasion of Iraq came from the bidding of the Neocons ─ American officials allied with Israel. Deceptively portrayed as a war to defeat Saddam Hussein’s’ developments of farcical “weapons of mass destruction,” the invasion of Iraq used American forces to subdue Israel’s principal nemesis.
Reasons for U.S. antipathy toward Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Yemen Houthis, and Iran are not clear. None of these nationalities have attacked the U.S. or its personnel. Their common expressions are opposition to (1) Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people; (2) seizing Arab lands, and (3) disturbing Muslim sites in Jerusalem. Without Israel, dominating their lives, the Middle East might have rivalries but warfare is not probable. U.S. policy of bringing peace between countries in the region could not succeed. Support of an aggressive Israel meant peace in the region was impossible.
Nonproliferation of nuclear weapons
Nonproliferation of nuclear weapons is best accomplished by making certain that no nation fears a nuclear threat. By ignoring Israel’s development of the atomic bomb, the U.S. made sure that Middle East nations felt constantly threatened by an aggressive Israeli military machine. Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Syria briefly sought nuclear developments and were stopped. Although denying it, Iran is presently believed to be in an advanced stage toward developing an atomic bomb. Do away with Israel’s atomic bombs and assuredly, Iran will halt its developments. Another failure of U.S. policy due to its strange relations with Israel.
Free flow of energy and commerce to the global economy.
OPEC determines the price of oil and the U.S. does not control OPEC. President Carter’s anxiety that closing the Strait of Hormuz will greatly disturb oil shipments to Western nations is exaggerated. The burning of oil by the U.S. fifth fleet in the Indian Ocean contributes as much to the price of oil as would the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. Well, not exactly, but it’s a point.
In 2022, oil flow through the Straits “averaged 21 million barrels per day (b/d), or the equivalent of about 21% of global petroleum liquids consumption. Estimates are that” 82% of the crude oil and condensate that moved through the Strait of Hormuz went to Asian markets in 2022. China, India, Japan, and South Korea were the top destinations for the crude oil ….In 2022, the United States imported about 0.7 million b/d of crude oil and condensate from Persian Gulf countries through the Strait of Hormuz, accounting for about 11% of U.S. crude oil and condensate imports and 3% of U.S. petroleum liquids consumption.” China received 1/3 of the Asian market for the crude oil.
Whose free flow of energy is the fifth fleet protecting? Very little to the Western markets; more to the Asian markets and mostly to China. The fifth fleet, which has been hanging around in the Indian ocean for thirty years waiting for Godot is principally occupied to defend Chinese (our nemesis) right to assure oil shipments.
If the United States wants to assure Iran will not interfere with oil shipments, why not become friends with Iran? Good reason to be friends with the mullahs. Friends help friends, except when the “friend” is Israel.
Want to receive shocks in free flow of oil, Israel is the “go to guy.” The deepest scarcity of oil and high prices occurred when oil producing Arab nations embargoed oil to the United States in retaliation for U.S. rescue mission of military shipments to Israel during the !973 Yom Kippur War, another U.S. Middle East policy of sacrificing the interests of the U.S. people to enhance Israel’s interests.
Conclusion
U.S. Middle East policies have been consistent failures, bringing great harm to Arab populations and to the American people. In all the policies, beginning with the ratification of the 1947 Partition Plan and arriving at military assistance to Israel in its 2023 war on Gaza, the Israel state appears and diverts the policies to catastrophes. Americans of good conscience stand aghast at Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians and America’s participation in the genocide. They do not realize that the Palestinian genocide is a byproduct of 70 years of slaughter of the American psyche and its institutions. Too few take notice of the onslaught on American academic and press freedoms, corruption of American values, coopting of its political system, and reduction of its intellectual qualities. Assailants sink America further into an abyss and more Palestinians are murdered from the same assailants. Americans and Palestinians are “captured in a web that imprisons every faculty and sense.” Only a captured faculty can allow a genocide. No genocide makes sense and this genocide makes all of us senseless.FacebookRedditEmail
Dan Lieberman publishes commentaries on foreign policy, economics, and politics at substack.com. He is author of the non-fiction books A Third Party Can Succeed in America, Not until They Were Gone, Think Tanks of DC, The Artistry of a Dog, and a novel: The Victory (under a pen name, David L. McWellan). Read other articles by Dan. 
British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson IMAGE/
