Resurrecting Empire

Then, there's the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement, depicted at the end of Lawrence of Arabia. While British romantic naifs, such as Lawrence, refused to see the underlying nature of British and French operations in Africa and the Middle East, Arabian political leaders, such as the Hashemite King Faisal (cynically depicted in the film as better than he was by Sir Alec Guiness), understood very well what was going on. The British, French and Romanov governments had made secret deals about dividing up the Middle East when they won the war. When the Bolsheviks couldn't hold onto their end of the bargain, the remaining wolves devoured the unattended feast.

In his lengthy Chapter 3, Khalidi discusses the Seven Sisters - the older generation's oil companies. The offspring of Rockefeller's giant Standard Oil were seven big American oil companies. In their foreign operations, however, the Seven Sistors always ran just one big casino, and always dealt the cards from a marked deck. (U.S. law stopped at the shoreline.) Arabs know this, and struggled to get rid of ARAMCO (Arabian-American Oil Co, the Seven Sisters plus Texaco) and British Petroleum.

Iraq was one of the last countries to nationalize its gas and petroleum reserves, in 1975. Before that, all the other major oil players had got rid of foreign exploiters and formed OPEC. The biggest oil reserves are in Saudi Arabia, which managed to unload the British early on because the Brits mistakenly thought the Arabian peninsula worthless! Some clever American geologists knew otherwise, so the Seven Sisters made deals (as ARAMCO) with the Saudis (after WWI) in which (Arabian) national ownership of oil was recognized from the beginning. The Americans soon realized their error, however, so thereafter were involved in endless political operations in oil-bearing countries, such as Iran and, especially, Iraq. The British, in the guise of British Petroleum, were doing the same thing. Consequently, the rest of the Arabs weren't able to get hold of their own oil until the late 1950s and 1960s, when Britain lost its grip on the Empire. The Iraqis were late in the process, because of American intrigues and interference with the Iraqi government.

Khalidi suggests that most Arabs suspect that, had the Westerners known their future oil needs better, the Middle East would have remained occupied territory to this day, Thus, there is no way Iraqis can dismiss the fear and suspicion that Americans are in Iraq to expropriate a strategic commodity: oil. Those hackles are raised higher by things like the U.S. building its largest embassy in Baghdad and imposing 14 long-term leases for military bases on the Iraqi "government" (the Coalition Provisional Authority). (Those leases are already at issue when the newly elected Iraqi government takes charge.) Most Americans are only dimly aware of those Iraqi feelings and opinions. Those Americans who suggest similar motives as those alleged by Iraqis are called "un-American," traitors, etc.

What Khalidi shows is that most Americans are just ignorant of Middle Eastern history, and current affairs there. Historical knowledge and insight are not prized possessions in America. The U.S. media have generally portrayed the Middle East in a propagandistic way that supports American government policy. That is bad enough, but the situation would at least be tolerable if the American government was properly advised by experts on the subject. Khalidi reports that the Brits had such expert help in running their Empire, but Americans fly by the seat of their pants. The Bandit's neo-con advisors (Wolfowitz et al) don't know much about the Middle East, except what their ideology informs them. Thus, American policy is like flying a 747, auto-pilot off, having been trained to be a pilot with one's favorite Caribbean beach scene glued to the cockpit windows. The miracle is that anything got off the ground. The disaster is the landing.

I join with Prof Khalidi in bemoaning the stupidity and ignorance of Bandit government. Even lay readers of Middle Eastern history and events, such as myself, were able to discern long before the first shots were fired, what would happen in Iraq. Thus, from many people and most Arabists, the advice to the U..S. government was, 'leave well enough alone.' Of course, the Bandit, a Sorcerer's apprentice, couldn't and didn't. We all know what happens in that story.

Prof Khalidi also discusses at length the bloody Israeli-Palestinian impasse. Once again, the American public is poorly informed about Palestinians. The American government, particularly the Bandit Administration, is 100% behind Israel all the time. American views of Israel are strongly conditioned by Bible stories and Holocaust horrors. Americans give short shrift to Arabs, especially Palestinians, who they see as Fascist terrorists. Israeli military operations against Palestinians are either suppressed from view, soon forgotten and ignored. That makes it very difficult to arrive at any settlement of the long running conflict, as the start of negotiation usually assumes there are at least two sides. (We should have learned that a "Versailles diktat" only engenders another war.)

For those unfamiliar with modern Middle Eastern history, I highly recommend Prof Khalidi's short and readable introduction of it. He has discussed in this book the salient points everyone should know when considering American foreign policy in the Middle East, whether or not one agrees with the Professor, this writer or the Arabs.