Russian President Putin Blames 'U.S. Interference' for Helping Spread Extremism in the Middle East

Putin to U.N.: America Is Destroying the World, and Only We Can Stop It

September 28, 2015

Slate - Both Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin frequently claim to reject outdated Cold War thinking, but it’s hard to avoid the comparison when both leaders devoted their addresses to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday morning to rejecting the other’s worldview.

Speaking shortly after Obama dismissed Russia’s view that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad can be a partner in fighting ISIS, Putin, making his first address to the General Assembly in a decade, blamed foreign—read: U.S.—interference for helping the spread of extremism in the Middle East. 

“Rather than bringing about reforms, an aggressive foreign interference has resulted in the brazen destruction of institutions,” he said. Addressing “those who’ve caused the situation,” Putin said he’s temped to ask,  “do you realize now what you’ve done?” (Putin never referred to the U.S. specifically, only to an unnamed Voldemort-like malevolent presence doing terrible things in the world.)

Attacking the policies of two U.S. presidents in one fell swoop, Putin noted that the ranks of ISIS include former Iraqi service members who were decommissioned after the 2003 invasion, as well as the “ranks of so-called moderate opposition. First they are armed  and trained, and then they defect to the Islamic State.”

Saying “we cannot allow these criminals who have already tasted blood to return home and continue their evil doings,” Putin argued that ISIS’s growth poses a threat to all nations, including Russia, and called for the formation of an international partnership “similar to the anti-Hitler coalition” in order to fight them. (That would be a coalition with several brutal dictators competing for the role of Stalin.)

This wasn’t the only historical analogy in Putin’s remarks. He also compared western attempts to spread democracy in the Middle East to Soviet-era experiments in spreading Communism around the globe, suggesting they were destined for similar failure.

“No one has to conform to a single development model that someone has recognized as the only right one,” he said.

Moments after Obama rejected the notion of a “conspiracy of U.S.-controlled NGOs” to overthrow governments around the world, Putin described the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s government as a “military coup” that was “orchestrated from outside.”

Putin also defended Russia’s use of its veto at the U.N. Security Council, which U.S. officials say undermines the authority of the body by shielding violators of international law from criticism and sanctions. Russia’s response is that the U.S. is simply irritated by a check on its unrestrained power in international affairs. Putin rejected criticism of Russia’s veto as “a dangerous attempt to “undermine the legitimacy of the United Nations” by a power who “thought they knew better and didn’t have to reckon with the UN.”

Wonder who he could be talking about.

A good question about American interests in the Middle East but what is the answer? [Excerpt]

October 13, 2012

Alan Hart - The U.S. has always had two predominant interests in the Middle East:

1. The first was guaranteeing the flow of oil at the lowest possible price even when that meant supporting corrupt and repressive Arab regimes which would do America’s bidding. (Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal, in my view, the first and the last truly great Arab leader of modern times, was assassinated because he was no longer willing to be an American puppet, a fact he demonstrated by, among other things, defying Henry Kissinger with his support for Arafat and the PLO.)

2. The second was to do with the fact that the Military Industrial Complex, in all of its manifestations, is the biggest single creator of jobs and wealth in America. It not only needed wars to guarantee the flow of tax dollars into its coffers, it also needed very wealthy Arab client states to buy its products. (In 2011, U.S. weapons sales reached a record high of $66 billion. America's largest customer was Saudi Arabia, which purchased more than $33 billion worth of weapons from the U.S., including dozens of F-15 fighter jets and missiles. The Obama administration proudly said that this deal alone would be a major stimulus to the U.S. economy and generate 75,000 new jobs. The United Arab Emirates and Oman also spent billions on buying American weapons.)

In the last decade or two of the 20^th century the U.S. has had a third predominant interest in the Middle East:

3. It was having in power Arab regimes which were prepared to spend big amounts of the wealth of their countries on keeping the American economy going, and quite possibly preventing it from collapsing, by buying American debt. This purchase of U.S. debt instruments (paper promises) enabled Americans to go on living beyond their means and helped to create a national debt which is now approaching $17 trillion. (The other two major purchasers of American debt were Japan and China.)

If we asked the candidates to outline some actions they would take to support American interests in the Middle East, neo-cons (Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel right or wrong), if they were honest, would say: “We need more wars.”

Israel has been and continues to be a predominant American interest in the Middle East for two related reasons:

1. One is the ignorance of the vast majority of Americans. I mean ignorance in the sense that they have been conditioned to believe a version of history, Zionism’s version, which is a pack of propaganda lies. The consequence is that they, the vast majority of Americans, have no understanding of what the conflict is really all about, who the real victims are, and why it is not in America’s own best interests to go on supporting Israel (the oppressor) right or wrong.

2. The related reason is that this ignorance has made it easy for the Zionist lobby, through its stooges in Congress, to call the shots for policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

I am in no doubt that Obama, unlike Romney, is completely aware that the biggest real threat to America’s own best interests in the Middle East (and the whole of the wider Muslim world) is the Zionist state, on account of the anger and the despair provoked by a combination of its contempt for international law and arrogance of power, and America’s lack of will to call and hold the Zionist monster to account for its crimes.

If I was in the audience for the next presidential debate, the question I would want to put to Obama and Romney is this: Do you believe it is in America’s own best interests to go on supporting Israel, right or wrong?

If the answer was “No,” the follow-up question would have to be: In order to best protect America’s own interests, will you be prepared to take whatever action is necessary to require Israel to end its defiance of international law?