Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter speaking from Cairo to the New York Times. He says that most Egyptians want to retain the treaty with Israel, but want that treaty's long-nullified promise of Palestinian freedom to be fulfilled. Then there's this:
he also acknowledged that in retrospect the Egyptian revolution had cast a new light on the alliance he helped forge with Egypt’s military-backed strongmen, first President Anwar el-Sadat and then his successor, Mr. Mubarak. Many Egyptians, he said, now complain that for three decades the United States supported a dictatorship at odds with its values to preserve peace with Israel.
“I think that is true, we were,” he said. “And I can’t say I wasn’t doing that as well.”
So the U.S. helped maintain a dictatorship in the largest country in the Arab world for the sake of peace with Israel-- the aforesaid only democracy in the Middle East. This is emblematic of the fact that since Partition we have opposed democratic values in the region, the idea of self-determination. We do not trust the Arab people generally because they do not like the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. I don't think this opposition to popular will has served Americans. And this is one reason I believe in the Israel lobby theory: for the sake of Israel, we'd toss our values when it comes to 85 million Egyptians. It's not like Egypt has oil. And yes, Mohammad Atta, one of the leaders of the 9/11 hijackings, was Egyptian. Why did he hate us?
Phil, you really need to pay more attention to the way you phrase some of your sentences. Exactly what message did you intend to send when you typed that sentence?
“We do not trust the Arab people generally because they do not like the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine”. [Who, BTW, is "we"?] Well, the G-USA does what AIPAC asks, so who cares what G-USA thinks, whom it trusts.
However, since the Arab League endorsed the Saudi peace plan, calling for a return to the pre-1967 borders and some return of 1948 exiles, it is clear that Arab governments are prepared to put up with Israel, presently calling itself a “democratic” Jewish State. The Arab people could learn to live with it if the Palestinians made a peace: it would be up to the Palestinians to signal what is a sufficiently fair (“just and lasting”) peace. SO — after there is a I/P peace, and perhaps before (even as a prod toward it), “we” could learn to put up with the ever-distasteful “democracy”, even in the Middle East, [and even as Israel industriously abandons it].
And then the follow-up question: could the G-USA learn to live with democracy in the USA (where the 99% might get a word in edgewise)?
That’s a very good observation, pabelmont.
What’s “G-USA”, pabel? I don’t get the ‘G’
Carter’s words just confirm one thing to me. Israel is a synthetic State.
Jimmy’s on my shit list.
From the Times article:
“I think it is probably going to be inevitable, and I don’t think it is going to be detrimental for the military to retain some special status,” he said.
…
“If the civilian leadership decided to give the SCAF immunity from prosecution, say, for the death of the people in Tahrir Square over the last few months, I would have no objection to that,” Mr. Carter said. Protecting the military budget from full civilian scrutiny might be another point where civilian political leaders could compromise, he said.
It’s been my impression of Carter that, for better or worse, when he gets involved in conflicts he usually tries to argue for a compromise between the two sides, even when one of the two sides doesn’t really have a moral leg to stand on. I think he probably means well–whether this is a good way to reach a stable agreement is a separate question.
Oh oh,he’s done it again, he’s upset the wackos with truth.
And Jimmy,where did all that bowing and scraping(less than the average POTUS)get you,another term?
And remember how the MSM treated Reagan when he negotiated with the Iranians behind the scenes to hurt your campaign?
Uh,they never even brought it up.
“the US began supporting Sadat because it was the height of the Cold War and the US wanted to move him from the Soviet camp. Peace with Israel was a fringe benefit”
There’s some truth to this, though I think that Israel was also seen as our Cold War ally, useful for smacking down radical Arabs who might align themselves with the Soviets. For someone like Kissinger, it was all part of the same thing.
“Hussein in Jordan was a US ally”
Jordan is kind of interesting. The monarchy has always walked a tightrope and the country is almost an ally of Israel sometimes, while fighting wars with it at others. But they were definitely an American ally and an Israeli ally in fighting against radical Arab nationalism. (I mean an ally of the US government–personally I don’t approve of what the US government does half the time.)
My impression is that under the table Israel and Saudi Arabia were often on the same side with the US during the Cold War. They were both involved in the Iran-contra affair.
There’s a perennial debate at Mondoweiss (that you’re not involved in since you’re a Zionist) about the reason why the US supported Israel in the Cold War days, with one faction saying it is mainly the Israel Lobby, because support for Israel is against our “interests”, while the other faction says that Chomsky is right in seeing Israel as a kind of client state which the US supported because you guys came in handy defeating radical Arab nationalists. I tend to think that in the Cold War days that second view was correct and so there’s nothing particularly startling about the fact that the US was allied with Israel, Jordan, the Shah of Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and then Egypt was brought in, all as part of a supposed alliance against the Soviet bloc. Of course people in the Mideast had their own interests, but from the US POV it was good not to have our allies shooting at each other.
The relationship between the United States and Egypt during the Sadaat years had very little to do with the Soviet Union.
As early as the 1950s, the United States had promised Egypt that it would fund the construction of the Aswan dam.
At the last minute, on the advice of a US ambassador in the region, the United States changed its mind.
That pushed Nasser to the Soviet Union which had started shipping Egypt Soviet-made weapons to counterbalance the US supply to Israel.
eee is promoting false information due to either intentional historical revisionism or mere ignorance. Donald seems unfamiliar with the historical record so he follows along based on general and simplified notions.
3e: Why was Israel “in” the Sinai in 1956? Did they join an imperialist attack against Egypt with Britain and France?
False again, eeeeek.
1. Don’t ever link to a Wikipedia article if you want to be taken seriously.
2. Read Stephen Humphreys’ Between Memory and Desire. That’ll clue you in on the diplomatic memos that went back and forth, the memoirs and the journalistic sources that explain it all.
Wikipedia….wow, I’m inspired.
That is absolute baloney.
Gamal abd al-Nasser was actually making sure that the border with Israel was kept quiet.
It wasn’t until Israeli forces attacked an Egyptian military base in Gaza, killing several soldiers, that the situation escalated.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Israel is an expert at that.
And lastly, the coordinated 1956 attack on Egypt was aimed at the Suez Canal for its geo-strategic location.
Your Fida’iyyin mythology is quite tedious.
The facts are simple, the US considered Israel an important asset during the Cold War.
Then why did Major General Richard Secord have to scramble to get an abandoned Russian air base in Egypt at Wadi Qena operational during the Iranian hostage rescue operation? The facts are simple all right, Israel was never an asset it was usually an obstacle.
You can actually read the transcripts of the Congressional hearings about proposed US financing of the Aswan Dam.
Egypt join the Soviet side in the Cold War because a) the US Congress refused to supply Nasser arms to defend Egypt and Gaza against Israeli incursions, and b) Congress withdrew the US offer to help fund the High Aswan Dam construction project after Egypt recognized the government of China. A few years later even Nixon realized the wisdom of recognizing the same regime. Here is a link to some of the hearings link to archive.org
The Soviets were happy to do business with Nasser.
Donald, please stop with the speculative and the severely-lacking pseudo historical analysis.
The fact of the matter is that if the United States wasn’t influenced by the Israel lobby, it wouldn’t have opted to support Israel over supporting Egypt in the early years of the Cold War.
Why? Because the United States would have benefited more from having a foothold in Egypt in the 1950s rather than wait for the 1970s to support Sadaat as you and eee allege.
“Donald, please stop with the speculative and the severely-lacking pseudo historical analysis.”
Okay. I’ve read some books, but am not an expert. You might be right for all I know.
“After the end of the Cold War, about 10 years later, the US could not just turn around and say that it will not uphold its agreement for economic and military support to Egypt. Who would make deals with the US if you did that?”
Laughable esp. in any argument that mentions the Soviets, of all people. How many years did it take the US to go from ‘Stalin is a democrat fighting the good war for civilization against the evil Germans’ to ‘Stalin is an evil dictator and the SU (even and esp. after the post Stalinist ‘thaw’) an evil empire and Germany (or more precisely: West Germany) must be rearmed as fast as possible to help us fight the good war for freedom and democracy’? Much less than 10 yrs. ‘Never trust the Americans’ is old Soviet wisdom, now widespread in the ME and around the globe. Saddam and OBL used to be the good guys, too. One reason for the existence of a powerful Israel Lobby is that Israelis don’t trust the Americans either. Hasn’t kept anyone from making deals with the Americans. As long as they are the strongest military power and can borrow money from China, this is unlikely to change. However, Kissinger told Sadat that the Soviets can only give him weapons, which means war, and that only the US can give him back the occupied territories, which means peace. And so it was. The Sinai, however, was a lucrative bargaining chip for Israel. Jerusalem and ‘Judea and Samaria’ are apparently not negotiable. Nobody believes that the US can give back those occupied territories to the Palestinians. Any such hope people in Egypt or elsewhere may have entertained in the past have been shattered, never more so than under the current US administration. All the US can give is weapons, which, as Kissinger correctly stated, means war, not peace.
There is a lot of political myth about US support of Israel during the Cold War.
Go to Eisenhower’s Library and do some reading for a start.
But to nutshell it.
Israel as a asset during the Cold War was regarded by US military as having a ‘Beware the Attack Dog” sign on your fence without really having an attack dog.
If we had ever had a conventional war with Russia in the ME the only asset Israel would have been was in supplying bodies to fight using weapons and equipment the US would have had to provide them.
I don’t want to go into a long explanation about Israel blackmailing the US by threatening use of nukes, you can see Hersh’s Sampson Option as well as Eisenhower for that. Israel put out a lot of smoke about having the ability to hit Russia with nukes at the time which was hype. Israel only later and lately had the ability (with the Jericho) to launch a missile 4000 miles and even now it’s precision is not that good. People interested in who can actually do what they claim in warfare should consult the Federation of Atomic Scientist, fas.org. who keeps a data base on all weapons.
You can distill Israel-Cold War-US and everything since down into this:
A. Political support for Israel due to US Jews/Zionist political activity.
1. Therefore look for ways to use Israel and justify that support.
2. Even though the US Attack Dog sign on the fence attracts more trouble for the US than it prevents.
eee writes: “The US would have accepted Sadat as an ally even if he would not have signed the peace agreement, just like Hussein in Jordan was a US ally and also the Gulf Arabs.”
Your assertion rests on a faulty premise: it presumes that it would be even remotely possible that Egypt/Sadat would be inclined or could be persuaded to be an “ally” of a country (the US) that enables (politically, militarily, and diplomatically) a state that occupies part of its territories, or that it would be remotely possible for a congress “bought and paid for by Israel’s Lobby” (© Tom Friedman) could appropriate any aid to a country that represents even a remote threat to the Zionist settler-colonialist enterprise. I suggest that absent Israel, all states in the region would have – by default – been automatic US allies against the Soviets. . Israel was and is still a major liability to the US, in my view.
>> After the end of the Cold War, about 10 years later, the US could not just turn around and say that it will not uphold its agreement for economic and military support to Egypt. Who would make deals with the US if you did that?
Sometimes it only takes five years for the U.S. to betray its new friends…
Libya Is Off U.S. Terrorist List
Jimmy Carter is only stating something that everyone with a little knowledge of foreign affair issues knows already. The cost of supporting Israel is enormous and often unjustified not only from an ethical and moral point of view, but from an economic one as well.
Cost of supporting (whatever that means) Israel to US tax payers (2011 and projected 2012 figures):
link to state.gov
Military Aid to Israel:…..$2,775 Million $3,075 Million
Military Aid to Egypt:…..$1,300 Million $1,300 Million
Military Aid to Jordan:…….$300 Million $300 Million
Total……………………….$4,375 Million $4,675 Million
Total Military Aid………..$5,520 Million $6,550 Million
% to Israel……………………..50.3% 46.9%
% to Isr+Eg+Jord…………….79.3% 71.4%
This counting only direct military aid to Israel, Egypt, and Jordan!!! If one were to include Iraq and Afghanistan, we would be close to 100%!
And here in the US we are splitting hair as to how to pay for health care and social security! When will the US people wake up?
Phil, you write that the US supported a dictatorship in Egypt because the Israel Lobby wanted the US to do so, because of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty.
If you look around the world, you’ll find a LOT of countries where the US has supported dictatorships: Batista (in Cuba), Duvalier (father and son, in Haiti), Rios Montt (Guatemala), General Ongania (in Argentina), Castello Branco (in Brazil), Trujillo (in Dominican Republic), Hugo Banzer (Bolivia), Somoza (father and son, in Nicaragua), Pinochet (in Chile), and many others in Latin America alone. I should have also mentioned the recent military coup in Honduras.
Want more US-supported dictators? In Asia, Chiang Kai-Shek (China), Syngman Rhee (S. Korea), Diem and successors (S. Vietnam), and various military dictators (Pakistan).
At one time, the US supported the Taliban in Afghanistan (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were the only countries that gave official diplomatic recognition to the Taliban. The US almost did, but feminists raised such a uproar that the US backed off.)
In Europe, include the Greek dictatorship (“Regime of the colonels”) 1967-1974.
In the Middle East, the Saudi royal family, King Hussein of Jordan, Mubarak in Egypt, the Shah in Iran (before his 1979 overthrow), and Saddam Hussein in Iraq (before 1990).
Some dictators were eventually discarded when they outlived their usefulness (Diem for example).
So what is the point of this long list of dictators? It’s NOT AT ALL UNUSUAL for the US to support a dictatorship. So it doesn’t require special exertions by the Israel Lobby to get the US support for the Mubarak dictatorship.
Am I denying the existence of the Lobby? Not at all. And when Mubarak’s fate hung in the balance a year ago, the Israeli government was on the phone to Obama every day pleading for the US to save Mubarak. The Saudis also urged US support for Mubarak.
My point is this: even if the Lobby didn’t exist, the US would probably support Mubarak or someone else like him. From the point of view of the US empire, better a friendly dictator than an unfriendly democrat. (Better Pinochet than Allende). So the Israel Lobby in pressuring the US to do something that the US is inclined to do anyway.
Correct.