The UK Government, the Free West, William Hague and the "Dirty Arab"

Take a look at a a map of Africa or the Middle East and you will see on it, countries divided by straight lines and not by natural, tribal, ethnic and language boundaries like those in Europe. This has come about because colonial powers like France and Britain carved up these areas to suit their administrative, economic and political goals. The results have brought untold miseries to the people of those countries resulting in constant civil wars between the different ethnic groups. The results can be seen  in countries like Rwanda, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Bahrain, Algeria, Chad, Palestine and Israel, and in many other countries. To add to the party the colonial powers exploited the natural wealth of these countries for their own economic ends and used  massacre, torture and slavery to achieve their objectives.

 The same policies resulted in the ethnic cleansing of the native American Indian, the Inuit, the Aborigines  and the Maoris. But, this is not just history, dear reader, these attitudes continue to this day, dictating the economic and political goals of the old European colonial countries,  resulting in the destruction of millions of lives in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Chad, Algeria and now Syria.

 Perhaps one of the worst current day examples is the policy of the  United Kingdom towards the Arabs. It was common in the Foreign Office at one time to use the expression the "Dirty Arabs" to describe the peoples of the middle east. That policy still exists but we now divide the Arab nations into good Arabs (who buy our weapons, are non democratic, do not allow political or gender freedoms and annihilate any opposition) and "Dirty Arabs" who wont sell us their oil, and who have the temerity to develop relations with non western countries. These are the ones that we bomb, invade, and impose economic sanctions against (such as Iran),  resulting in economic ruin and millions of deaths through starvation and the lack of medical supplies. In our free country I am unable to use my Visa card to buy goods from Iran, and in similar fashion make a donation to Wikileaks. Is this living in a free country - bollocks?

 A wise man once said that people “make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted”.

 The de facto purpose of Britain’s foreign policy has traditionally been to advance the interests of concentrations of social and economic power, not to reflect the will or the interests of the general public, or to promote liberal, humanitarian values. Above all, it is the commercial interests of those best placed to influence the government that tend to be prioritised by policymakers.

 This is why Britain supports the US-led maintenance of a global system which is seen as amenable to those commercial interests, and tries to maximise Britain’s influence within that system.

 Throughout the Middle East, Britain has consistently backed those regimes most likely to be accommodating to its interests, no matter how thuggish, how exploitative or how undemocratic. Britain provides training to the militaries and/or police forces of states such as Bahrain, Oman, Libya  and Saudi Arabia. It also sells arms to practically every regime in the Middle East and North Africa bar Syria and Iran, which are strategic rivals. In the 12 months up to September 2010 alone, the value of government-granted licences for military exports to the region stood at over a third of a billion pounds and has increased vastly since then.

On a recent tour of the Middle East, David Cameron poured scorn on the notion that the countries of the region could be expected to produce all their means of defence, asserting that since they could not, it was right that Britain should continue to sell arms to the regimes in question. So the deal is that we  buy their oil in return for our arms. The problem with that argument is that the primary concern for these governments is to defend themselves against their own people and their demands for democratic freedoms or to supply those arms to the oppositions of their enemies in the area.

 So,  William Hague's unceasing efforts to bring ever more misery to Syria, by arming the opposition freedom fighters, rebels, terrorists or whatever you wish to label them is consistent with pursuing British interests against the "Dirty Arab". I am indebted to Dr. Anthony McRoy for this article on anti-arab racism.

 As a footnote have you noted the muted response of the Western bloc to the military coup in Egypt where a "Dirty Arab" had become its elected President. As far as the West is concerned democracy comes with the price of being subservient to its interests. But if you do not toe the line then they will use the military in those countries to intervene on their behalf such as they did in Chile where an elected President was executed.