Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on September 22, 2013
US Embraces Cruel Dictators Who Host the Navy and Supply Our Oil
Although normally the Washington Post (WP) editorial board hawks war, it sharply criticized the White House for its hypocrisy on denouncing cruel dictators who defy the United States while embracing cruel dictators who are pro-US, particularly when they ship us a lot of oil and allow the Navy’s 5th fleet to establish headquarters there.
The case in point here is the Obama administration’s ongoing support for the reigning al-Khalifa family in Bahrain:
Bahrain’s leaders regularly assure the Obama administration that they are open to reforms and compromise with their opposition. But massive human rights violations, including the torture of detainees, continue. Leading political figures and human rights advocates remain imprisoned.
Bahrain has violently suppressed dissent, but what drew the ire of the WP editorial board was the apparently trumped up arrest of a moderate opposition leader Khalil al-Marzooq.
Instead of US national leadership protesting his detention, the WP is astonished by the State Department’s position that al-Marzooq and the opposition to the dictatorship “were withdrawing from the national dialogue”:
Fearful of compromising a naval base that backs up U.S. operations in the Persian Gulf, the Obama administration refuses to hold the Khalifa regime accountable. Incredibly, the State Department’s response to Mr. Marzooq’s arrest was to express disappointment with the opposition for withdrawing from the national dialogue. That myopic attitude will only encourage more repression and further political polarization in Bahrain — and endanger the very U.S. assets that the administration sees itself as protecting.
This is an astonishing warning coming from the WP, which has for the last few years been a clarion voice for the preservation of US empire. In terms of Bahrain, it appears to at least for the moment understand the glaring hypocrisy in US Middle Eastern selective support of brutal dictatorships when it comes to the “Great Game” of oil.
As for the 5th Fleet anchored in Bahrain, don’t forget that the Pentagon is the largest consumer of oil in the world. That’s an important yardstick to consider when looking at different standards for US policy toward dictators.
6 Comments on "US Embraces Cruel Dictators Who Host the Navy and Supply Our Oil"
J-Gav on Sun, 22nd Sep 2013 4:18 pm
Interesting to see that the WP does still publish a more or less accurate article from time to time on international politics. Of course none of this is new(s) for anyone familiar with the basics of empire. That’s how they’ve always worked … until they stop working. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal … right on back to the Romans, despite all the differences due to the variety of historical contexts, the blueprint was basically the same.
Norm on Sun, 22nd Sep 2013 5:08 pm
Cheesus did you see that paragraph-sized run-on sentence? No risk of learning who rides the white horses and who rides the brown horses, with lousy writing like that!
Norm on Sun, 22nd Sep 2013 5:09 pm
And its the first sentence of the article.
DC on Sun, 22nd Sep 2013 5:19 pm
The US never met an oil-rich arab dictator it didn’t like. And the odd time when it does-it has them killed.
GregT on Sun, 22nd Sep 2013 6:40 pm
“But massive human rights violations, including the torture of detainees, continue. ”
Why would the Whitehouse care, if other nations also torture and confine ‘prisoners’ without due legal process?
Arthur on Sun, 22nd Sep 2013 7:15 pm
Nothing wrong with buying oil from an ‘evil dictator’ or even supporting one to safe-guard future supply. Everybody is allowed to defend his interests and the citizens of countries run by ‘evil dictators’ need to eat as well. Unbearable however is the hypocrasy when applying socalled moral values when dealing with others the US does not like, for geopolitical reasons. And no country has the right to invade another country if there is no threat for the invader.