War and the "New Middle East": US Coalition Building and the Arab League

A Very Good Piece
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

Global Research, April 9, 2008

"In the collective memory of many inside and outside the Arab World, the summits of the Arab League have a tradition of inconsistency and contradiction. They symbolize the dysfunction that has plagued the Arab World since the First World War. The pageantry and speeches of Arab League conferences are scorned by the citizens of Arab League members as hollow, empty, and as the pinnacles of hypocrisy.

Here is an important look back at three summits of the Arab League held in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria in 2003, 2007, and 2008. The importance of these Arab League summits are in their roles in paving the political grounds for U.S. war plans in the Middle East.

It is in the context of the Arab summits of 2003 and 2007 and the U.S. desire to categorize the Middle East into two opposing camps, one of so-called “moderates” and the other of so-called “radicals” or “extremists,” that the 2008 Arab League gathering in Syria must be analyzed. A review of the Arab League gatherings of 2003, 2007, and 2008 will also give a glimpse of the involvement of Arab governments in American war plans in the Middle East from Iraq to Lebanon and beyond.......

The road of the historical conflict for control over the Middle East does not end in Damascus it goes through Damascus, as it did through Baghdad, for the Arabs and all the other peoples of the Middle East, including the Iranians and the Turks. Damascus has merely served to further expose the political dividing lines that exist in the region. This political divide and the alliance system that it accentuates, which is also solidifying, in the Middle East have striking similarities to the political process and the alliance systems that were in place in Europe on the eve of the First World War. The most important question in regards to this process is where are these divisions taking the Middle East? Is war the final objective or is something else? Even if the objectives of this process are understood the sentiments of the public in the Middle East are united, with some variations, from Iran and Turkey to Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia — and this in itself is a genuine challenge to imposing the Project for the “New Middle East.”"