[While many are claiming that a central goal of U.S. policy is to minimize influence of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Noam Chomsky contributed this to our blog]

It is well-established, including the major scholarly literature, that the U.S. supports democracy if and only if that accords with strategic and economic objectives.  Following that principle, in the Arab/Muslim region it has generally supported radical Islamists in fear of secular nationalism (as has the UK).  Familiar examples include Saudi Arabia, the ideological center of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror), Zia ul-Haq, the most vicious of Pakistan’s dictators, Reagan’s favorite, who carried out a program of radical Islamization (with Saudi funding), and many others.  The operative criterion is obedience, not religious extremism (rampant in the U.S., for example) or surely democracy.

Chomsky’s books include Deterring Democracy.

I took a quick look at [“U.S. embassy cables: Hillary Clinton woos prickly Egyptians“].  It’s interesting that Israel does not appear, only Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon.  I found only one entry of any interest, in US Embassy to Clinton: “Soliman brokered a half-year-long truce last year, which Hamas broke in December, leading to the Israeli invasion of Gaza.”

It’s next to inconceivable that the Embassy didn’t know that Israel broke the truce in November, that Hamas was calling for it to be reinstated, and that Israel rejected the offer – almost certainly because Israel (and the US) preferred bombing to ending the rocket threat. Israel of course officially concedes that until they invaded Gaza on Nov. 4, there was not one Hamas rocket (even though Israel violated the truce agreement from day 1, refusing to end the siege). One interesting question is whether they are flat lying, or are getting their information about the world from the NY Times. The latter would not surprise me. [Read more…]