I have to admit I've never wanted to look too closely at Mid-East polotics, but in the light of recent events I've been making a concerted effort to realy site down and figure some of this stuff out. What is the nature of the various conflicts, and how is the US involved in them?
This morning I came across this line:
Israel is one of the largest customers for US armaments.
It [Israel] also receives several billion dollars a year in direct and indirect aid from Washington.
That isn't taken out of context and those two sentences actually followed one another. here. A few days ago I found an article regarding us "rushing" the next shipment of precision bombs to Israel.
Now, two points, firstly, as I mentioned I'm an amateur at this, it seems to me that a lot of people want this bombing to stop. Kofi Annan has called for an immediate ceasefire. Experts worldwide generally accept that this tactic can't possibly stop Hezbollah and will most likely strengthen grassroots support for them.
Also seems to me that you need to have the precision bombs in order to be dropping them. So, why are we giving arms to anyone in the Middle East - especially the ones who are bombing the hell out of another country? How can this possibly lead to the bombing ending sooner.
I'm not so naive as to think that Israel won't obtain arms in some way otherwise, but it shouldn't be from us. And it shouldn't be amidst a UN ceasefire call!
Second Point: I know governments are pretty strict with their budgets and all, X number of dollars in the foreign aid coloumn and X number of dollars in the welfare program, but in reality, money is rather fluid. By this I mean that by giving aid to Israel and selling them arms, aren't we in essence by arms from ourselves.
Granted, I don't know what we are receiving in exchange for this aid, but it seems like we should have a few rules here. You get foreign aid, OR we sell you arms. Otherwise this easily acts as a way fro american arms manufacturers to siphon taxpayers dollars into their own pockets. Wonder if any lobbyists influenced this decision?
So, what I'm getting at here, is can anyone point me to a comprehensive breakdown as to the major players in the middle east and how the money/arms/alliances flow. I'm brewing up one hell of a letter to a representative here and would love to at least sound informed as I do it.
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