Behold the crowning achievement of the Lebanese invasion. Sabra and Shatila! True, there is little left to see now – only the bulldozer tracks over the blood-reddened earth, here and there some shell casings, a baby’s arm sticking out of a mound of dirt, the Lebanese Judases counting their pieces of Israeli silver and enjoying the stench of death, their laughter not quite covering the screams of the helpless still echoing in the hills.
We push past the American marines who had somehow vanished just before the slaughter and who were now back on their “protective” post.
And we follow the trail of devastation of 4,000 weaponless corpses, the ruins of hospitals and schools and homes, testifying to the Nazi-level efficiency with which the Israelis employed their U.S.-donated weapons.
We push past the U.S. warships bristling with nuclear weapons in the Gulf, past the exercises of the U.S. Rapid Deployment Force, preparing to secure Saudi Arabian oil against any possible insurrection, past the feverish construction work on the string of U.S. bases tightening the noose around 100 million Arab peoples.
And we push past the phalanx of U.S. “peace-makers” — the negotiators and mediators, the arbitrators and treaty writers, finishing off what the Israeli tanks had left undone, and paving the way for a possible Third World War.
We push past all of this and go back in time, trying to unravel the threads of the present crisis, tracing its development, identifying the forces at work, forces which often operate in the shadows, pulling the strings of those who pull the triggers.
We need to go back in time to the period when most of the Mideast was part of the decaying Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, when at the beginning of the 20th Century the European Powers, having assumed the “White Man’s Burden,” had subjugated practically all of the peoples of Asia and Africa, destroying their economies, trying to obliterate their social and cultural institutions, looting their wealth, and imposing on them one or another form of slave labor.
And each Power was unselfishly anxious to relieve the other Powers of their “burdens,” to the point, finally, of sending millions of their working people to slaughter one another in World War I.
To the victor belongs the spoils, and France now divided up the Middle East among themselves. The sun never set on the British Empire, and one-quarter of the world’s people were enslaved to this most democratic of states.
The Middle East then seemed to have little of economic value. It was prized chiefly for its strategic position as a gateway to Asia. But it did have one natural resource which the war had demonstrated would be vital for future military operations: oil. (The importance of oil for industry and the automobile was still in the future.)
British companies acquired the lion’s share of the oil reserves then known to exist in the region — in Iran and Iraq, and shortly thereafter discovered that oil was not only a key to military power, but the source of the most fabulous profits in the history of the world!
It was during World War I that the British saw the possibilities of making use of Zionism, which had emerged as a movement of middle-class European Jews offering to act as agents for every power, from Kaiser Germany, Czarist Russia, the rulers of the Ottoman Empire, and the British ruling class. It was finally the British who agreed to the planting of a Zionist colony as a strategic link between the Suez and India. Typically, the British made contradictory promises to both Zionists and Arabs, since they required the support of both in their persecution of the war.
Pretending to a concern for both Jews and Arabs, the essential element of their policy was the encouragement and protection of Jewish colonization of Palestine. Gathering momentum under the impact of Hitler’s genocidal policies, Jewish immigration was forced by the Western Powers and the Zionists into Palestine. At the same time, Britain, recognized the necessity of pacifying the traditional Arab elite whom it used as a tool in controlling the Arab masses, and who, in turn, were under increasing pressure from those masses to put an end to Zionist encroachments. Thus, Britain resorted to its traditional strategy of divide and rule.
In the late 1930’s, the Palestinian people revolted against the growing Zionist pressure, but their uprising was finally put down with British arms.
With the coming of the Second World War and the weakening of Britain’s hold on its empire in the face of the Nazi onslaught far, the Zionists felt that their hour had come, that they were strong enough to create their own state without British protection. And so, while millions of Jews were bein exterminated in Nazi concentration camps, the Zionists would not lift a finger to participate in the anti-fascist struggle but instead prepared their military forces for the postwar takeover of Palestine.
1945.
Things were really looking up for America. The war years had been boom times for the US economy, pulling it out of a decade-long depression. Europe lay in ruins, which meant not only that America’s competitors were temporarily out of business, but that the job of rebuilding Europe would keep a lot of American cash registers ringing.
It seemed that the world was America’s oyster. And Henry Luce, publisher of LIFE Magazine, proclaimed the next hundred years the American Century.
There were some problems, to be sure, but they seemed manageable enough. For one thing the “natives were growing restless.” Colonial peoples all over the world were demanding freedom. But just as Woodrow Wilson’s call for the self-determination of peoples during the First World War had not meant to cover the peoples of the Third World under European domination, so the US, French, and British, despite their rhetoric about World War II being a war for freedom, were not embarrassed about attempting to reimpose colonial chains once the war was over. Tus, as only one example, British warships carrying French troops raced to Vietnam to put down the Vietnamese resistance fighters and actually insisted that the surrendering Japanese troops not lay down their weapons until the French had reestablished control.
And so, while the peoples of Asia and Africa were in motion, the French and British imperialists, backed as they were with American military and economic power, saw no reason to fear any real change in the status quo.
Another problem in the immediate postwar years was the tremendous growth of Communist Parties in Western Europe, who were making a serious challenge for governmental power. The Marshall plan, pumping in huge amounts of American aid to Western Europe, killed two birds with one stone. A condition of that aid was that the Communists be curbed, which they were. And another condition was that the US would have the say on how that money could be spent, which meant, among other things, that the money flowed back to US manufacturers and banking interests.
The third problem was the challenge of the Soviet Union having emerged victorious from the war. But our experts predicted that it would take generations for them to recover from the Nazi devastation. Moreover, the US had an ace in the hole: a monopoly on the atomic bomb.
Where the Marshall Plan alone could not adequately take care of the Communist Problem, other methods were employed. The British sent in paratroopers to Greece to assist the Right wing in the Greek civil war, but the British discovered they were too war-weakened to continue their guardianship of the Mediterranean. Thus was born the Truman Doctrine.
Said the Joint Chiefs of Staff in framing the basis for Truman’s policy:
…the proximity of important Soviet industries makes the importance of holding the Eastern Mediterranean-Middle Eastern area obvious. This is one of the few areas for counteroffensive action. Quite aside from military counteroffensive action in the area, the oil resources of Iran and the Near an Middle East are very important…
Oil! On which our automobiles, industry, and foreign policy runs.
To many Americans, our problem in the Middle East is that a bunch of Arab sheiks are holding a dagger at our throat, threatening to cut off the supply of the precious lifeblood of our economy and extorting billions from us in fantastically high prices. To these Americans, OPEC is the Mideast villain.
But let us take a little closer look at this. We may be surprised to find out who the real oil kings are, and where the real oil cartel is located.
By the turn of the century, John D. Rockefeller had managed, by means having little to do with the Protestant work ethic, to knock together a huge oil monopoly called the Standard Oil Company. And in spite of all the muckraking, the thousands of pages of exposes about Rockefeller’s piratical methods, this figure has found his way into the history books as a benefactor of mankind. Such is the laundering power of oil money!
Rockefeller had knocked out his small and hot so small-fry competition. But in the 1920’s, fantastic oil discoveries were made in Texas and elsewhere. Once more his job was to put a lid on production, to prevent a glut, to keep prices up, and once more Standard rose to the occasion. The small producers were forced in line, and the stage was set for a deal with that other world giant, British Petroleum. For while Standard controlled the Western Hemisphere, British Petroleum and Standard were locked in a titanic struggle for the European market.
Agreement was reached, and the first world oil cartel was formed, which included a few other American companies that had in the meantime managed to escape Standard’s control and had become giants in their own right in supplying the needs of the new domestic American oil industry and other new industries. Through the 1920’s and 1930’s oil was discovered all over the Gulf region. Not only was the Arab world a bonanza to the oil companies in terms of the sheer volume of the reserves discovered: it was unbelievably cheap to produce! And all of this came to be placed under the control of seven companies, five being American, known as the Seven Sisters.
These companies decided among themselves how much everyone in the world would pay for oil, how much they would agree to pay in royalties to the local Arab rulers, which company would sell to what markets, what per cent of the market would go to each company, etc. And despite all the American anti-trust laws, as far as the U.S. Government was concerned, this cartel was quite legal.
Who cared that the oil giants were making fortunes at the expense of the consumers and at the expense of the peoples of the Mideast whose immense natural wealth was being plundered by a handful of foreign companies, payment for which was used solely for the extravagance of local Arab despots whose political power was protected by the governments of the oil companies.
At this point it might be well to indicate just what the stakes are of the oil companies, just what have been the dimensions of their profits.
The first thing to note is that the rate of profit in the oil industry is far greater than almost every other industry. In 1981, United States oil corporations received one-third of the total profits of all American companies – as it had for the decade before that.
While our government and the media have constantly trumpeted about the vast wealth pouring into the Arab governments from oil revenues, they are somewhat more bashful about enlightening the American people concerning the fabulous profits that not only have not be reduced since OPEC began raising oil prices, but which have been steadily rising. We use the table below to illustrate this:
| 1948/57 | 1958/67 | 1968/72 | |
| Saudi Govt. income | $1.3 billion | $5.0 billion | $8.0 billion |
| US oil companies’ income in Saudi Arabia | $3.0 billion | $4.75 billion | $5.5 billion |
Note that the $4.75 billion income earned in a ten-year period by American oil companies was surpassed in just the next five years, more than doubling their average annual income.
Perhaps this will put matters in proper perspective: in the fifteen-year period shortly after World War II, the US oil interests took more wealth out of the Middle East than the British took out of their entire empire in the whole of the 19th century!
Of course, oil taken from domestic wells is another source of tremendous wealth. That such colossal economic power has commanded equal political power will come, of course, as no surprise.
Thus, Theodore Roosevelt had called the oil interests “The Invisible Government,” as Woodrow Wilson called it “The Invisible Empire.” In 1947, it was no less than the Chairman of the Democratic Committee in Texas who said, “The oil industry today is in complete control of state politics and state government,” while in 1955 Governor Price Daniel of Texas, in running for the Senate, stated that he did not see how anyone could get elected in Texas without the backing of oil money.
During the 1950’s and 1960’s, both the US Senate and the House of Representatives were headed by Texas representatives of the oil interests – Lyndon Jonson and Sam Rayburn, wielding enormous power over every committee in Congress. For a long time key members of the Senate finance committee were Robert Kerr of Oklahoma and Russell Long of Louisiana, both owning large fortunes in oil.
To the enormous economic power provided to the Rockefellers by their oil company ownership (especially Exxon and Mobil) is joined their control of the Chase Manhattan Bank. and it was not some Communist or wild-eyed radical but none other than Robert Taft, “Mr. Republican,” who publicly stated that for three decades the Chase Manhattan Bank had named every Republican Presidential nominee.
It has long been known that the oil companies have, f all the economic interests, had the most important voice in foreign policy. Just to give a flavor of the connections between the oil interests and State Department, here are just a few facts:
- Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, became chief counsel to the American Petroleum Institute.
- Secretary of State Dean Acheson had been a partner in the law firm whose founder had represented oil companies in securing the Congressional tax giveaway known as the depletion allowance.
- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a former partner in the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, which was retained to defend the oil cartel against anti-trust prosecution.
- George Ball, Under-Secretary of State became a Director of Standard Oil of California, as did John McCone, who served as head of the CIA.
- Another CIA Director Allen Dulles, brother of John, had personally worked on a claim for an oil company which had been nationalized by Mexico.
- When Allen went into government, the case was handed over to Edward G. Miller Jr., who later was designated Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.
It would seem only proper that the Rockefeller family, with the largest foreign investment stake in oil, banking, and industry of all the major economic powers, should play the major role in naming the United States’ top foreign policy officers. And only woolly-heads, Communists, and other subversives would insist that our Government officials should represent the American people rather than a small clique of plutocrats.
We shall not stop here to discuss the long history of the Government’s wincing at, when not actually fostering, the oil cartel, despite the antirust laws which make such a cartel a criminal conspiracy. Nor shall we take time to review the long history of political bribery conducted on a mammoth scale by the oil companies, which even government bodies have documented – from Standard Oil’s outright purchase of State Legislatures in the 1900’s right up to the huge Nixon oil slush funds of our day.
The fact is the American people have been fleeced by the oil cartel and the politicians have been well taken care of to do the oil companies’ bidding. How amny billions of dollars have been siphoned out of the pockets of the American gasoline consumers into the pockets of the oil companies through their monopolistic pricing? It does not matter whether gasoline has been cheap or expensive, the oil companies have always made their superprofits in the absence of any real competition. Not only as consumers of oil products, but as taxpayers have the American people been fleeced. Through such gimmicks as the oil depletion allowance and the treatment of oil royalties to foreign governments as foreign taxes, the oil companies have managed to avoid paying practically any tax at all on their gigantic earnings.
Specifically, most oil companies pay a grand total of about 3 per cent in taxes. Exxon, which pays the highest rate, contributes no more than 6 or 7 percent. The result is that the tax burden is placed completely onto the shoulders of the working people.
But not only do the oil companies evade paying taxes. It is the oil companies who are among the prime beneficiaries of the federal budge, a huge portion of which goes to paying for the gigantic military apparatus which is used to secure American oil investments abroad.
In how many ways do the oil companies act against the interests of the American people! Everyone recognizes that our mass transit systems are woefully inadequate and have been deteriorating steadily for quite a period of time, where they even still exist. But how many Americans are aware of the fact that the oil, automobile and tire companies conspired together to destroy many mass transit systems after World War II so as to promote the greater use of the automobile and bus. Joining together, these interests bought and then junked trains and trolley systems in 45 cities, at great economic loss to those communities, hardship to millions who could not afford automobiles, and with the baleful effects on health caused by automobile pollution.
The oil companies have always draped themselves in the American flag, and those who speak out against our foreign adventures on their—behalf are decried as unpatriotic. But let us recall that during World War II, when we were in a life-and-death struggle with world fascism, the oil companies took advantage of their monopoly control over oil resources to price-gouge the Government, extorting huge profits from overcharges. At the same time, through the influence of the oil companies, the U.S. Government refused to purchase much cheaper Mexican oil, because Mexico had nationalized her oil a few years before, at the expense of American oil companies.
That the United States and Fascist Japan were headed on a collision course, that war between them was virtually inevitable, the whole world knew. Yet, in spite of this and in spite of the fact that Japan was engaged in wars of aggression against many states of Asia, US companies kept up a steady supply of oil, without which Japan’s war machine would have ground to a halt. And it can be said that it was American oil companies that ultimately helped send American boys to their death at Pearl Harbor and afterwards.
Let us return now to the Middle East.
We have seen how in the late 1920s the British and American oil interests worked out a division of the world. During the 1930s, through British misjudgment, U.S. oil companies were able to take control of what were to prove to be the largest oil reserves in the Middle East — in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.. At this point the region was divided up among the “Seven Sisters,” five American oil companies.
By the end of the Second World War, the US oil companies controlled almost half of the Middle East oil resources. The region was in ferment. The success of German arms against the British and French had cracked the aura of invincibility around the colonial powers. The war, waged in the name of Democracy against Fascism, encouraged the democratic aspirations of the colonial people. A great nationalist upsurge was developing among all the third world peoples.
U.S. foreign policy was now confronted with several tasks: On the one hand, its now vastly superior economic, military and political power vis-a-vis the weakened British encouraged it to seek to muscle Britain out of the way so that the U.S. might exercise complete control over the Mideast.
On the other hand, the U.S. needed British assistance in dealing with the rising nationalist currents, needed a United Front with all the Western powers against the colonial peoples. Moreover, in its confrontation with the Soviet Union and a rising socialist tide, the Middle East represented an area of particular strategic significance to the United States.
While British paratroopers managed to keep a Right-wing government in power in Greece, the effort was exhausting and British imperialism turned the baton of Mediterranean control over to the United States. The Truman Doctrine declared the Mediterranean an American lake, and the Sixth Fleet was installed to police the region.
The manner in which the United sates dealt with all its strategic and economic objectives can be seen in classic form in Iran. Here was one of the few areas from which Britain had succeeded in excluding US oil companies. And here was one of the richest areas of the Middle East in terms of known oil reserves. A wave of Arab nationalism had finally brought Mossadegh to power, whose program was utilization of Iranian oil resources for the benefit of Iran. (Naturally, the western media portrayed him as a madman.) When the Shah attempted to dismiss Mossadegh as the Prime Minister, the Iranian people rose up, and it was the Shah who was “dismissed”, fleeing abroad.
The nationalization of Iranian oil brought about a boycott of that oil by the Western powers, including the United States. Thus, Iran’s economy, completely dependent on oil for revenue, was being strangled. Then the US began flirting with Mossadegh. The British, now realizing it was better to have a piece of the pie rather than no pie at all, signaled it was prepared to deal the United States in. With that, the rug was promptly pulled out from Mossadegh. The CIA, through Kermit Roosevelt, a representative if US oil interests, arranged a coup, and the Shah returned in triumph. In 1953 the nationalization was abrogated, and when the smoke had cleared, US companies ow owned the majority of Iranian oil, while the British was the junior partner.
Under the Shah, all democratic liberties were suppressed and the national aspirations of the people were ruthlessly dealt with. Iran was inundated with American “advisers” who resumed the work they had been busily at after the war of building up the Iranian military and security apparatus. Of course, with the fall of Mossadegh, that loathsome “neutralism” which was so repugnant to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and which he branded as immoral (and which represented, of course, nothing but an attempt of nations to pursue a truly independent foreign policy course) was discarded, with Iran taking its place in the anti-Soviet scheme of military alliances.
But the billions of dollars of military equipment that were poured into Iran had still another purpose: Iran, with Washington’s approval, had appointed itself the policeman of the Gulf, that is, protector of Western interests against the Arab nationalist movement, similar to Israel’s role at the other end of the Arab world. Iran’s strategic and economic importance to the West, and particularly the United States, was thus incalculable.
The Revolution of 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah has been a severe blow to Washington, which now pins its hopes on Saudi Arabia, another regime with one foot in the Middle Ages that fears the Arab national movement whose modern asperations would sweep away the Saudi throne. The Carter Doctrine now places a protectorate over the Gulf states, and Washington has served notice that if the people attempt to overthrow the “Shah” of Saudi Arabia or any of the other little Shahs in the Gulf states, there will be the Rapid Deployment Force to deal with, with its hundreds of thousands of troops, its fleet, and its nuclear weapons.
But let us return to the immediate postwar years. The Mideast, as was indicated earlier, was seen as an important strategic staging area against the Soviet Union. Soon after the Second World War the United States attempted to knock together an anti-Soviet alliance of Arab and Islamic states. Together with Britain, this alliance came to be known as the Baghdad Pact, involving Britain, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the United States. But except for Iraq, still controlled at the time by Britain, no Arab state wanted any part of it.
In 1952 the Egyptian revolution exploded the plans of the Western powers. Nasser emerged as a hero not only to the Egyptian people but to all nationalist-minded Arabs because of his programs of modernization and economic and political independence. As one of the founders of the Nonalignment Movement, Nasser became a prime target of the Washington Cold Warriors, as well as to the Western economic interests (primarily oil) to whom Arab nationalism had sinister implications, namely, nationalization of oil.
Washington’s strategy alternated between a policy of trying to woo Egypt into the Western camp and conspiring to destroy Nasser’s power — both through external and internal means.
In 1955, the United States agreed to grant Egypt a loan to finance the Aswan Dam, considered by Egypt to be its important economic project and a key to industrialization and economic self-sufficiency. The U.S. reneged on the deal as Egyptian-Israeli confrontation became critical following an Israeli military attack in Gaza. While pressure was mounting on Egypt from Israel, the Western countries were sending military equipment to Israel while refusing Egypt military assistance, thus forcing Egypt to go to the Soviet Union for arms.
Western attempts to bring Egypt to its knees prompted the Egyptian response of nationalization of the Suez Canal, controlled by English and French stockholders. In its wake, the English, French, and Israelis launched their tripartite aggression. For a time, the world teetered on the brink of world war as the United States supported the invaders while the Soviet Union warned of dire consequences of continued invasion.
The United states backed away from support for their allies, the invaders ultimately had to withdraw, and Egyptian prestige soared to new heights. The Soviet Union agreed to furnish the resources for the Aswan Dam, and the last vestige of Anglo-French prestige in the Mideast was destroyed. By not overtly supporting France and England, the United States hoped to pick up some political dividends, but their hopes were not realized.
The Suez fiasco led to the Untied States enunciating to the world a new policy for the Arab world, taking into account the elimination of French and British influence in the area. Having proclaimed that a “vacuum” now existed, the United States offered its protective military (including nuclear) umbrella to anyone in the region threatened by aggression from any nation “controlled by international communism.” Thus, it was not only nor even principally a threat from the Soviet Union that was the subject of concern of this Doctrine, but rather the nationalist governments of Egypt and Syria, who were accused of becoming agents of Moscow in the Middle East.
Four months after the proclamation of the Eisenhower Doctrine, King Hussein of Jordan, faced with a powerful and rising nationalist movement, dismissed his nationalist-minded Prime Minister, dissolved parliament and established martial law. Immediately, the United States sent sizable quantities of arms to Hussein as well as economic aid, while the Sixth Fleet conducted demonstrative naval maneuvers Elsewhere in the Mideast, Syria was being threatened by the United States through its proxy, Turkey. And the Right-wing Lebanese government of Camille Chamoun was being beefed up with large amounts of US aid, leading to a civil war between Chamoun’s forces and Lebanese nationalists.
With the fall of the British puppet King in Iraq, the first successful nationalist uprising in an oil-producing country, U.S. and British leaders decided the time had come for direct intervention. While British paratroopers landed in Jordan, 17,000 U.S. Marines (two and a half times the size of the Lebanese Army) invaded Lebanon, with the dual aim of restoring the Iraqi status quo and defeating the Lebanese nationalists. However, after three months, the U.S. and British were forced to withdraw without achieving its political objectives, and bringing down on them unanimous Arab denunciation.
The Eisenhower Doctrine was quietly buried.
Having failed to swing the Arab world into line with the Baghdad Pact and the Eisenhower Doctrine, the United States, which had previously kept a low profile in its support of Israel, now decided that tire Zionist expansionism was the most reliable horse to harness to U.S. Mideast aims. The extraordinary buildup of the Israeli military machine was now the order of the day, although for tactical reasons, the U.S. still preferred to have aid funneled indirectly (at this point through West Germany) so as to be able to pose as an even-handed seeker of a fair resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Arab world.
Beginning with its first direct arms shipment to Israel in 1962, the U.S. Government accelerated its military and economic support, the fruits of which was the 1967 Israeli war of aggression against its Arab neighbors.
It would be useful to pause here and very briefly touch on a few of the most salient facts of Israeli history and the Zionist movement. For support of Israel, which has been the centerpiece of U.S. strategy in the Mideast, has already cost the American people over $25 billion and has created a powder keg which could erupt in the Armageddon of a nuclear world war. On the question of support of Israel, American politicians display virtual unanimity. As a matter of fact, it is difficult to think of another foreign policy issue which commands within the American Establishment such an identity of views. All shades of opinion, from liberal to arch-conservative, within the political establishment, the media, and until recently within the entire spectrum of American churches, have rallied to support what has been portrayed as the Israeli David against the Arab Goliath. Invoking the memory of the Holocaust, exploiting at one and the same time democratic sentiment against anti-Semitism and chauvinist feelings which identify with the white European and North-American Jews against “primitive” Arabs, playing on the constantly soaked Cold War hysteria and presenting Israel as a bastion of the Western World against Soviet penetration of the Mideast, the American people have been swept along until quite recently in uncritical approval of a policy which is fundamentally racist, undemocratic, aggressive, and serving the interests of the Pentagon and the transnational corporations, particularly the oil companies and banking institutions.
The most important single fact in considering the history of Palestine (from which the state of Israel was carved), is that Jews have constituted, until quite recently, a negligible presence. For example, as late as 1914, Jews residing in Palestine comprised only about 3 percent of the population, congregating in a few cities and, incidentally, living in peace with their Palestinian neighbors.
With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Zionist program for the Palestinian people was unfolded before the eyes of the world: Making Palestinian refugee camps, schools, and hospitals its prime targets for destruction, the Israelis now loudly proclaimed what before they had only whispered among themselves: the Palestinians had to be liquidated.
How has it been possible for this small, Zionist state, congenitally bankrupt, to conquer forces numerically so much stronger? Just as Zionism could not have initially penetrated the Mideast without British bayonets, so too could Israel have not survived without the lavish economic, military, and political backing of the United States.
