Official U.S. Policy in the Middle East

According to his recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lt. General William E. Odom, (Ret.) [Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute and Former Director of the National Security Agency], says promoting democracy was never U.S. policy in the Middle East. He says we were interested only in balance.

I'll inform America's schoolchildren of our honorable international intentions. Also, his remarks mirror previous statements by Secretary Rice.

"Since the 1950s, the US aim in this region has been “regional stability” above all others. The strategy for achieving this aim of every administration until the present one has been maintaining a regional balance of power among three regional forces – Arabs, Israelis, and Iranians. The Arab-Persian conflict is older than the Arab-Israeli conflict. The United States kept a diplomatic foothold in all three camps until the fall of the shah’s regime in Iran. Losing its footing in Tehran, it began under President Carter’s leadership to compensate by building what he called the Persian Gulf Security Framework. The US Central Command with enhanced military power was born as one of the main means for this purpose, but the long-term goal was a rapprochement. Until that time, the military costs for maintaining the regional power balance would be much higher.

The Reagan administration, although it condemned Carter’s Persian Gulf Security Framework, the so-called “Carter Doctrine,” continued Carter’s policies, even to the point of supporting Iraq when Iran was close to overrunning it. Some of its efforts to improve relations with Iran were feckless and counterproductive, but it maintained the proper strategic aim – regional stability.

The Bush administration has broken with this strategy by invading Iraq and also by threatening the existence of the regime in Iran. It presumed that establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq would lead to regional stability. In fact, the policy of spreading democracy by forces of arms has become the main source of regional instability. [Emphasis in original.]"

Source: Odom, W. E. (2007, January 18). Testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Retrieved January 18, 2007, from http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2007/OdomTestimony070118.pdf

Legacy of Reagan, Bush and Clinton

Here's a quote from a recent article, citation below:

"The U.S. government first began giving military aid to Turkey in 1946 to counter Soviet influence in the Middle East during the post-WWII era. But substantial support really began after a military coup in 1980 (an article in the Economist at the time said the armed forces “acted as they had to”) when the U.S. signed a military agreement with Turkey. The U.S. agreed to help modernize Turkish armed forces in exchange for the use of Turkey’s military bases, which bordered Iran and the USSR. After the coup, the situation of the Kurds worsened, as the military gained greater influence and a civil state of emergency was declared in the Southeast in 1987. The civil war between the Turkish armed forces and the PKK that began in 1984 and ended in 1999, left about 37,000 dead, 3,000 Kurdish villages destroyed, and possibly 2 million Kurds displaced. The United States funded 80 percent of Turkey’s arms during these years."

Source: Kuras, E. (2007, January). Kurds in Turkey: Still fighting for freedom. Z Magazine, 20(1). Retrieved January 10, 2007, from http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jan2007/kuras0107.html