This great article by Mark Perry and Alastair Crooke tells you why “western” governments “don’t have a clue about what’s really going on in the” Middle East.
It’s because “Once again, we’re being ‘Chalabied’”. That is “western” governments don’t talk to important Middle East players “Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood.” Rather, “Western governments are dependent for information about the region on a set of clients who, as often as not, are mere reflections of what Westerners want the Middle East to be, rather than what it actually is:…. This clientism is not new; rather, it is a continuation of the misreading that led US and British officials to believe their soldiers would ride to Baghdad along flower-paved highways.”
What does it say about the USA foreign policy apparatus that the clients usually skillfully play USA policy makers?
The article is well worth a read.
