Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

The Republicans are coming | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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The US Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s visit to Israel deserves to be contemplated and its details analyzed.

The visit comes at a time when the Arab region and the Middle East are completely preoccupied with the issue of Syria and its development, as well as with the consequences of the Arab Spring earthquake that turned the region upside-down.

Romney is making the visit in order to present his credentials to Israel as a peerless friend, as well as a supporter of the concept of the Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital, and as a supporter of the unlimited growth of Israeli military power and activity in the region.

Romney is visiting Israel as an old personal friend of “Bibi” Netanyahu – the two met nearly 20 years ago – and as a timeless supporter of the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby group, deemed highly influential in the US presidential election battle.

At the same time Barack Obama, having sensed such movements, has issued a decision preempting Romney’s travel to Tel Aviv. He has ordered to pay the Jewish state US$ 60 million in aid, and displayed his full understanding for the state of emergency recently announced by the Israeli army, in light of the situation in the region.

The Americans sense that the situation in the region is highly volatile, yet any meaningful decisions in this regard are being postponed until the presidential election is decided next November. As a result, the Syrian massacres will have to continue until November, and similarly Israel’s plans to strike Iranian nuclear facilities must be put on hold until then. Furthermore, the regimes of the Arab Spring states must maintain their current internal balances until the master of the White House is decided.

At the same time, Mitt Romney’s team is putting forth a set of extremely radical ideas and plans that could only be rivaled by the policies of George W. Bush administration. Romney supports Israeli plans against Iranian military powers, backs the idea of US military intervention in Syria, and is reconsidering the US stance towards the regimes of some Arab Spring states.

With Mitt Romney and his team, we are face to face with the hardline American right wing, strongly allied with the powerful finance and military-industrial community in the US.

Historically speaking, such powers have proven that whenever they rise to power, they transform all theatres of world events into inextinguishable blazing fires.

Suffice to say, the George W. Bush project in Iraq cost the US treasury nearly US$ 2 trillion, not to mention the thousands of Americans who were killed and injured. Iraq was ultimately handed over to a sectarian Shiite leadership, and Iraqi national security has strongly fallen under Iranian influence.

Romney’s success will be a disaster, but likewise Obama’s stay in power will be another disaster altogether!