The Ghouls In The Blob Fucked It Into The Sun Again

With hindsight, the Kushner-Netanyahu Middle East Peace Plan was perhaps not such a wise path to follow.

The past week saw the destruction of yet another dream palace: the Biden administration’s effort to reinforce a U.S.-dominated Middle East security architecture through closer defense pacts with the region’s various repressive governments. The point man for this has been the White House’s top Middle East policy hand, Brett McGurk, who has served in senior policy positions in every administration since George W. Bush’s, including as a legal advisor for the U.S occupation of Iraq.

The Biden doctrine presumed that the Palestinians could be shunted aside and offered some crumbs to keep them quiet.

Unlike Bush’s post-9/11 Middle East “freedom agenda,” which, despite its strategic flaws and disastrous and deadly consequences, at least had a genuine policy component of human rights and democracy promotion, President Joe Biden’s doctrine for the Middle East, as outlined by McGurk in a February speech, shows vanishingly little concern for how the people of the region are ruled. Its brief mention of a “values” component is so perfunctory as to be insulting.

In stark contrast to his campaign promises to prioritize human rights, as president, Biden has drawn the United States even closer to Middle East authoritarians. While at first holding the Trump administration-brokered Abraham Accords at arm’s length, the Biden administration soon embraced them in the misguided belief that stitching together arms deals with abusive governments and calling it “peace” was a good way to advance Americans’ security and prosperity.