James Bradley, author of The China Mirage, says that “if you stood on the tallest building in Beijing and looked at the oceans and land surrounding you, you would find American destroyers, planes, and missiles encircling you from every direction.”
This image embodies the reality of US hegemony across the world, and the nature of the relationship between Washington and its adversaries on the planet. If we move from East Asia to West Asia, the scene is identical between the ocean and the gulf. US military bases are spread across more than 19 geographic locations between the Arabian Gulf and Eritrea. About nine of these bases are considered permanent bases, located in Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Zionist entity. Over the past decades, with each political juncture the region goes through, the United States doubles the number of its military bases and soldiers in the region.
Despite the enormous number of US soldiers occupying these countries through military bases (more than 35,000 soldiers) plus a huge stockpile of ammunition and military equipment, Washington’s military bases remain in the shadows of the political and intellectual debate that erupted after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. Why are US military bases absent from our discussions? And how do we understand the present and future role of these bases in the region?
An “ignored” enemy
Bradley considers that part of the success of US hegemony in the world is what could be described as a policy of “obfuscation” or creating a “mirage” in how it spreads its military bases around the world. Despite the bases being openly announced, which are presented in the context of “joint defense” agreements with countries and regimes (most of which possess no sovereignty except a flag and an anthem,) the United States deliberately obscures, through its media and political influence, the role of these bases and the strength of their impact on regional policies and conflicts among neighboring countries.
For example, there is a plethora of news and analysis about Japanese-Chinese disputes, but rarely any mention of the presence of 85 US military bases and more than 52,000 US soldiers in Japan with advanced weapons and intelligence technologies directed against China. The same policy is followed in our countries. Screens are flooded with talk about the “Iranian threat” and “Arab states’ concerns.” But the fact that most US military bases in the region were established before the Islamic Revolution in Iran is never mentioned, meaning that the role of these bases in besieging Iran is hidden.
The discussion has shifted away from the reality and role of these foreign bases on Arab land and instead considers them a given in the Arab political reality. This is the essence of the intellectual normalization of the direct US occupation of our countries. Even the word “occupation” is absent from any discussion surrounding these bases. This deliberate “obfuscation” aims to force us to submit to Washington’s supposed divinity. As if the superpower capable of dictating our reality, security, and policies as it pleases, and securing its “interests” (what are the interests of the colonizer?) is simply our inevitable fate. Through this policy, Washington succeeds in extending its hand of killing and extermination to serve its colonial agenda while avoiding backlash against its occupations and brutality.
The biggest example of the success of this policy is the difference between the Arab reaction to the United States’ occupation of Iraq in 2003, and the Arab reactions to the US operations in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya after 2005. In the first instance, the blatant scene of direct occupation was sufficient to provoke diverse populations into expressing their rejection and condemnation through both armed resistance and other means. The latter instances, no less deadly for the peoples of our region, barely receive any attention or scrutiny. US occupation has become accepted as part of the region’s daily life, as if we have all acquiesced to Washington’s self-proclaimed “right” to bomb whomever it pleases, without the slightest objection.
The tool of obfuscation
However, the role of US military bases goes beyond the military, security, and intelligence dimensions, although this role is the pillar of US hegemony. All forms of cultural, economic, and political hegemony are merely symptoms of military and security hegemony. A closer examination of Washington’s military bases in Arab countries reveals an additional role for these bases, which is the media role.
Today, the most widespread and influential Arab media institutions in traditional and digital media operate under the protection of US military bases. This presence is not a coincidence, but a clear, well-defined role that entails a lot of role distribution while maintaining the main goal, which is to obscure the enemy. For example, since the start of the Zionist extermination war on the Gaza Strip, there are daily shipments of weapons from Washington’s Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar to the occupation entity’s bases in occupied Palestine. Shipments carrying tools of extermination are accompanied by pressure and threats against anyone working to stop the extermination.
But the Arab viewer will not see even one news item (even in passing) about the role of the Al-Udeid base in the extermination of the Palestinian people (and before them the Syrian, Iraqi, Yemeni, Afghan, and Libyan peoples.) Why? Because the media empire dominating minds and screens operates under the protection of this base and will not deviate—even by mistake—from the path of media propaganda for which it was established under the shadows of this US base. From here, we can understand the ease of the “hostility” that Al Jazeera shows towards Israel, in exchange for completely and deliberately obfuscating the role of US military bases in the war of extermination against the Palestinians (whom Al Jazeera claims to support.)
This contradiction between focusing on “Israel” while obscuring the role of other US military bases in the region grows starker as the battle lines become clearer, especially after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. Today, as we approach a full year of ongoing massacre and persistent resistance despite starvation and siege, and while US and Western armies gather in our seas and on our land from all directions, it has become necessary to fully understand our enemy to make it truly meaningful. Hostility towards “Israel” alone was never sufficient to begin with. Today, limiting our focus to “Israel” alone amounts to participating in the crime of distorting awareness and enabling the continuation of extermination.
The magnitude of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation and the agony of the bloodshed in Gaza demands a correction of both our understanding and our political compass.
Know your enemy: all US military bases are your enemy.
(Al-Akhbar)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune