American diplomacy: A fraud and farce

The Collins Dictionary defines diplomacy as:

1. The conduct of the relations of one state with another by peaceful means,

2. Skill in the management of international relations,

3. Tact, skill or cunning in dealing with people.

Cunning: crafty and shrewd especially in deception, sly.

With the ongoing (there's still more to come I am sure) Wikileaks, the third definition would seem most appropriate to describe American diplomacy or should I say duplicity.

Duplicity: deception, double dealing.

America tells her friends and allies something to their face and something else behind their backs.

250,000 mostly classified US embassies' cables across the globe have been breached and disseminated.

Now being caught out, they bay for the blood of Julian Assange - calling him a criminal and worse. In fact a former advisor to the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper even suggested that Assange should be assassinated.

Isn't that the prerogative of the CIA? Hilary Clinton promised "aggressive steps" would be taken against those who breach America's data security. Ah, so the Americans are not going to franchise out their extermination programme after all.

250,000 cables is a feast. For now a sample hors d'oeuvres should suffice:

Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, was 'driven by paranoia" according to one cable. If that is so what do you think Barack Obama is driven by when he ordered his spooks to keep an eye on the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and key UN staffers?

Prince Andrew was 'cocky'. (His impending marriage will soon put an end to that).

Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi as 'feckless, vain, ineffective'

German chancellor Angela Merkel is 'risk averse and rarely creative'.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is a 'flabby old man'.

Then there's Libyan leader Gadaffi and his voluptuous blonde. All blondes seem to be well endowed, I don't know why.

Titillating tittle-tattle is all very well but the leaks also hold serious revelations.

For instance:

The UK allowed the US to store cluster bombs in its territory despite an international ban on the weapons. Britain was signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) in December 2008. The treaty bans the use of cluster bombs and prohibits signatories from assisting other countries to use, stockpile or transfer them.

So it's not enough that Britain turf out the inhabitants of Diego Garcia so that her master can build an airbase there, she's also letting him store illegal stuff. The American poodle aims to please.

What is of greater concern is the situation in the Middle East vis-à-vis the Palestinians and Iranians.

One cable described Israeli premier Netanyahu explaining to a Congressional delegation on the 28th April 2009 that 'a Palestinian State must demilitarised, without control of its airspace and electro-magnetic (sic) and without the power to enter into treaties or control its border.'

The delegation tacitly agreed, if their silence can be taken as a 'yes'.

So we now know that Israel has been negotiating with the Palestinians in bad faith. And the U.S. abetted it. They have been leading the poor Palestinians on all the time. What duplicity.

There will be no Palestinian State as far as Israel is concerned. How can there be? How can you have a sovereign state when you cannot control your borders or make treaties with other countries or have to ask Israel permission to use your airspace? It would be laughable if it weren't so serious.

Obama's Middle East peace initiative is both farce and fraud.

And what are the other Arab countries doing about it? Well, Egypt has been bought by the US to the tune of a couple of billion a year. Funnily enough a cable from Cairo described Netanyahu as 'elegant and charming, but never keeps his promises.'

It doesn't matter to Mubarak that Netanyahu is untrustworthy because that's not his lookout; he has his hush money.

The Gulf States are no better. They are so worried about Iran that they would like Israel to bomb their fellow Islamic nation.

Abdullah of Saudi Arabia insists 'America must cut off the head of this snake (Iran)'.

King Hamad of Bahrain thinks the danger of letting Iran continue with its nuclear programme was 'greater than the danger of stopping it.'

Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi confided to US Ambassador Richard Olsen his worry about Iran, to which the Ambassador observed that he has 'a strategic view of the region that is curiously close to the Israeli one.'

These Middle Eastern potentates must pray five times a day that Allah will get the Americans and Israelis to bomb Tehran.

Meanwhile they have totally forgotten about their long-suffering Muslim brethren in the West Bank and Gaza.

In my view a strong and (if need be) a nuclear-armed Iran is a better guarantee of peace than what the US can offer. What kind of peace is it when the Palestinians are facing a slow death by sanctions and the creeping land grab by Israel - all abetted by the US?

And why do you think the Iranians are arming themselves with nuclear weapons (if they are indeed doing that)? If your enemy has hundreds of nuclear warheads don't you think you are entitled to at least one?

It's too dangerous having one unchallenged superpower in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter.

Remember the days when the US ran riot - assassinating legitimately elected heads just because they were a little pink? Times when they were propping up corrupt dictators, and invading nations at their whim?

The US realises that it is no longer the sole superpower and it cannot make mischief on a grand scale any more. It can only 'take aggressive steps' to eliminate a poor 39-year-old Queenslander who dare leak its secrets and expose its diplomacy. Or should I say duplicity? Well, it's the same thing isn't it? malaysiakini.com