"What we're seeing here … are the birth pangs of a new Middle East." Dr. Condoleezza Rice the US Secretary of State has used this concise, meaning-pregnant statement to describe the situation as she has seen it in Lebanon: the fires and the destruction; the killing of civilians and the devastation of infrastructure, houses, roads, bridges, and of water and electricity stations; indeed of everything.
By this statement, concise and meaning-pregnant as it is, Ms. Rice has expressed her country's views and policies regarding not only Lebanon but the entire region as well. She did not say that what she sees is the birth pangs of new Lebanon but of a whole new Middle East region. There is a great difference.
This is not the first time the US proclaims a vision of a new Middle East; neither would it be the last. This clearly indicates the importance this region holds for the US; it occupies no small part of Washington's political conceptualization; indeed of its present and future arrangements.
Earlier, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a similar view of a greater Middle East extending from Pakistan in the east to Morocco in the west. Now it has become Condiz's vision of an extended Middle East.
Anyway, there is no difference in respect of what the US really wants; whether it is a new, a greater or an extended Middle East. All stand to mean the same under the dynamics of the present world and under the new uni-polar global order.
Mohammad Barakat
Al Akhbar
July 25, 2006
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