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Washington's
Pathetic Arabist Hustlers
The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations
A Rogue's Gallery of Operatives and Arms/Oil Merchants:
John Duke Anthony, Les Janka, Peter Gubser, et. al.
Aramco, Boeing, Ratheon, Lockheed-Martin, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Exxon-Mobil, ChevronTexaco
MER - Mid-East Realities - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 16 Sept:
Quite literally as Iraq was exploding this week worse than ever Washington's pathetic little establishment 'Arabist' crowd was busy festing on grape leaves and
wine
listening to
the CIA-Baghdad regime's female 'Ambassador', Rend Rahim Francke, explain how things were
really getting better in Iraq with both "land prices and salaries way
up". It was in reality a despicable little gala mini-event sponsored by the super-rich oil companies, the arms merchants, the Arab oil 'client regimes', and hosted by their long-time little group of incestuous on-the-take operatives who prance around Washington claiming to be doing this and that while in the end only continually gorging themselves and cronies.
At the top of the crafty but slimy operatives list -- John Duke Anthony, Peter Gubser, Les Janka, and a host of mediocre on-the-take speaker/participants who continually repeat themselves to each other while few others even care to listen.
At the top of the arms merchants and oil companies list -- Saudi Arabia and Aramco, Kuwait and Exxon-Mobil, Ratheon, Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Shell, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips...you get the idea.
The occassion was the amazingly dull and lack-luster annual meeting of what is called The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, a deceptive and well yes slimy fund-raising operation headed up by this little inbred group always busy lining their own
pockets
and running off to the rich and the
royal in the region to claim they are doing something important in Washington to further 'U.S.-Arab Relations'. To put it simply and crudely -- what a bunch of bull they keep selling year after year to their counterparts in the Gulf oil states. The corporate types in the U.S. probably know the whole thing is more a con game than a serious undertaking; but they may well prefer that to anything serious, potent and/or controversial.
To call them the counter-neocons because they have all also been in Washington for decades now feeding their faces would be to give them far too much credit.
For the neocons -- whatever one thinks of their policies and allegiances -- have real organizations, important publications, powerful think-tanks, key positions, and tragically great influence. Whereas the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations types not only have none of the above but are lazy and impotent too boot, coasting along from one disaster to disaster yet always profusely complimenting each other, inviting each other to speak at their teenie events, and pretending on their trips to the rich Arabs abroad to be something other than a very small self-protecting group of political Washington whores.
Strong word, we know, but tragically well-earned. For Washington is full of beautiful woman on the make looking for benefactors and sugar daddies. And the same is true for this group of smiling Washington Christian white men, some with the gift of gab, most with little other than their sponsors favor.
The President of the National Council for instance, John Duke Anthony, is a failed academic long ago booted from a Washington University who turned to selling himself as an 'Arabist' knowing he could easily court the largely ignorant Arab regimes and the business-types they cavort with.
Indeed, for the past 20+ years, those who today run this little scam operation are primarily busy lining their own pockets year-after-year at the expense of the very peoples and issues they claim so disingenuously to care about.
As the meagerly attended one-day conference was concluding, a long-time American Ambassador was seen outside the hotel taking a little smoke-break stroll. Asked if it already was over he replied: "Clovis Maksoud is speaking now, and surely he has nothing new to say". That's former Arab League Ambassador Maksoud who himself is one of the worst of the group having badly sullied just about everything he has touched in Washington, from the Arab League itself to the fizzled bunch of Arab American and Palestinian organizations that collectively have even less following and influence in the American capital today then when they began.
'Nothing new to say' was indeed a fitting paradigm for the whole little inbred gathering put on by The National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel last Monday.
Even at such a critical time in the history of the Middle East and U.S. policies, even with the free food and drinks, even with the 'impressive' list of big-time corporate sponsors, most sessions had less than a hundred and fifty people in attendance, many far less. In a city full of journalists, embassies, students, lobbyists, and policy-makers it is truly amazing that after more than a decade of 'organizing' the credibility and worth of this bunch of p.r. hacks is so low that few want to be seen in their company and fewer still think they really have anything to say worth the bother. Add to the above that this little conference had the 'additional assistance' of the Pentagon as well as the Departments of State and Commerce.
The truly sad and tragic reality is that this little cabal has actually done more to harm and discredit 'U.S.-Arab Relations' then to further the important and worthwhile cause -- as evidenced by how few people even wanted to come and listen in a city now teeming with those interested in and concerned about the subject.
Of course those above named, along with their few friends who work for and with them in one way or another, vehemently deny these Washington realities, always desperate not to be exposed for what they really are and for how things really are. And of course instead of dealing with the hard and tough substance of things this is a group that specializes in vilifying any and all who dare connect the dots to raise these issues with all sorts of ill-motives this and that.
But the most tragic reality of all is that in the process of what they have done for themselves this pathetically incestuous Washington cabal of 'Arabists' has squandered crucial decades, all together more than a hundred million dollars, and even now with the Middle East on fire and Washington gripped by policy warfare very very few even want to bother to come and get their free lunch with them.
Mark Bruzonsky
