US military aid to favoured Middle East nations

...this'll be a package that ultimately will be in the billions of dollars, but there are two other factors involved here. One is, while we got a preliminary idea and a preliminary list of equipment and supplies and other kinds of systems that the countries would want to buy, part of it is determining the quantities involved. Part of it also, as Nick said, is that once we actually begin these formal consultations, there may be other -- they may decide -- some of the countries involved may decide that their needs actually are in a somewhat different direction. So it's pretty hard to really even offer you an estimate of that.

US Department of State press secretary Tom Casey, 30 July 2007, commenting, unwittingly, on the banality of weapons of mass destruction.

The relative lack of critical analysis of the United States’ military aid package to favoured Middle East nations reveals a great deal about contemporary measures of peace and security. How exactly does a $20 billion military aid package foment peace in the Middle East? This is Orwellian stuff. The US offers yet another golden handshake to regimes, Jewish and Arab alike, with questionable human rights records and we are meant to understand that this is in the interests of peace. But how will sophisticated jets stop suicide attacks? How will tanks encourage democracy along pluralist lines? And should we not be surprised if Iran and Syria, key targets of the military build up, themselves decide to increase their military output however pathetic this output may be in comparison to the greatest military power in the history of human civilisation?

What is clear is that the military aid continues the long tradition of United States funded militarism in the Middle East, a militarism expressly forbidden under international law, including under several United Nations Security Council resolutions which have called for the demilitarization of the Middle East. It is high time we were honest; the United States is not interested in peace in the Middle East. For not only does the threat posed by the United States come from its own armies of which there is already a great deal in the region. It also comes from the favourable regimes which seek not to develop peace and security but to suppress internal dissent.