Sometimes the corporate news media's understanding of the world makes me giggle.

Consider the question, "is Saudi Arabia actually our enemy?" This query is currently being raised because of some Saudi royal family money ending up in the bank accounts of a couple of the 9/11 Arab Kamikazes--the question was also raised by the corporate news media some months back when it was learned that the vast majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian in origin. "Are these longtime close allies of the United States actually secretly harboring a deep hatred and resentment of our freedom and prosperity?"

Whatever.

The reality is that the Saudi royal family has been a business partner with American oil interests. Period. Further, American oil interests (and other arms of American corporate power like, say, um, the United Fruit Company) are often seemingly able to call upon the vast Arsenal of Democracy and its spooky appendages to aid their economic ventures: the US government has quietly provided military support and training that has kept the decidedly non-democratic House of Saud in power for decades.

Here's a bit of the Saudi reality. There is very little, if any, freedom of speech--this results in all moderate dissent being crushed, leaving only radical, militant, Islamic dissenters to legally criticize the government. The Saudi government practices torture. Women have very few, if any, rights. There is no freedom of religion. The state religion, Islam, is of a decidedly fundamentalist (and therefore dangerous and irrational) variety. The Saudi family and their friends are very rich, raiding the country of its oil and selling it abroad (not to mention lavishly vacationing abroad); average, ordinary Saudi subjects (not citizens) do not really seem to benefit from their nation's vast wealth too terribly much at all.

And our government, business establishment, and military have helped make it all possible! So you tell me: are the Saudi people our enemies or are we (meaning the US government and American wealthy elite) their enemies?

The reality that the corporate news media consistently ignores is that our foreign policy NEVER EVER concerns itself with what is decent and right. (Okay, maybe the interventions in Somalia and Haiti could be described as "humanitarian" but there's still a lot of room for argument even in those cases.) More than half of American "friends" are and have been brutal, torturous thugs that help keep their countries safe and stable for American business and are well compensated for it: Suharto, Pinochet, Diem, the Shah, Noriega, Mubarek, Sharon, and dear, old Saddam Hussein (back in the day) to name just a small few…this is actually quite a long list.

Who are we as a people?

Surely we're not all cold-hearted businessmen ready to send out the Pinkertons to bust heads when our wage-slaves in the random third world nation du jour go on strike. I personally believe that the vast majority of Americans are decent, moral people (if not a bit culturally backward and red necked) that would weep for years if they knew what horrors and atrocities had been and are being committed in their name. But cold-hearted imperialist is the American face to most of the world. We, the people, may not be evil, but our government and wealthy elites are.

Profit at any moral cost: that is our foreign policy.

So I ask again, just who is the enemy here?