The piecemeal nature of the information that reaches the American public – as well as its leaders – prevents us from seeing discrete events within a larger framework, the ‘big picture’ that I have been writing about for years, and which is now the title of Thom Hartmann’s show on Russia’s English language TV channel.

What’s the big picture in the Middle East?  1) Our client governments are trying to keep their people down, using increasingly brutal methods, which we are forced to condemn, but which differ only by degrees from our own. 2) The United States helps them hang on to power until the last minute, then backs the rebels we think will keep their country in our camp.  Not only because we need their oil, but because a radical shift toward independent power in that region puts Israel in real danger (as opposed to the boogeyman dangers it has been crying wolf about for decades: first Iraq, now Iran).

It is no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood is defying the military rulers of Egypt after first supporting them following Mubarak’s ouster: the Brotherhood’s new generation of leaders are more interested in seeing their country break free of America’s virtual occupation – and its concomitant support of Israel – than in checking on headscarves.

As for Russia and China’s dogged support of  Syria, it’s not only about a Mediterranean port for the former, and business for the latter: it’s about the Big Two’s support for Iran, that has long backed Syria as the ‘front line state’ in the stand-off with Israel. But more broadly, it’s about never allowing to be done to other rulers what you do not want done to you: that is, interference in the ‘internal affairs’ of a country, which usually ends in the deposition of the rulers.

The double veto of the Arab League’s initiative at the U.N. to condemn President Assad was followed tonight in the United States by the first mention of the inevitability of military intervention: it will be undertaken as much in the hope of installing a govenment friendly to Israel as to ‘save’ the Syrian people.  But that is not likely to succeed.

No more than the Egyptians, are Syrians, once free, likely to befriend Israel. Yet Israel focuses obsessively on Iran’s putative nuclear program. Its leaders apparently believe the United States will be able to exact tacit support from new Arab leaders for its protection of Israel, whereas we cannot prevent Iran from lobbing a missile at it.

But Israel is in a state of denial: the flames predicted for years by Arab leaders as it became ever more intransigent toward the Palestinians, are erupting with greater ferocity than anyone imagined, because they are part of a bigger picture: worldwide revolt against America’s military and cultural domination, in which Israel has become a junior partner.

Fixated on the supposed deleterious influence of Islam, we have failed to recognize that the Muslim world’s people and their new leaders possess far greater ideological literacy than our politicians. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists on speaking to them as an unelected leader, it is clear that the United States cannot see the forest fire for the trees.

Were Israel to grant independence to the Palestinians tomorrow, the fire would not be contained.

On the first anniversary of Egypt’s Revolution that dethroned a thirty-year dictator, activists lament the continuing power of his army, while Americans worry about the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood. Little by little it’s becoming clear that fundamentalism and military control are not limited to Third World countries trying to achieve ‘democracy’.  The most powerful democracy in the world increasingly uses drones to spy on its citizens and assassinate enemies – or unlucky by-standers – around the world.

As usual, I’ve raised two issues here, but they are related: one is the increasing clout of fundamentalists in all religions, the other is rulers’ increasing recourse to military means to control populations.

Fundamentalists are not generally perceived as threats by governments. They tend to approve of the use of force to force conversions, but more ‘fundamentally’ , obedience to any higher power, be it God or a President, implies a willingness to accept that power’s use of force.  As I have written in ‘A Taoist Politics’, both the Judeo-Christian ethic and Islamic morality are based on God’s perceived power over life and death.

Thus it is not surprising that American military bases and academies have increasingly made room for religious services, fostering a simultaneous commitment to God and the use of force.

Nor is it surprising that our twenty-first century enemies go by names such as Al Shabaab (Movement of Striving  Youth) in Somalia, or Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law) in Yemen.  Have we not fundamentalist militia groups preparing to take on the American government, which they see as opposed to their moral convictions?

Not to mention well-funded movements of American evangelical Christians who oppose “both modernism in theology and the cultural changes that modernism endorses”? <en.wikipedia.org/wiki Christian_ fundamentalism# Militancy_ and_ evangelicals>.

The fact that Tea Partiers and associated groups tend to believe in competition rather than cooperation is really a detail compared to the fact that they, like Islamic fundamentalists, believe women should be subservient to men, and that real men carry guns.