It is ironic, but understandable, that whatever names are given to US foreign policy objectives, the reality is either the exact opposite or vastly different from what is signified in the name. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" could more appropriately be called "Operation Iraqi Subjugation" or "Operation Iraqi Oil." The "Road Map to Peace" should be called the "Road Map to Palestinian Surrender" or the "Road Map to South African-style Bantustans," where the Israelis get the good land and the water and Palestinians get whatever is left over.

There have been so many so-called peace processes in the Middle East dealing with Israel and the Palestinians that Noam Chomsky states that whatever US foreign policy objectives are in the region automatically receive this designation. Looking back, for example, there were the Oslo peace agreements and Camp David and many before that.

I believe in the proposition that US goals concerning Israel and the Palestinian people have nothing to do with peace, but are instead concerned with a reduction of Arab nationalism and the threat Arab nationalism poses to US control of the oil reserves of Arab nations. Israel is one of the surrogate partners of the United States in repressing Arab aspirations for independence from puppet regimes and control of their own natural resources. Noam Chomsky calls Israel the local cop on the beat for the United States.

For example, in the 1967 war Israel destroyed the Arab nationalism being promulgated by Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt. Egypt had already forged an alliance with Syria, and Nasser was talking about cooperation between all Arab countries to eliminate the influence of the former colonial powers, Britain and France, and the United States. These ideas were intolerable to US imperialists, and Israel performed a valuable service to the United States by defeating Egypt and destroying Nasser's power.

There is no road map to peace between oppressor and oppressed. The solution is to create a world without empire and one with economic and political justice for everyone. Without justice, there can be no peace.

Imperialists don't conduct real peace negotiations. They want abdication and surrender. The United States signed many peace treaties with the Native Americans, all of which were subsequently broken. Instead of giving Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Joseph or any of the other Native American leaders a road map to peace with justice, the US government gave them a road map to the reservation. George W. Bush's road map to peace for the Palestinians is a similar sort of deal. In reality, it is a small part of a much larger road map to empire.