Question Everything

All conquerors claim to be "helping" the people they conquer. The Soviets claimed to be "liberating" the afghans from Muslim oppressors. The Japanese claimed they were "protecting" the Koreans. It's all a bunch of BS designed to justify imperialism. It is a double standard to dismiss Soviet claims of "helping people" as a justification of aggression and yet
believe them in the case of Amerika. When the West bullies around the Arabs (or the rest of the world) it is not "helping," it is forcing it's will on other peoples. The governments of the west often claim to be helping, but they are lying. The immense majority of people outside of the West recognize these as lies because they suffer the harmful results of western policy. This is why the US government is hated around the globe. More people within the West believe these lies because they are insulated from the actual results of the policies - they do not see them first hand which makes it easier for governments, media & corporations to sell these lies.

After World War One the Ottoman empire, which had previously ruled the Middle East, collapsed and the region was conquered by Western powers, mainly Britain. The British decided to maintain control of the area by setting up a system of puppet governments. This is where most of the modern governments in the region came from and when most of the borders were drawn. The situation is analogous to what the Soviet Empire did in East Europe after WW2. While formally independent, the puppet governments were in practice subordinated to Britain. British companies had control over most of the Middle East's wealth and the puppet states protected that wealth. Most of these puppet states were highly repressive Monarchies. The British set up a tiny oligarchy to rule each country and made those oligarchies dependent on Britain (through money, arms, etc.) in order to stay in power. The oligarchies were hated by the people (because they were so repressive and gave most of their wealth to foreigners) and so they had to depend on the British in order to stay in power. The British used this situation to control the region.

After World War two this system went into crisis. With the decline of the British empire the oligarchies could no longer depend on the British to help keep them in power (in exchange for being a servant of the British empire). In some countries this resulted in the overthrow of the old oligarchies and there replacement with independent governments. In other cases the Oligarchies looked for some other great power which they could rely on in order to stay in power. They found one in the United States. America basically took over the system of satellite states originally established by Britain. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries became US puppet governments - the US helped those governments stay in power (giving them weapons, money, etc.) in exchange for their obedience and control over their resources. The most important of their resources is obviously oil. In places where the previous puppet government had been overthrown the US (often working with Britain and Israel) acted to attempt to reestablish a client state. Sometimes this was successful, sometimes it wasn't. The purpose of the US occupation of Iraq is to restore Amerikan control of that
country.

Lots of Arabs (excluding a small oligarchy) are poor because of Western Imperialism. They have lots of resources but they are controlled by the west (usually through their client oligarchies). Arab poverty makes Americans' SUVs possible.