The Guardian is running a story titled “‘Apocalyptic’ Isis beyond anything we’ve seen,’ say US defence chiefs.” Now, it’s true, The Guardian tends to exaggerate. But lemme tellya: this one is no exaggeration.
I lived in Saudi Arabia for ten years, in one of the remotest parts of a remote kingdom. We lived among the local people, who, during the 1950s, were still dwelling in conditions Europeans would think of as medieval, culturally and materially. No love was lost on Americans among the Saudis, and let me assure you, the murder of an innocent victim such as James Foley as a device to express hatred, vengeance, dominance, and menace was culturally acceptable then and it remains so now.
The West in general and the United States in specific have made so many bone-headed mistakes in the Middle East that it is impossible to keep track of them. Those stupid moves are coming home to roost now. With the ascendance of the kind of people who make it a religion to hate the West — to some degree with good reason — and the suppression of ruthless dictators who had a vested interest in keeping the peace, we do indeed face an apocalyptic threat. The Moslem extremists who are fast seizing power are fully capable of and feel justified in exploding nuclear bombs, releasing poison gas, and spreading engineered disease in cities filled with civilians, in any country on the planet. And sooner or later they will do so.
The most serious recent mistake the West has made was to support the overthrow of strongmen like Saddam Hussein and his ilk. That is because we operate under a fundamental error: we believe, as though it were a religious tenet, that because democracy works for us it must therefore be best for everyone else in the world. And that is not true.
Democracy does not necessarily fit every culture. That is especially so for cultures that spawn groups capable of the atrocities we’ve already seen — atrocities that, you may be sure, are just the beginning. We need to butt out of the governance of other people’s countries. If a dictator is what’s needed to keep extreme jihadists under control, then a dictator is who should be in power. But stupidly, we failed to take advantage of the strongmen who were in a position to do that. When we should have continued to cultivate them, we dethroned them, or encouraged the locals to dethrone them. This was exceptionally stupid.
Our longest-running mistake in the Middle East has been to build dependence on the region’s oil supplies to support America’s enormous, spendthrift energy needs. This forced us to intertwine our economy and our politics with cultures that are not our friends and never have been our friends. Surpassing exceptionally stupid. We would have been better off to dig up all of Alaska, Canada, the Dakotas, the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico than to establish the kind of dependence that we have now and have had for decades. When you compare the two evils, the former would have been less harmful to the United States as a nation and to the West as an alliance of technologically developed nations.
Our second-oldest mistake — hang onto your hats, folks, because I’m about to surpass myself in political incorrectness — was to support the establishment of Israel and maintain an alliance with it.
Think about Israel from an Arab point of view: This is a Western sovereignty populated mostly by people with European cultural roots that was forcibly planted on soil stolen from Palestine. Western allies supported its development shortly after the Second World War for a simple, truly evil reason: no one wanted to provide homes and safety for the millions of Jewish refugees from European tyranny. Instead of opening our borders to the beleaguered victims of a murderous time, we exploited a specious religious belief that a plot of territory on the Mediterranean was a God-given “promised land” to the Europeanized and Americanized descendants of an ancient nomadic tribe. After all, we persuaded ourselves, the Jews were there first.
Well. Maybe. But consider an American analogue. Let us suppose the European Union decided that Virginia should be removed from the governance of the United States and returned to the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Indians, on the theory that they were there first and Virginia is, after all, their land. Imagine how that would go over! It’s just about as rational, though, as ripping out a chunk of Palestine and handing it over to the descendants of the Hebrew tribes.
Given that Israel has systematically oppressed the local Palestinians and as we scribble is in the process of killing hundreds of civilians in its own defense (2000 Palestinians vs. 68 Israelis), it’s not surprising that Arabs feel a certain resentment toward the West.
In my opinion, ISIS is the worst threat to Western civilization that we have seen since Adolf Hitler. We need to crush this outfit NOW, even if it means dropping plutonium bombs on Syria, Iran, and Iraq, killing innocents along with the criminal extremists, and letting God sort them out. We cannot allow ISIS to gain any more power, territory, weapons, or political influence — period. If stopping ISIS means killing everybody in sight, that’s what we need to do.
We need to go all-out in building an energy infrastructure completely free of any association with any Middle Eastern country, even if it means despoiling our lands, raising the price of gasoline, building more nuclear plants across the nation, and perforce limiting the amount of power we expend.
We need to quit sending military aid, economic aid, and political support to Israel, even if it means evacuating every person of European ancestry and Jewish heritage and finding homes and jobs for them in Western countries. How about Virginia for starters?
My mother was not an educated woman. But she was perceptive. Sometimes she said things that amounted to metaphor. Once, she remarked, in so many words, that “Armageddon will come out of the Middle East.”
It sounds extreme. But she was commenting on an extreme situation.
World War III will come out of the Middle East. And WW III, given the kinds of weapons we have now and the fanaticism of our opponents, could very well be the Western world’s Armageddon.
Postscript, 8/23/2014: Don’t believe me? Well then, take a look at this authoritative article by Ed Husain, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior advisor to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. It appears in this morning’s New York Times. What Mr. Husain describes exactly reflects my own experience of a decade in Saudi Arabia.
I simply cannot pretend to understand what is going on there and it’s damn near impossible to find ‘objective’ overviews of the situation (if one even truly exists). But it is terrifying.
Probably there is no objective reporting on human actions. If that’s so, the best we can do is look out for our own interests. Or for those of future humanity.
Perhaps I am an unfeeling biotch, but this scenario does not terrify me. I completely agree with you, Ms. Funny. In fact, I’ve been saying essentially the same thing for the past 30 years. I’m not terrified, for the same reasons you recently gave for not being afraid to die of cancer. We humans have been creating our own extinction for quite some time now, but as change is the only undoubted rule in the universe, there is only today to be concerned with. I’m going to the beach!
Possibly Powhatan was also a fatalist. 😉 That would put us in good company.
The Middle East is a very complicated “puzzle”. My thought is Israel is our most staunch ally…and can always be counted on. I am not a Jew but make no mistake the creation of Isreal after WWII was basically an apology and an attempt “to set things right” after what happened to the Jews under Hitler. But it is no small miracle what has come out of that tiny bit of real estate. If you’ve ever seen pictures of that place in ’47 it has to amaze you as to what has been done. These factions Isis included should be grateful that the US has tried to curb Israel’s hawkish views on the region. IMHO if you gave Israel the means they would have the “neighborhood” cleaned up in a year. And as time goes on what Israel has been saying has been true all along. Let us not forget the “6 day war”…this was supposed to be a rout for the combined Arab forces but instead was an embarrassing defeat and sent the Arabs scurrying to the United Nations for relief. And the last time I checked a very large portion of the oil from the Middle East goes to Europe…yet I don’t see a large commitment from Europe. But they are more than happy to pay ransom so that the terrorists can buy more ammo…To close has Isis really been tested? The Iraqi army is a joke some would even say cowards… let’s see how they fare against Israel and US air support….
If turning the area into irrigated, developed, technologically advanced country is a miracle, then indeed that is what has happened. Europeans and immigrants from other parts of the globe did the same thing in North America. But that doesn’t make it right: in both cases, the miraculously transformed lands were wrested from their former inhabitants, legions of whom were slaughtered and oppressed.
If a world war is to be avoided, Europe also is going to have to find other sources to feed its energy hunger.
The Iraqi army may be a joke, but ISIS is not the Iraqi army. Not all Middle Eastern armies are driven by and populated by fanatics. Fanaticism is a dangerous force that, coupled with money and technological savvy, can and will build entities capable of wreaking havoc around the world.
Had a cousin who was career military and was in Desert Storm I. The build up to the assault was unbelievable he said with stories of the elite “Guard”. Dear cousin said these “soldiers” were no match for disciplined soldiers of the US…but they had been very good at beating up and intimidating civililians. My thought is the same goes for Isis…real good at killing civilians and an inept military that can’t run fast enough when the going gets tough. Let’s see how they do when faced with a disciplined force. Who knows maybe the Arabs themselves will wake up and put an end to this “cancer”. The real way to put a stop to this is the money and who finances this madness…That responsibility falls clearly on Iran’s shoulders. Cut off the oil money…and ya can’t buy weapons , fuel or ammo….
Take a look at the postscript I just added to the main post.
As a practical matter, the soldiers of a corrupt government that reigns over a country that has advanced, over the past 50 years, from medieval times to Renaissance times will naturally be questionable. However, to go from where Europe was in 1250 to where it was in 1650 or so is quite a leap, for half a century. We can’t rest on our proverbial laurels and assume the enemy will never get its act together. Nor can we imagine that fanatics who ground their extremism in religion will be anything other than persistent.
Remember, these are people who brought down the World Trade Center. They have no intention of stopping at that.
Actually I think the unrest originates on the few benefitting from the oil wealth thru out the Arab world. As you know in Saudi Arabia folks stand in line to kiss the ring of the King and ask for favors. And if your well connected or he feels like it, you get something. IMHO it’s the “disenfranchised” that feel they have no choice but to take up arms. The Saudi elite live in elegance while most of the population lives modestly. And please make no mistake folks in the Middle East….hate America. I have talked to several servicemen who are career folks and make no mistake they hate Americans even our supposed allies….everyone of them to the man slept with a side arm under their pillow while stationed in Iraq and other areas of the Middle East. I still contend that you cut off the funding from oil money and Ises has a much tougher time achieving their goals by throwing rocks and sticks . I guess we will agree to disagree as this a very difficult situation and everyone has their opinion. I can recall after 9/11 watching my favorite “redneck” the shock jock Imus ( who I miss terribly) on his Imus in the Morning Show…and his answer to the problem was “…kill…them ….all…” If it was only that easy….
Osama bin Laden was part of the Saudi family — anything but disenfranchised.
It’s a religion, just as crazy and doctrinaire and murderous as Christianity was throughout the middle ages and into the Renaissance. If you’re not one of us, you’re the Satanist enemy and you deserve to die and we will cheerfully do the honors.
The standing in line to ask the King’s favor is part of the tribal culture. It persists to some degree even today. In some cultures — including Europe’s until quite recently — there is no concept of upward mobility. As in the middle ages, the Renaissance, and the 17th to late 19th centuries in the West, Arabs “know their place”: they know the rank and fate to which they were born and, unless they’re very foolhardy indeed, they accept it as part of the natural order. This is a significant reason that the ruling and religious elites so vociferously oppose cultural contamination from Western media: God forfend that the hoi polloi should get any uppity alien ideas.
Obviously, not everyone is the same. Not everybody east of the Mediterranean lives in medieval squalor. But on the other hand, even those who are good of heart are not us and, and their difference must be respected. And recognized.
While I think it would be immoral to kill them all…well. I’m afraid I’d rather do that than have them kill us all. Excuse me, now, while I hide under my insulated desk to escape the forthcoming Divine Lightning Bolt.
LOL…Funny you are a riot….As you say this and dive under the desk…. I picture that gal in “Annie” singing “…the sun will come out…tommorrow…”
It bothers me so much that we can’t get our act together regarding a REAL energy program so we can just let that area of the world more or less destroy themselves (you don’t hear much about Africa? because we, as a country, don’t really care what’s happening over there).
Put a Manhattan type project together to figure out this solar thing! Boom, every rooftop is a mini-freaking-power plant! The panels should be able to be made here EFFICIENTLY.
Right on!
And as part of the solar project, don’t let the old coal-driven utilities work to undercut the newer solar suppliers.
Hereabouts, because of course we have sunlight to burn (uhm, as it were), solar panel leasing companies have been seeing some real success.
With their business model, you lease panels for, say, 30 years, paying a lease over a set period. You also pay the electric bill. AND because your house stays connected to the grid, any excess power generated by your rooftop grid is fed back to the power company, which pays YOU the going rate for power. Between the enormously reduced power bills and the kickback for the excess power, even though you make lease payments you average monthly payment is MUCH lower than your old power bill.
The leasing company maintains your panels AND takes responsibility for maintaining your roof for the entirety of the lease period. If you get a leak in your roof at any time, they fix it. Hailstorm damages the panels & roof, they fix it. And so on.
Not surprisingly, the power companies don’t like this. They go to the corporation commission, complain, and get power hikes and reduced payback on the power your system generates and any number of lagniappes. They really want to put these solar leasing outfits out of business.