Ending the Middle East Disaster
Since no one with a real political voice, not even Bernie Sanders, has had the courage to state the real way out of the current Middle Eastern mess, I guess I will give it a try. In fact, the answer is not complicated nor is it difficult, except when we run into the hatred and abuse that are the inevitable tools of the right when they want to protect their right to be as subhuman as possible. Anyway, here's my plan.
1. Absolutely as a first step, the American people must give up the simplistic notion that the whole problem between us and them is a matter of religious fanatics gone wild, or people who "hate our freedom." It is time that we all need to accept the fact that the people of the Middle East are perfectly justified in being suspicious and angry toward us. The West in general, particularly England, France and the United States, has a history stretching back over two hundred years of invading the countries of the Middle East and butchering their people, to achieve its own interests. This history stretches back before 1800, when Napoleon invaded the Middle East on his way to conquering (briefly) Egypt. And it is not a history of a time that has passed. Our own country overthrew the democratic government of Iran, and imposed a vicious dictator on their people, to suit our own business interests. And barely more than a decade ago, we committed an act of criminal aggression against Iraq, destroying their stable society, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and leaving chaos behind. We placed our troops in Lebanon. We supplied weapons to the Iranian Mullahs. We have kidnapped and tortured their citizens. We supported a grossly corrupt government in Afghanistan, with the result that the only thing to show for our 13 year occupation is destruction. And now, our political scene is dominated by demagogues who talk about nothing but bringing more damage and suffering to them. What possible reason could they have to trust us to be constructive partners with them, in bringing a fair life to their people?
2. We must LEAVE THEM ALONE. Until we prove to them that we are finally willing to keep our greedy, violent hands off their countries, they will never trust us, nor should they. Yes, I admit the problem with this: It will take 50 or 100 years of decent behavior, before we can regain the trust of people in the Middle East, which is totally understandable given what we have done to them. But the only alternative is to just going on with a policy of continuing to kill them until they do what we want. I think at this point, it should be pretty obvious that this approach is worse than useless.
Well, there it is. Simple, really. When we show them that we are capable of treating them as human beings, they will stop hating us. It really has very little to do with religion, and virtually everything to do with not being fodder for someone else's profit. Fat chance, huh, with one of our two political parties having dedicated itself to hatred and violence. So, there is one more necessity to end the chaos in the Middle East"
3. The Republican party, as it exists today, is driving the country into a violent oligarchic dictatorship, which will never give up the use of violence, both domestically and internationally, to get what it wants. This party must be destroyed. The chance that they will give up this march to Fascism is virtually nonexistent, so another way must be found to terminate their power, once and for all, they have no constructive role left to play in our society; in fact they have had no constructive role for a hundred years. Enough already.
If we do this, at least our part in creating the Middle East disaster will come to an end. And as our part has been a massive one, this strategy can be nothing but a benefit to us all, on top of saving us from a couple more three trillion dollar aggressions.
1. Absolutely as a first step, the American people must give up the simplistic notion that the whole problem between us and them is a matter of religious fanatics gone wild, or people who "hate our freedom." It is time that we all need to accept the fact that the people of the Middle East are perfectly justified in being suspicious and angry toward us. The West in general, particularly England, France and the United States, has a history stretching back over two hundred years of invading the countries of the Middle East and butchering their people, to achieve its own interests. This history stretches back before 1800, when Napoleon invaded the Middle East on his way to conquering (briefly) Egypt. And it is not a history of a time that has passed. Our own country overthrew the democratic government of Iran, and imposed a vicious dictator on their people, to suit our own business interests. And barely more than a decade ago, we committed an act of criminal aggression against Iraq, destroying their stable society, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and leaving chaos behind. We placed our troops in Lebanon. We supplied weapons to the Iranian Mullahs. We have kidnapped and tortured their citizens. We supported a grossly corrupt government in Afghanistan, with the result that the only thing to show for our 13 year occupation is destruction. And now, our political scene is dominated by demagogues who talk about nothing but bringing more damage and suffering to them. What possible reason could they have to trust us to be constructive partners with them, in bringing a fair life to their people?
2. We must LEAVE THEM ALONE. Until we prove to them that we are finally willing to keep our greedy, violent hands off their countries, they will never trust us, nor should they. Yes, I admit the problem with this: It will take 50 or 100 years of decent behavior, before we can regain the trust of people in the Middle East, which is totally understandable given what we have done to them. But the only alternative is to just going on with a policy of continuing to kill them until they do what we want. I think at this point, it should be pretty obvious that this approach is worse than useless.
Well, there it is. Simple, really. When we show them that we are capable of treating them as human beings, they will stop hating us. It really has very little to do with religion, and virtually everything to do with not being fodder for someone else's profit. Fat chance, huh, with one of our two political parties having dedicated itself to hatred and violence. So, there is one more necessity to end the chaos in the Middle East"
3. The Republican party, as it exists today, is driving the country into a violent oligarchic dictatorship, which will never give up the use of violence, both domestically and internationally, to get what it wants. This party must be destroyed. The chance that they will give up this march to Fascism is virtually nonexistent, so another way must be found to terminate their power, once and for all, they have no constructive role left to play in our society; in fact they have had no constructive role for a hundred years. Enough already.
If we do this, at least our part in creating the Middle East disaster will come to an end. And as our part has been a massive one, this strategy can be nothing but a benefit to us all, on top of saving us from a couple more three trillion dollar aggressions.
Comments
I guess what I am saying is something I learned from the I Ching: You can only control what you are doing to make things worse. Western colonial aggression is a major factor in the degenerate state of the Middle East today, and that is something we can change. Let's at least do that, and hope for the best.
By the way, that is why Obama's reaching a deal with Iran over nuclear weapons is one of the greatest diplomatic victories in the history of this country. He convinced people who had been savaged, betrayed and murdered by us for seventy years to trust us again. Of course, in one day in office, a Republican President will undo all of this and set us back to 1953, so we can start trying to dig ourselves out for another seventy years.