The Middle East is a mess!
It always has been, of course. However, events recently have transpired so fast that not even the Warner Brothers’ roadrunner could keep up with them. I will only comment here on two things that really bother me, but it’s obvious from previous blog posts that many things concern me about how the West is handling problems in that region of the world. Today my two concerns are American duplicity and Muslim immaturity.
Duplicity is SOP in our State Department. You have to wonder if that’s what foreign policy reduces to these days. When the Egyptian revolution started, the diplomatic corps, led by Mrs. Clinton, struggled to figure out which side to support, the rebels or Mr. Mubarak. It was clear that it’s time to change our foreign policy and people. The duplicity resides in supporting some clearly tyrannical and oppressive governments and trying to topple some others.
Let’s make it an even comparison. Why choose Libyan rebels over Syrian rebels? Why put down the rebellion in Bahrain and not in Syria? I don’t buy that what swayed Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton was the fact that the Libyan rebels asked for help. There are even reports in some of the blogs that Mrs. Clinton struck a deal with the House of Saud—the Saudis would allow the U.S. to help the rebels in Libya if we allowed them to invade Bahrain. Considering the Saudi duplicity of supporting madrasas while taking our oil money (graduates from those madrasas formed the majority of the group that attacked the WTC on 9/11), I suppose this just matches duplicity with duplicity.
Our American soldiers, diplomats, and agents overseas are far too valuable to put in harm’s way when Mr. Obama and company don’t even know how much terrorist influence exists among the Libyan rebels. At least in Yemen we know that al Qaeda is probably in the driving seat, so our government has refrained from taking sides, instead muttering platitudes like we support democracy in the Middle East. I’m not sure Muslims buy any of that, considering what we did to Iran by installing the Shah and our lame WMD excuses for invading Iraq.
Our fighting men and women, as tough and dedicated as they are, are now stretched very thin with a war we cannot name in Iraq, the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan, and now an undeclared war in Libya. These wars represent unnecessary burdens on the American taxpayer—no significant budget cuts to the Pentagon are being considered in the current budget battle in Congress. More irksome is that we don’t provide adequately for the fighters overseas and those that return home while we enrich the fat cats of our military-industrial complex.
The only thing consistent about our Middle Eastern foreign policy is our greedy push to control oil for us and our allies. Everything else reeks of chaos and incompetence. Chasing after oil like spoiled kids in a candy store isn’t very noble either, but at least we’re consistent. Oh, yes, I forgot—we’re also very consistent in using the Middle East as a proving ground for all our fancy weapons that allow us to achieve a maximal kill count without looking at the people we kill right in the eye. We like to avoid that, since many of the dead are innocent civilians—women and children among them.
Some Muslims don’t seem to be smart enough to see through the duplicitous nature of their own governments and those of the Western allies. This is why we have madrasas where young and uneducated men are brainwashed to hate the West—all westerners, not just the Western governments. This is also why they pour out into the streets in violent protest due to the stupid actions of a gun-toting Florida minister and his flock of a dozen or so followers.
I don’t know who is more stupid—the protesting Muslims or the minister and his flock. As far as I’m concerned, Islam can never—I repeat never—become an acceptable religion until its adherents learn to have a thick skin. If they want, they can shun the stupid people that make fun of their religion or burn their Korans. The civilized way to treat insults is not by reacting in anger—your best bet is to walk away if you don’t agree. Don’t waste your time and energy.
Religious tolerance is proof of a civilized society, and I’m including tolerance of atheists too. Intolerance or persecution of any kind is just plain stupid and unproductive. Most of us in this country realize this and will speak out against the few people who don’t—like the idiots in Florida.
I don’t know what the minister and his few followers hope to gain by burning a Koran. The only thing it proves is that these Florida neanderthals are stupid. I’ll tell a Muslim or a Christian right to his face that their holy books are just ink and paper. Yet the value of the ideas and the stories don’t disappear because someone burns one. Moreover, you’re not going to change someone’s belief system by burning a book!
I have two opinions about religious strife. The first is that they are usually about something else, something political or some perceived ethnic grievance. We want oil—Muslims want the ability to choose their own destiny and not be dictated to by the West. The second opinion is that religious strife is useless and unproductive. “True believer” and “true faith” should not be a part of human discourse—rather, the word “true” should never, never be employed. You and I should be allowed to believe what we want to believe, as long as those beliefs do not infringe on anyone else’s freedom to believe.
And so it goes….
