Waking up in a new world: Part VIII

Editor's note: Yes, this is part 8. I'm told the ending is on the horizon. All we can do is pray...

If this is your first time here, start at the beginning. Which is usually good advice.

The Middle East

Some eighteen months ago I was reading an opinion piece by Charles Krauthammer in Time magazine about the US coming ashore in the Middle East. He opined that for years, the US was more than willing to sit on their great navy vessels in the Persian Gulf and watch the various countries bash away with each other. His argument was that America could no longer afford to watch, but must become involved with boots on the ground.
[Editor's note: It is quite the claim to state that the US has not been involved in the region.]
[Author's note: Seeing as Europe has been meddling in the Middle East for hundreds, if not thousands of years, I find it rather refreshing that America has managed to keep its hands to itself for so long.]
[Editor's note: If the author is saying that the US looks standoffish in comparison to the worst meddling of the British empire (among others), that is perhaps true - although one could say that the US is trying to make up for that, and that emulating an empire is not becoming a free democracy. But for the sake of continuing on, let's pretend that Mr. Krauthammer's point has some validity, and that the US had turned a blind eye to and tread lightly on the Middle East until now.]

The reason I mention this writing is because he made one outstanding point (among many outstanding points) and that is the Arab League consists of 22 nation members, not one of them freely elected. Monarchs, military dictators, theocrats, thugs and other assorted oppressors. Can you imagine that? An entire region of the world, and not one single government is freely elected by their citizens.

That was back in February of 2003. Today the Arab League looks like this:


• The Hashemite Kingdom Of Jordan
• United Arab Emirates
• Kingdom Of Bahrain
• Republic Of Tunisia
• Democratic And Popular Republic Of Algeria
• Republic Of Djibouti
• Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia
• Rebuplic Of Sudan*
• Arab Rebuplic Of Syria
• Republic Of Somalia
• Republic Of Iraq
• Sultanate Of Oman
• State Of Palestine
• State Of Qatar
• Federal Islamic Republic Of Comoros
• State Of Kuwait
• Republic Of Lebanon
• Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
• Arab Republic Of Egypt
• Kingdom Of Morocco
• Islamic Republic Of Mauritania
• Republic Of Yemen

*That's actually the way it's spelled on the website. Sounds like a real republic to me.

First off I must admit, I find the humor in non-democratic countries naming themselves in a way that would make George Orwell shake his head. "Democratic And Popular Republic Of Algeria." That's a good one! Not only are they "democratic", but they are also "popular". Just read the name. Still don't believe it? Just ask any citizen, I'm sure they'll be more than happy to gush about what a wonderful democracy they have. Please ignore that guy with the AK-47 standing just off camera. He's a representative from the democratic and popular government.

Today, that list no longer contains 22 undemocratic governments, it contains only 21. The Republic of Iraq, will become, on Thursday, a true Republic. It's a start.

(Please note, I sincerely hope that in a relatively short and peaceful amount of time, Lebanon can be considered free and democratic, which moves the tally to 20 - 2.)

Many who openly oppose and protest the war in Iraq would read the above statements and shrug, saying something like, why should we care? What does it mean to us how those people choose to live their lives? It's no sweat off our brow. Wrong, it is sweat off our brow, we desperately and earnestly need to be concerned.

A while back I saw an interview on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I don't remember the gentleman's name, but he was hawking a new book called "No God but God". His take on 9/11 was Islam has been in the midst of a civil war for hundreds of years, and its still going on. Seeing as he's from the Middle East (Iran) I assumed he knew what he was talking about. There are many different forms of Islam, but there are two main factions. One side wants to get along with the rest of the world, become part of the international community, live their lives they way they want, to be religious or not, their own choice. The other is a darker form of Islam.

The darker form of Islam takes a much more literal view of the Quran. That is to say, when God created man, God put certain restrictions on man, such as the need to eat, the need to sleep, etc. Those actions are beyond anyone's control, so they must be anointed from God. Everything else is covered by Islam. When to eat, what to eat, how to eat, which foot to enter a room with first. It's a pretty crushing theology. But even more than that, it's the cleric who translates and interprets the Quran for the commoners. Because they supposedly have studied the Quran sufficiently, they have been granted obscene powers over civilization, by God no less. There is no rigid hierarchy of Islam, there's no Pope or Cardinals or Bishops to openly state a cleric is in violation of Islam by his teachings, and he must be corrected. No, when an Iman, a Mullah, or whatever they call themselves makes a declaration, it is not open to interpretation. Its Sharia, the law.

Bin Looser found a cleric, one Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, to issue a religious decree, in a cave in Afghanistan, that declared Islam at war with the United States and the west. The result was September 11, 2001.

But if this is a civil war inside Islam, how did the US and the West get pulled in? The author's opinion was simply because bin Looser could do it. Western civilization, in general, is an open society. Sure there are laws, some travel hassles, commitments to be met, but for the most part, we're an easy going group of people who just want to live our lives. In other words, we're sitting ducks. September 11, 2001 happened because we weren't paying enough attention to the Middle East. We made it too easy for them to resist.

I've been told by many people that democracy will never flourish in the Middle East because the people aren't civilized enough to make it work. The only way to keep the peace is by the iron fist rule of blood-thirsty dictators. But for me, therein lies the problem. Seeing 21 members of the Arab league are not democratically elected, they are the blood-thirsty strongmen crushing the people of the Middle East. All media outlets are controlled by the state. Just because their news organizations do not show footage of people being dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again, does not mean it does not happen. The absence of violence does not equal peace.

Remember the post about Saddam? That river blood flowed not only in Iraq, but it flows throughout the entire region. The citizens are crushed beneath the boots of vicious dictators. There is little to no hope that the people can rise up and over throw their leaders, the modern police state has seen to that. Remember the Shiite and Kurd uprising in 1991 against Saddam? 21 Out of 23 provinces rebelled? The vast majority of the country? How'd that work out? Not very well.

When one lives under a vicious dictator, one owns nothing. The government does. Want to build an addition on your house? Take care not to make it to nice, or you just may loose the entire home. I remember watching an interview in post-Saddam Baghdad. The reporter was talking to an entrepreneur who was doubling the size of his restaurant, hiring, buying new equipment. He said that he could never have done that with Saddam in power. If business looked too good, one of Saddam's sons was sure to learn about it and then demand the entire business at the end of a gun.

That's a tremendous amount of power to hold over a person, over a people, over a nation. You can take their homes, their business' and their families on a whim. I read another article in Time after the invasion. It covered just a small example of the brutality. A father was celebrating the marriage of his oldest daughter. One of Saddam's sons showed up uninvited. He demanded to see the father. He said he found the father's younger daughter (14 years old) quite attractive and wanted her delivered to his home. The father pleaded no, after all she was just a child. The baathist said either deliver the girl or else they would kill his entire family, and take the child anyway. The father relented and sent his child to be raped, in order to save the rest of his family. Later the father committed suicide, unable to live with his actions.

And pretty much the entire Middle East is run that way. On the one hand, it keeps a lid on the real crazies, on the other hand it crushes the very life out of the population of an entire region.

My opinion is that this is the major, root cause of Middle East terrorism. The lack of hope, the lack of a future, the lack of any other way. Do nothing, and it will continue. Desperate men do desperate things.

Now this is nothing new. The Middle East has been ruled this way for hundreds, if not thousands of years. There is a difference now, though. That difference is called Weapons of Mass Destruction.