Hi paul_philp; I agree that economic advancement to the point where there is a large and healthy middle class is what will (eventually) calm down the Middle East. The problem is that no one is pursuing those policies. Certainly Israel isn't doing a damn thing to pacify the region.
Here's a quote from Blackhawk Down that perfectly expresses what I see going on over there:
Blackhawk Down
Mark Bowden, (page 334-5, paperback)
... Mogadishu has had a profound cautionary influence on U.S. military policy ever since.
"It was a watershed," says one State Department official, who asked not to be named because his insight runs so counter to our current foreign policy agenda. "The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed all that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in hatred and fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she'll say, yes, of course, I pray for it daily. All the things you'd expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another in order to have that peace, and she'll say, 'With those murderers and thieves? I'd die first.' People in these countries -- Bosnia is a more recent example -- don't want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don't want peace enough to stop it."
-- Carl
P.S. This gets back to my comments that the Germans loved Hitler (see #reply-17552983 ) Let me expound on that. Not only did most Germans adore Hitler, but I think that most of them approved of his actions against the Jews. Not because of anything different or special about Germans (or Jews), but instead simply because of the natural human tendency to organize together for brutal bloodshed.
For the same reasons, having Arafat (or Sharon) removed from power will not significantly pacify the region. To get real peace, the people (on both sides) have to want peace more than revenge (or retribution, or "defense", or "martyrdom", or whatever they want to call their violence).
And what good would it do to push over the regime in Saudi Arabia? (Or Iraq, for that matter.) Does anyone really think that a peace loving democracy is going to grow out of the ruins? And beating the Saudis into submission is not an option. Under international law, beating another state's public into submission (as opposed to military) is termed "genocide", and is universally frowned upon.
We were lucky in Afghanistan because they'd already beaten themselves into submission.
But the next time the big guys go at each other (may it not happen in this century), you can expect to see some populations beaten down. Or maybe by then they'll have a non fatal way of making humans submit. You could tickle the other side until they realize that they have been forever bested and agree to fight no more forever. |
