[img]1640|right|Arthur Schaper||no_popup[/img]How many foreign forays will it take before the United States diplomatic corps starts to see that we cannot control the world. We cannot police the nations. No country, no matter how armed, can put down or end the political-ethnic-tribal turmoil churning up the Middle East. Yet Republicans and Democrats in Washington today argue that the United States has a vested interest in sending military personnel, not just money, into Syria, where a self-inflicted quagmire of Shi’ites loyal to bloodthirsty dictator Assad, are pushing against Sunni rebels, along with latent terrorist elements like Al-Qaeda and secular opposition fighters.
The arrogance, the flippant notion that any country can step into this cacophony staggers the mind. No collective of power or prestige can put down the massacres raging in the name of law – religious and cultural – and a worldview dictated by the rule of the Almighty. The United States would do better doing nothing. They can knock on wood that the Syrian civil war continues indefinitely, tiring out the violent elements that have been vying for power for decades.
The history behind the boundaries and broken promises in the desert cannot be ignored. The tribes and tribulations of the Middle East all started with World War I, where The Ottoman Empire, the “Sick Man of Europe”, lost internal integrity as well as external legitimacy. King Mehmed VI Had joined forced with the Central powers Germany and Austria-Hungary, and lost. Palestine and Jordan became British mandates, while Lebanon and Syria fell under French purview. The British had their hands full with a global empire spinning away, while the French also witnesses their grand experiment to civilize the uncivilized fall apart.
The boundaries drawn up by the allied powers after Armistice Day disregarded ethnic, religious, and ethno-religious elements. Political identity based on the rule of law and civil conduct depends on a universal acceptance of human rights. Religious factions face fundamental divides, dramatic distinctions that can mean the difference between life and death. A devout Muslim may interpret his holy book to make holy war on any infidel who refuses to accept the tenets of his faith. Such is the fraught basis for the fights that never end in the Arab world.
Freshening the Background
In 1991, Desert Shield gave way to Desert Storm when a communion of communities took on the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, which was desperate for oil and prestige following a disastrous eight-year war with Iran. Oil-rich Kuwait served the oil-dependent rest of the world. Following the forced evacuation of Hussein’s forces, the United States restored some lost military prestige from Vietnam. A 1992 recession and a third-party run by H. Ross Perot killed the second-term chances of President George Herbert Walker Bush.
Hussein still loomed large in the minds of our government, enough that Congress passed a 1998 resolution to remove the dictator from power. Before that, Al-Qaeda was on the move, attacking the World Trade Center in 1993, followed by attacks on U.S. consulates in Africa and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.
By the time George W. Bush was elected in 2000, the conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia were no longer knocking on our allies’ doorsteps. Suicide bombers took advantage of CIA miasma in Washington. They attacked the World Trade Center, along with the Pentagon and an attempted hijacking and crashing into the White House. Mr. Bush’s response instigated the invasion of Afghanistan, the removal of the Taliban, and the resumption of the search for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
How to React
What else to do? Resume the upsets over the Hussein regime, over which the Clinton administration had been dropping bombs weekly for years. Separate intelligence reports, before and after invasion, confirmed that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Skeptics during the Bush administration conceded that Hussein was such a weapon himself. Nine-plus years in Iraq, and what do we have? More trouble. While Mr. Bush had intimidated Arab dictators to play nice, respect Israel, and diminish Al-Qaeda terrorists and Muslim extremists, the same repressive policies, mixed with the technological innovations, created the sub-cultures of dissent that spread from word of mouth to biting with megabytes, as Internet, Facebook, My Space became the new public square of dissent in the Middle East.
Tunisia toppled, followed by leaders in Egypt, Yemen, Libya. One set of bad guys who feared Al-Qaeda has been replaced by the latent terrors and extremists so hunted and despised by the United States. The Arab Spring has sprung. Governments have been falling all over the Arab world. The pretended peaceful democratic transitions have erupted into chaotic transformations of tyranny. Terrorists take charge while secular, principled interests remain the endangered minority. For all of those reasons, with so many unintended consequences to democratic intentions, the U.S. would do best to stay home.
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a writer on issues eternal and unchanging, timeless and timely. A life-long SoCal resident, Arthur lives in Torrance.
Twitter – @ArthurCSchaper
arthurschaper@hotmail.com
asheisministries.blogspot.com
