I’ve tried to stay away from this because to cover it in anything smaller than a book seems to give most of it short shrift but then I got to feeling that I’ve avoided it too long so here’s the Curmudgeon’s take on the problem of the Middle East.
Now I could have said the problems of the Middle East but actually the entire region is one big problem and strangely enough, it’s a problem that may be solving itself despite us.
Let’s be frank, the Middle East problem started back in the nineteenth century when the European nations seemed to decide in unison that the only way to national significance was to acquire as many other nations as they could fit under their national bonnets. This concept had actually started a few centuries before with the British, French, Spanish & Dutch running all over the planet looking the a way to the far east and mistaking any number of continents for what they conceived to be The Orient.
It was, however, in the 1800’s that the British really got into it in the Middle and Far East and Africa, grabbing land and enslaving peoples on a more than massive scale. Of course, as everyone knows, the empire was more than the poor Brits or any of the Europeans could manage and it began falling apart just before WWI.
Under normal circumstances the Middle East would have been viewed as a worthless accumulation of sand and bad mannered Bedouins who filled the pages of “High Breasted,” tales with their kidnapping and bodice ripping exploits, but there was one thing about the Middle East that attracted more than romance authors and it was oil.
Oil had come to hold a significant place in the hearts of the world’s industrial barons, especially since the increased need had significantly reduced the whale population and slowed their contribution to a trickle. So what happened? Well the industrialists moved in and brought with them their governments who were already convinced that the needs of the industrialists coincided neatly with the needs of the nations. Wherever they could, they installed their own bought and paid for leaders to rule over what previously had been colonial mandates or just unassociated tribal fiefdoms and that’s where the problem really began.
The yardstick for regal success in these, mostly manufactured, kingdoms, was that the oil spout be kept open. To this end, first the Europeans led by the Brits and shortly thereafter the Americans led by the oil barons, installed and maintained a series of greedy, despotic thieves whose only measure of political success was how much of their countries oil royalties they could move to personal accounts in Swiss banks.
So did any of these appointed despots know anything about how to run a country? Well it kind of depends on your definition of “run a country.” Their version was being fat and sassy and keeping any unruly elements that wanted to earn a living or educate their kids firmly under the royal thumb. They were very good at this. If you use the democratic yardstick, however, they were abject failures. Despite this they managed to maintain, with our assistance, a tight control over their individual countries for an inordinate period of time, right up until the present.
This is where I use an analogy that absolutely drives Ronald Reagan fans nuts. Their problem is that they live under the mistaken assumption that Reagan, somehow, caused the Soviet Union to collapse. This is of course pure fantasy. The Soviet Union collapsed because of television. It was because of television that all the Eastern Block peasants finally saw evidence that the Marxist Paradise, that their leaders kept telling them they were living in, was in reality a cesspool. That is what brought down the Soviet Union and that in a different form is what is currently causing the Arab Spring.
Okay, but let’s step back a second and check out the result of all these oil created despots running all these poverty stricken countries and how that mix created the first wave of unrest that threatened to pop the lid on the oil wells. Interestingly enough the first rumble, while political in nature was religious in inspiration.
Sometime in the 1970’s Sayyid Qutb a fanatic Islamic mullah began writing against the foreign invaders (mostly financial invaders at that time) and the governments they had created and supported in various Islamic lands. His writings became the foundation of Al Qaeda when they inspired Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri the future leaders of that terrorist organization. They also inspired any number of other Islamic mullahs with their support of Sharia law and their affirmation that the problems that faced the Middle East were the result of Western, (read American) support for regional dictators who were, in many cases, secular rather than supportive of Islamic law.
The fire spread and soon the United States became the symbol of everything that was wrong with the Middle East. And truth be told, they weren’t far off. The problem was that we didn’t care who we supported, weren’t interested in how they treated or mistreated their people, as long as they were cooperative with our goals of extracting oil and other minerals from their countries at prices that were favorable to the U.S.
Meanwhile except for the rulers and a very few close cronies, the inhabitants of the countries that fed the insatiable appetite of American industry lived in abject poverty, their children destitute of education, health care or any kind of social help. These millions, spread across, Iraq, Syria, Eqypt, Iran, Yemen, Morocco, Tunesia, Lybia, Bahrain and the like, were being told by their mullahs that the United States was the devil and the cause of all their problems. Instead of nipping the problem, our installed despots, in the bud, we ignored it. What the hell, we were still making tons of money.
The mullahs, pretty much with the exception of Qutb, who was finally executed for his writings, were careful not to attack the governments that were the cause of their problems but to keep their attacks pointed at the great infidels. This strategy was a boon to Al Qaeda and helped create the Great Satan across the sea; us. The going concept was that that there was a global conspiracy by the West and its puppet allies in the Muslim world to destroy true Islam. This conspiracy, if Al Qaeda was to be believed, was the work of the United States.
Unfortunately we were not interested in listening to what was going on in a crucial area of the globe. We were too busy making money off their labor and their natural resources. So instead of the United States looking around and investigating some of the tyrannical dictators we supported in this area, we figuratively stuck our head in the sand and paid no attention. When we finally decided to knock over one of these goons, Saddan Hussein, remember, had been our ally against Iran, it wasn’t because he was killing and torturing his people, it was because George Bush decided he could get cheap oil and get even for his father not knocking over Hussein when he had the chance.
So here we are with American boys deployed all over Iraq, Afghanistan, probably Pakistan and if we screw it up some more, Lybia. And all of a sudden the people of the Middle East are in the process of doing what we should have done years ago, kicking out the dictators that have kept their countries operating for far too long, in the style of the Middle Ages. And how did this happen? Much the same way the people of the Soviet Union organized their revolution only this time it isn’t television, this time it’s the Internet and maybe if we pick our shots we just may have a chance to look like the good guys in some of these countries. Of course to look that way we have to act that way and our muddled efforts in Lybia aside we haven’t looked very good so far.
Not that it will be easy considering the hole we’ve dug, based on our greed for oil and the fact that we’ve been too slow to pull the trigger on the despots we’ve kept in office all these years. The point has been made that these are guys we have put in office and have supported for many years, years during which they have done right by us, so where do we get off dropping them into the fire as soon as we get a little heat?
Well the fact is that we should never have put them in office and should never have supported them, but while we did they stole with both hands and abused their people, so they really don’t have anything to bitch about, even if we turn around now and help to kick them out. We gave them all great jobs and they abused their positions. If they had been smart they would have used their power to develop their countries the way Kalifah Al Thani has done in Qatar or Khalifa bin Zayed in the United Arab Emirates or even Abdullah in Saudi Arabia but instead they just took and took and took. Now they are gong to give back… big time.
If they are smart they will run. They all have swollen bank accounts in neutral countries. If they are dumb or overcome with hubris, they will stay and fight, like Gaddafi, and if they do we should help to put them out of their misery. It may not make us feel like heroes, but it will be the right thing to do and it will help us get back some tiny shred of favor in countries where we have done everything in our power to make the people hate us.
Now I know that all the right wing crazies are going to go nuts over this and start screaming about dead American kids in Iraq and 911 victims but Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are the product of American stupidity and greed. If we had taken care of business and put functioning people into power over there, even if they didn’t always kiss our asses, neither Osama bin Laden nor Al Qaeda would have come to exist in anything like the form they finally manifested. No, there is no excuse for 9/11 nor for any of the other terrorist activities that any number of militant Islamic terrorists have engaged in and yes bin Laden got what he deserved but the fact remains that if we had acted nobly, rather than like a bunch of greedy pigs, there never would have been a reason for bin Laden to exist. The people of the Middle East would have been in much better shape and so would we.