adventures in disaster

Provoking thought with a large bowie knife

I like to read the Dilbert blog. I am not a big fan of the cartoon but I think Scott Adams can write with some wit. Lately he has tried to encourage his readers to solve the problem of the Middle East.
Okay, solve may be too strong a word. He would like them to consider all the reasons for the hate and then process these into solutions.
A thought experiment he calls it.
I don't agree.
Any experiment needs safety to expound stupidly and Adams seems a little too sarcastic for that.
What I do find fascinating is how angry people are.
I get a little angry too.
I think it's because the problem is so messy. The issues are so emotional, so scary that to try to detangle anything becomes a politically incorrect nightmare.

There are so many players here.
Everyone in the West feels a need to defend Israel at least a little bit but we also have this thing for the underdog. We want the Palestinians to win too.
We have a simplistic need for a winner in all things, everything here is a reality show competition.
So we go into these conflicts already conflicted and we manage to piss everyone off with our wishywashyness.
Both sides want to be championed and instead we play favorites as the need and mood fits .
We have used both groups for our own ends and they both know it. The Palestinians know we will never wholeheartedly champion their cause so they went looking for someone else.
They didn't do it to piss us off . They did it to solve a need they had. They thought they weren't loved so they went looking for someone to love them. It never occurred to them that the minute they found someone new we would come back with promises of friendship and help. But now they know....They pull out the Iran card and wave it around and here we come with cash and a peace settlement.
Israel then gets furious.
It's like a guy having two girlfriends, neither of which he likes all that much but hell, they are handy and come in useful every once in awhile but they have really bad tempers and it's just best not to break up with them.

So, we would be better to dump them both and accept our punishment and let them get on with it by themselves but then they start screaming they are going to die if we leave. Both of them threaten to kill each other and damn, you're stuck.

You would think that experiencing this for years would have informed everyone about going into Iraq but nope...Two new girlfriends...None you like, more than happy to blow your ass up if you make one mistake...Great.... They are using you, you are using them..No one is getting what they want but tons of people are getting dead.

To look more closely we need to understand a little more about the middle east. We need to realize that Muslims don't come in just one flavour. Their faith has as many denominations as the Christian one. So they have different groups and these groups don't like each other very much. When left alone they will usually self segregate and be less than friendly, not crazy violent, just distant like dysfunctional family members. A brutal dictator can usually force them to all get along.
So absent the brutal dictator they get a little mean. Absent any government at all and a need for vengeance against said ousted dictator? Well then you get Iraq. Everyone has a grudge against the overthrown government that was filled with the "wrong" religious side. So the new guys hate the old guys and the old guys are terrified the new guys are going to murder them in their beds so everyone starts blowing each other up just in case.
They have competition issues too.
Then we try to make them all play nicely and that just makes them furious because both sides think they are the one with the true grievance and they should be championed and hey does any of this feel familiar?
If we pick a side the other side feels misunderstood and they get scared and they start blowing up the other side to get some attention and then the other side gets angry and defensive so they blow the other guys up...Both sides too stupid to realize they are blowing up real people with real lives.

After the fall of communism we saw a truly barbaric war full of ethnic cleansing, one tribe against another. These people lived peacefully with each other while being dominated by a ruthless dictatorship. The dictators left and they fell onto each others throats fighting over a war that had been fought fifty years before. Serbia, Bosnia...Does no one remember history?
This war went on year after brutal year. The world had to step in and separate them and create new countries.


Why do we think Iraq will be any different? Would it not make sense to separate Iraq now? What are we waiting for? Are we waiting for the US to finally give in so the world can step in to clean up this mess? Isn't it time the world told the US it has to leave now? The US must know it's just making everything so much worse.
The Middle East is not a US problem. The US needs to stop trying to be that guy.
The world needs to stand up and say that is enough, everyone get to their corner and let the grown ups figure this mess out. The US is too immature , the Middle East is too immature..Let's have countries that have solved their internal battles peacefully and successfully step up to the plate and take over.
What is so damn wrong with having three new democratic middle eastern countries? I can answer that too. The US wants complete success, they refuse to consider any other solution other than the shangri-la version of a happy, domesticated Iraq . That competition thing again...The need to always win. Israel suffers from the same delusion, they want their solution to the only answer.

See? Trying to solve the problems in the middle east is dangerous. You have to choose a radical solution and no one likes the idea of that. I can already hear the complaints..Who gets the oil fields? Who gets the water access? Where do you draw the borders? Who gets to decide all this? The people that live there or outsiders?

The other solution is to walk away and look how successful that has been in the Congo, Darfur....Oh right..No one cares about Africa, home to millions of radical Muslims.......Boy that may bite us all in the ass one day soon.

The western world mourns the loss of life from September 11 2001 today..Who mourns the massive loss of life in the Congo? Millions have died there since 2001 and no one has said a word..No moment of silence for them.

List the wars going on right now , now add Africa.




The world is on fire...
Go have another Cheeto and get ready for an explosive new Survivor..Where they are separated by race., it's the least you can do.

posted by adventures in disaster @ 9:10 PM