You know, people have been saying that Armageddon will come out of the Middle East for two thousand years. Niall Ferguson thinks it could be true this time.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
The ultimate in self-fulfilling prophesy. Saddle a geographic area with “Holy Land” bullshit and you pretty much guarantee that the Big One will come out of there.
On the other hand Edward Luttwak argues in the new Harpers that the Middle East is overrated in importance and could well benefit from benign neglect on our part.
This is something that the alternative energy crowd has been talking about since the 60’s. If it wasn’t for the oil, nobody but religious fanatics and poverty relief groups would care about the middle east.
Of course, that’s a bit — well, exactly — like saying if it wasn’t for junkies, no one would care about heroin, but I think you get my meaning. Aside from control of the Suez Canal, there is nothing of practical value to the West in the middle east other than oil.
Armageddon is a far broader concept than the Middle East. We are talking man against man, father against son, brother against brother until man exists no more.
On the “right” we have Joe Lieberman taking about war with Iran. On the “left” we have the “raptureous joy” about gays being able to get married in Massachusetts. This past week we have the dichotomy of Jesus Camp on Al-Jazzera. Not one branch of government is even marginally close to any rational solution to even the most benign of the issues facing all of the US and the world.
Here in the US our everyday life depends on the flow of energy. When this stops the floodgates will open with mostly armed unenlightened thugs coming out of the cities. Think gangs, postmodern feudalism a clash of false ideals based upon ages and demographics of the survivors lied to generationally by the MSM “media”.
Hell, even the grannys know.
http://www.grannywarriors.com/
There’s nothing to say that the war Niall describes hasn’t already started. The thing is, he’s still right in that the region could sustain a much higher rate of mutual annihilation.
The thing that people miss is that the type of war (between nation states) that they’re looking for can be a long ways off with events still just kind of intensifying.
Like “the Onion” said, ” Middle East Conflict intensifies as…
I think (and hope) that Turkey will hold against their internal fanatics, but if Pakistan goes, all bets are off. Even if it doesn’t, Lebabon already is. Syria is messy with Egyptian Brotherhood who hate having an Alawite governing bloc in charge of them, and it’s deeply wrapped up in Lebabon. The Kurds and Turks, well, the Kurds and Turks want, both want badly, to fight. That usually leads to fighting.
—
It seems that the U.S. has set a dangerous precedent of fallibility under Bush. One would think that the serial incompetence will have very long term effects, and that it is likely to have an increasing curve as it complicates politically &c.
The apocalypse that might not come is the U.S. electoral one. In two or three years we could all be here bitching about hypoctritical and compromised Democrats, and raising little bits of money and slightly larger stink to try to change things. Everything might be mostly the same. But it might not.
But that’s the next two or three years. Much beyond that, with crazies blowing each other up in the Middle East, I wonder if the local religious fundamentalists don’t start wanting some version of this. Then what?
Cafferty’s total “in your face” poll this week: “How’s your Middle East policy look now, Mr. President?” was a good representation of how little we understand the motivations of the people who put Bush in power.
Ultimately, the game of Stratego in the Middle East is a long term push for power vis a vis the Chinese. Their playground is Africa, and we want ours to remain the Middle East. The Muslims of the Middle East–surprise–aren’t willing to be anyone’s board game.
But the current chaos may be just what the back room players like Perle, Wolfowitz, and Cheney want. In the absence of order and reason, there are opportunities for the unscrupulous.
Which video? The one Demetrius did for this contest, which ate up almost every waking moment of the past week for him–and many moments that should have been sleeping moments.
You can see it here, if you like.