It's a region where three major religions and various ethnic groups compete and pursue ancient grievances. It's a bad place for a war because things can easily spin out of control. The incident that sparked it all, the killing of two people by a terrorist, happened earlier in the summer but by the end of July it had started a war, with exhilaration and foreboding on both sides. There was regret over loss of life, yes, but it was balanced by the conviction the war would be short and just. All the previous wars, going back over 40 years were short, after all. More importantly, there was the belief that a long war would be bad for international trade and relations and therefore the powers that be wouldn't let it go on. And if the war was to be short, all the more important that everybody stake out their positions, so when the dust settled they would get theirs. It was a gamble many were willing to take.
That's how it began, with the firing of guns between the aggrieved party, Austria, and the country that hosted the terrorists, Serbia. Shortly Germany would join Austria and France, Russia and England would form an alliance and before anyone knew it, five major powers would be joined by many minor ones. Patriotism and nationalism bloomed in the manure of the first flush of a war which eventually engulfed most of Europe. By the time it was over, not four months later but four years later, the Serbs, the alleged instigators, had lost 25% of their males between 15 and 49, The Turks suffered, too, losing some 15% of their men, but they also inflicted suffering of their own on what they maintained was an internal enemy, the Armenians, half a million to a million of whom they slaughtered in their own Holocaust. Millions of soldiers of all nationalities also died, cannon fodder for stupid generals. At the end, Europe and global history were irrevocably altered. It wasn't planned that way. Things just got away from everyone.
And now the Guns of August are heard again. It will be a short war, they say.
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Bush honestly believes he is leading a Christian Crusade against the axis of evil, meaning those who do not believe in the one, true, Christian God. What do Crusaders do? They kill non-believers. And Bush plans to use the B60-111,a tactical nuclear weapon, to take out the nuclear installations in Iran; and at the same time kill millions of non-believers in the one true God, and destroy the axis of evil.
In the article in The Atlantic Monthly, in 1999, by Harvey Cox entitled "The Market As God", Cox, a professor of religion, says The Market as God is now the new world religion
that will replace all older religions.
Cox says "The willed but not yet achieved omnipotence of The Market means that there is no conceivable limit to its inexorable ability to convert creation (Mother Earth), into commodities."
"In the mass of The Market, things that have been held sacred transmute into interchangeable items for sale. Land is a good example. For millenia it has held various meanings. It has been Mother Earth, ancestral resting place, holy mountain, enchanted forest, tribal homeland, sacred turf, and much more.But The Market converts Mother Earth into real estate, to be bought and sold."
"What is the true value of human life in the Theology of The Market?...That The Market is not
displeased by downsizing or a growing income gap, or increased cigarette sales to young people in China, should not cause anyone to
question its ultimate omniscience....The Market
ultimately knows best."
In Sand Country Almanac, written in 1949, the author sums up what is right and wrong succintly: "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
There are now 2 possible scenarios: 1. We will die in a nuclear halocast. or 2. We and all creation will die slowly as The Market God,
and its instrument, the capitalist corporation,
pollute and kill all life on the planet.
sigh :-(
Humans (and/or their power-hungry leaders) are doomed to repeat their errors.
(Don't forget a "killer flu" Pandemic, william. Toss up as to numerical order...)
Great post, revere. You had me going with para one - I love the "rest of the story" ending in para two. I wish we had more history teachers like you. (I'm not being sarcastic.) Thanks, Steph
Bleak, yes; apocalyptic, no. Hold on, people. When you get hyperbolic like this it takes away from the good work on this site.
hold on; Nothing hyperbolic here. Just pointing out the similarities and noting that "little" wars like this can easily get out of control. Suppose Syria comes into it because Lebanon's Army is involved and then the US intervenes and then Jordan and Iran get involved . . .
Could easily happen, unfortunately. WWI wasn't envisaged either. They thought it would be over by Christmans, 1914. Do you think it's wrong to point these things out?
I for a very long time have contemplated on what would cause the adults to put down their silly little guns and stop acting like children. I think we are looking at it!!
No, Tom, we aren't.
Humans will never stop acting like suicidal fools. As a species, our level of mentation is grossly insufficient to manage our present technology. And that level of mentation isn't going to improve except by processes of biological evolution which take more time than we're going to have, before we find some effective means of species suicide.
Classic example of the trap of scaling.
System starts small, works. Succeeds, grows. Outgrows the point where it fails to scale up. Doesn't change. Dies.
There are so MANY examples of this I could write for hours amnd not exhaust the ones that are right at the top of my head. And so, I suspect, could you.
Charles You know the saying...nothing like a hanging in the morning to sharpen ones focus or something like that.
There is nothing like a billion dying from H5N1 to focus the mind. Hard to fight when the collateral damage is killing real soldiers rather than civilians and at rates millions of times greater than the current technology provides...
...but I get your point and in the end you will probably be right.
Charles is usually right, Tom. That's why I keep him around.
It's all about context. The background for WW1 was that a 500-year-old system of european government was rotten to the core and finally fell in on itself. The current world powers are not in this state of disrepair.
But, both were partly about oil in Southwest Asia. The first military action of WW1 was the British invasion of Iraq:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamian_Campaign
To add to the WW1 parable, don't forget it also made the perfect incubator for the flu pandemic.
The present world powers are rotten and corrupt to the core. Imho!
This whole thing has alienated folk. I believe that both water and oil are whats behind this war. The country is arid. It's parched...it's dead without irrigation.
Let the Israelis all move to Arkansas and the Palestineans to
North Dakota (punishment enough)
And as I read somewhere....make Canada the "Holy Land"
The Middle East is rotten and corrupt to the core. Dissipated decadence fueled by oil wealth, alongside intolerant puritanism with all the brutality of the Inquisition. Cycles of vengeance eternally escalating, and petty feuds escalated by egotism into affairs of honor (sic!). Once a lush green forest, transformed by population overshoot and ecological mismanagement thousands of years ago into a blazing barren desert where the predominant fact of life is the perpetual life-threatening shortage of water.
And yes it does look like a WW1 setup all over again. The interlocking alliances, some public and some secret, the whole house of cards just poised to go off like an open can of gasoline with a candle burning next to it.
Frankly the place needs to either change or die. It shows no signs of doing the former and appears heading for the latter with the eagerness of a suicide bomber. We can keep stepping in as "enablers," lat-minute rescuing the place from its repeated excesses for the Nth time, or we can stand back and watch the place have the implosion it seemingly aches for.
There is another lesson here for us. The Middle East is what becomes of humans after they trash an ecosystem, crash the carrying capacity, and keep multiplying like little mice.
We are all headed for a similar fate if we don't stop reproducing and consuming like locusts.
I have maintained from the very beginning that everyone not a citizen of the countries should leave the area and have the powers that be there get the situation over once and for all. This area of the world will never see peace........all we are doing is prolonging the antagonism and hate. Let them finish their fight (if that is even possible).
Ann: If you follow the news you will see that the civilians are trapped there. They cannot get out. Unfortunately this will not be settled by having them slug it out. They have been doing this for five decades. This won't be settled with guns. It will only be settled by negotiation with significant compromises.
revere: I agree about the negotiations with significant compromises....but who can do the negotiations (I don't trust our current world leaders) and even more, how do you get the combatants to the table?
Any student of military history knows this is going to be a debacle for everyone involved. The level of stupidity involved is stupendous.
g510: you say we need to stop stepping in as enablers, rescuing the place from its own excesses. We do far more than that. WE enablers don't just cover up the messes of our drunken "spouse," we supply the booze, and the drugs, and we encourage the abuse. That is to say, we give "diplomatic advice" that is designed to provoke and continue the Middle East turmoil, and we supply the bombs, the bullets, and the means to deliver them. We don't even try to hide the fact that we supply these things to Israel, but we also supply them a little more covertly to the Arab countries fighting Israel. Certainly Iran supplies Hezbollah, but who supplies Iran? Anybody remember Ollie North and the Iran Contra scandal? Think it all went away? We have a history of bedding with our enemies, and then a few years later calling them the scum of the earth. Yet we still sneak back into bed with them now and again when it fits our agenda. Sort of like a bad marriage. So if we are the co-dependents, what do we get out of this relationship?
Basically we need a return to the cold war. Russia versus USA. Mutual assured destruction if a major catastrophic war occurs.
Democracy is ensured by strong opposition in Congress or Parliament.
Peace is ensured by mutual fear of strong nuclear opposition.
It's not good...it's not perfect but it's better than this continuous period of massacres, low grade warfare, and pompous posturing of all concerned.