Saturday, August 10, 2019

At last, the inborn Common Sense has prevailed

It is happening the way it was supposed to happen. The people of the Persian Gulf region have responded to their inborn common sense, and have come to realize that their interests lie not in outdoing each other but in helping each other overcome the poisonous climate brought to the region by an imperialist predator whose interest is to dominate the region and everyone in it.

You can see how this is unfolding in the article that came under the title: “Iran Extends Goodwill Gestures to Its Enemies,” and the subtitle: “The Trump administration's 'maximum pressure' against Iran is unintentionally bringing the Middle East together.” The article was written by Matthew Petti and published on August 6, 2019 in The National Interest.

In the past, the Americans never understood what was happening in the Persian Gulf, and they don't understand what is happening there even now. They committed massive blunders then, and they are poised to commit massive blunders again. In fact, America's understanding of what is happening –– not only in the Persian Gulf but in the entire Middle Eastern region –– has been derailed and sent down the ravine of ignorance for at least half a century.

What the Americans are missing is that the people of the Middle East –– like the countries of Africa and Asia that suffered under colonialism –– wanted nothing more and nothing less than being left alone to develop and catch up with the economic and technological progress that moved ahead of them, leaving them behind. Alas, it did not take these people long before they realized that the road ahead was not going to be as smooth as they would have liked it to be.

The harsh realities were that both external and internal forces played a major role in making the road ahead, a very difficult one for these people. The external realities were numerous, among them: (1) the rivalries between the big powers; (2) the interference by smaller players looking for freebies on which to scavenge; and (3) the neocolonialist groups, were all out there plotting to halt the progress of those countries. Internally, the “family feuds” that erupted between the rulers of the various countries added to the difficulties they had to overcome while trying to inch forward and modernize.

At the start, the countries of the Middle East –– like everyone else on the planet –– had such a high regard for America, they called on it to help them overcome whatever problems they encountered. But they soon discovered that what they thought was a cure for their ills, was the poison that aggravated their ills. Rather than help them solve their problems, America made them worse.

For example, they called on America to chase Saddam out of Kuwait only to see a decade later that America had fallen under the control of Jews who ordered the Iraq 2 campaign, and messed up the Levant like no demon could have done it. They also asked America to help them get rid of the terrorists in Libya only to discover that the Jews were there instigating America to effectuate regime change, a move that turned Libya into a haven for terrorists that no terror organization could have accomplished on its own.

And then, a new and ominous development started to bubble-up to the surface, threatening the whole region. It was a feud that started between Iran and the Jews of Israel; a feud that quickly morphed into a standoff between Iran and America. The problem is that the Americans proceeded along the propaganda lines that were fed to them by the Jews. Listening to lies and exaggerations constantly whispered in their ears about a deadly struggle between the Sunni Arabs and the Shiite Persians, America fashioned a policy for the region that turned out to be as useless as a skunk in your backyard.

Though there has always been a rivalry between the two branches of Islam, they never fought a deadly war as did the Christians, for example. In fact, all Muslims lived side by side for more than a thousand years without anyone but the experts knowing there were two branches of Islam. It was only late in the twentieth century that the ethnic rivalries between the Arabs and the Persians –– adopting the European political ideologies and mimicking their destructive behavior –– began to shed light on the fact that the Arabs were predominantly Sunni whereas the Persians were predominantly Shiite.

That rivalry culminated in Iraq's Saddam attacking Iran, causing a war that ended in a stalemate. A war of words then flared between the two sides, aggravated by the foreign powers that sided with one antagonist or the other. But then, as the Matthew Petti article demonstrates, cooler heads prevailed. And like they say: Blood is thicker than water. Even though the Arabs and the Persians are not of the exact same blood, they are close enough to work on preserving it rather than shedding it. We should applaud them for that.