When we study our attitude towards life, and correlate what
we gather with the human condition, we discover that we are naturally governed
by two states of mind. There is one state that says we are curious beings who
seek to understand our environment; and we recognize this as being the force
which animates our youthful desires to learn and to progress. The other state
of mind says that we long for stability and predictability in our lives, and
recognize this as being the force of maturity which prompts us to build a base
for our existence so as to insure continuity and stability in life.
These two tendencies exist inside of us since birth. At
first, the youthful one dominates almost entirely but, as we grow older and
gain experience, the tendency slowly yields to the one driven by maturity. And
we find that this whole phenomenon is true to families, clans, tribes and
nations as much as it is to individuals. We also recognize that the interplay
between the two tendencies in the face of everyday challenges determines the
sort of lifestyle we adopt as individuals and families, and the form of
governance we choose for ourselves as a clan, a tribe or a nation.
Any being that is a human being living on this planet understands
that reality by the fact that he or she is human. In fact, we all do as
children until something happens in later years that changes all that.
Prejudice is inculcated in children as they grow older … biases to the effect
that the challenges they will face in the future may be due to more than
phenomena such as natural elements getting in the way. The children are told
that new challenges may come from other human beings ... people different in
physical appearance, in the system of beliefs they have adopted, or the system
of governance by which they choose to be ruled.
Still, with or without that sort of prejudice, the fact that
we live in proximity to each other makes it so that misconceptions and
misunderstandings will creep into our neighborly relations, cause friction and
sour relations. This happens at times; a development that may initiate quarrels
lasting a short period of time after which reconciliation is called for, and
calm is restored. This pattern would be the normal progression of a real life
situation, but sometimes abnormal developments may occur, and the quarrel
escalate till it gets out of hand. What we must know, however, is that such
escalation almost never happens naturally. When it does, it is because someone
has thrown gasoline on the fire – to use a famous metaphor.
The act of throwing gasoline on a fire remains an alien act
to the nature of the organisms that inhabit this Planet. But some people (who
should be called social pyromaniacs) happen to pick up the disease by a process
that remains unknown, turning life where they reside into a mini hell. And
there is an ideology which sprung up on this Planet thousands of years ago; one
that has adopted the throwing of gasoline on fire as a religious duty. This
ideology now calls itself a religion, and goes by the name Judaism.
Two articles, written on September 11, 2014 and published in
National Review Online, show how that ideology works and how it keeps the
Planet in a permanently afflicted state. One article was written by Victor Davis
Hanson under the title: “The Middle East 's
Maze of alliances” and the subtitle: “It's increasingly difficult to navigate
the web of transitory enemies and allies in the region.” The second was written
by Daniel Pipes under the title: “Hello, Kurdistan ”
and the subtitle: “The Kurds have proved to be, roughly speaking, the Swiss of
the Muslim Middle East.”
The Hanson article is a glaring example of religious
ideologues promising with confidence to shape the Middle
East by precise thinking and “moral clarity,” now admitting
calamitous failure for their efforts. Hanson does that by starting his article
with a challenge: “Try figuring out the maze of enemies, allies, and neutrals
in the Middle East ,” he writes.
He does not say why the Jews failed to deliver on their
promises, but goes on to develop an article that is an exact repetition of what
caused the failures over the decades. Instead of describing a situation the way
it is to deduce what the various interests might be, and what recommendations
would be appropriate, he spins the entire Middle Eastern stage like a carousel
caught in a cyclone. And what he does with all that spin is make everyone look
bad except murderous, genocidal apartheid Israel which he paints as a
saintly, ideal nation.
And of course, there is not one idea in that article to
suggest what could be done to further the interests of America , much
less those of the nations in the region. But there is one exception which comes
as a gift he wraps in cellophane and delivers to all those who root for the
glory of Israel .
Here it is in his words: “About the best choice is to support the Israelis and
Kurds.” The Kurds, he says? What about the Kurds?
Well, Hanson leaves it to Daniel Pipes to tell all about the
Kurds. Of course, the title of the Pipes article, as you may recall, is “Hello,
Kurdistan .” But that is not what he has been
saying all along. In fact, he begins the article by reminding us what he was
saying then. Here it is: “In 1991, I made three arguments against intervention
on their [Kurds] behalf: (1) independence for Iraq 's
Kurds would spell the end of Iraq
as a state, (2) it would embolden Kurds to agitate for the independence in Syria , Turkey ,
and Iran ,
and (3) it would invite the persecution of non-Kurds.”
Wow! That's a whole lot of reversals. What did happen in the
meantime? What happened is that the Turks and the Iranians are not friends with
Israel
anymore. As to Iraq, it did not turn out to be the magnificent “democracy in
the heart of the Arab World;” the thing that was expected to form an alliance
with Israel, and show the rest of the Arabs how to build a perfect nation.
The current thinking is that the Kurds, who were reviled at
the time, must now be recast as good guys operating in a sea of bad guys who
were thought to be good at the time, but turned out to be bad in time.
Confused?