There is a close relationship between the passage of time
and the making of history. This is a simple concept to understand because we
instinctively sense that if time freezes, history will not be made.
And so, we theorize that history is made because things
change from being in one state to being in another state. To test this theory,
we look out the window and surmise that the street below is changing because
cars move from place to place, pedestrians go in and out of buildings, traffic
lights change color, and so on.
On the other hand, we look into the night sky and see that
the stars are not moving even though we know from advanced research in
astronomy that the stars go around the center of the galaxy at speeds thousands
of times faster than anything we see on the street. And we realize that our
perception of history depends not only on the objects we observe but also on
us, the observers.
Being the “slow” observers that we are, we look at a tree
and do not see it grow even though we know that it is growing at a speed we
cannot perceive. To satisfy our curiosity as to how the process unfolds, we
plant a seed in the ground and use time-lapse photography to confirm that the
tree does not appear out of nowhere but grows a little at a time.
Having developed a rudimentary understanding of the
relationship which exists between the passage of time and the making of
history, we begin to wonder if we have been interpreting contemporary events
well enough to understand their historical significance. We examine what we
have been doing up to now, and realize that in “connecting the dots,” we always
miss taking into account the most important factor of all: time itself.
In fact, we in the West, have an instinctive grasp of the
concept of time that is not fully developed. Unless we are steeped in science,
we look at picture A that is frozen in time, and look at picture B that is
frozen at a later time, and fail to see that when A became B, it ceased to be
A. Thus, instead of deducing that a cause must have existed to produce the
changed effect we observe in B, we put the two pictures side by side into a
larger frame that remains frozen in time. We then think of the frame as being A
and B simultaneously, thus fail to realize that a change has occurred.
You can sense the debilitating effect of the Western
inability to understand the meaning of the changes detected in others when
reviewing the editorial that came under the title: “The Mullahs Thank Mr.
Obama” and the subtitle: “Iran
responds to the nuclear accord with military aggression.” It was published on
January 2, 2016 in the Wall Street Journal.
You sense from the first paragraph that the editors have
placed in one frame the frozen picture of Barack Obama side by side with the
frozen picture of Ronald Reagan. And they placed in another frame the frozen
picture of a hostile pre-nuclear deal Iran
side by side with the frozen picture of a hostile post-nuclear deal Iran . And the
editors connected the dots in such a way as to surmise that because Obama was
not as tough as Reagan , Iran has not knuckled under the way that the Soviet Union did.
This being a situation they do not like, they deduced that
villain Iran
remains villain because weak Obama has not acted as strongly as did Reagan.
They froze their thinking around these two frames, and wrote an 800-word
editorial that will not advance the debate one step, and will not help someone
make one sound judgment.
Had the editors of the Journal bothered to review what they
have been saying – something that should not be too difficult to do – they
would have realized they were never happy with the deal that Reagan struck with
the Soviets because it left the Soviet Union (now Russia) with a nuclear
arsenal that is larger than America's, and enough loopholes that have allowed
the Russians to develop their arsenal even further. The truth is that the
Russians did not knuckle under and Reagan did not lose either. That deal was
equitable given the needs of each party, and it served mankind well over the
decades.
Also, reviewing what they have been saying since the nuclear
deal with Iran, the editors of the Journal would have realized that they
demanded the Obama Administration clearly state that America's stance vis-a-vis
Iran will not change, that all options will remain on the table and that Iran
better behave or else. The Administration took the advice and did exactly as
demanded. No wonder then, seeing that America
froze itself in its old position, Iran responded by playing the same
old tit-for-tat game.