Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I think I’m coming down with something and not feeling very cohesive, so I hope this all makes sense.

A couple months ago I read a post that in essence read something like “The Muslims hate and want to kill us because we rich and happy and free…”

The ignorance of this statement was beyond appalling, but I took it as a hiccup, the lowest end of the political intelligence spectrum. Until I had to spend some time at the dog park this weekend explaining what Iraq has gone through in the last 100 years at the hands of western powers.

*pinches bridge of nose* oi!

O.k….I guess if you asked the average Iraq about the American Civil war they would probably be equally as clueless.

Granted I am not an expert by any means. In fact to better understand the situation I will be taking a History of the Middle East course this coming semester. But here is something for you to keep in mind before you just write the Middle East off as a tar pit of hatred: We had a hand in creating that tar pit.

History of The Middle East

First of all, western interference started in the Middle East in 1095 when the first crusade was launched. Up until that time Jerusalem was an open city; Muslims, Jews and Christians living practically side by side sharing the Holy city quietly. But Pope Urban got a lot of people stirred up using everything from spin doctoring to outright false information (of course, that would never happen now…). Now he may have been a true believer (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) but in reality the “War to Take Back the Holy Land” was a grab at the control of rich shipping routes to the East that had the ancillary benefit of redirecting the aggression of the unlanded younger sons of the Nobility. Elder brother getting everything? No problem! Go to the Holy Land and set yourself up as King of Damascus!

(And they Europeans were not nice about it. They won the first Crusade through terror and horror. One of the first people on record to skin their captives alive and roast them on spits in front of the city walls where their own families could see? Frankish Crusaders.)

Now before you go scoffing at people being upset about something that happened over a thousand years ago, go look up how long the conflict has been going on between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. How long the Serbs and Croats have been duking it out in their area? Go down to Georgia sometime and say the name “William Tecumseh Sherman” and see what kind of reaction you will get.

Now imagine how the South would feel if the North had kept coming and coming….

Over and over as the Muslims organized and took back bits of their lands, the Catholic Europeans would wage war on them again and again to regain control. The Crusades were an almost continuous series of wars that went on for over two centuries.

And then after that they were sacked by Mongols. Then conquered by Ottoman Turks who were Muslims, but not of the same ethnic decent of other groups in the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire is the reason that the Middle East; once a store house and font of knowledge, the people who invented Algebra saved and studied the work of Greek philosophers, creators some of the largest colleges in the Medieval world, fell behind the West in technological development.

After the Ottoman Empire fell in WWI, the European powers did to the Middle East wheat they had done to China; carved it up into colonies. France took the Syrian peninsula while Britain took everything else, including Iraq, setting up a puppet king.

After WWII, France and Britain were forced to formally leave the Middle East countries to rule themselves, but (stop me if you heard this one too.) not before creating treaty’s that guaranteed that they would maintain some control over the region.

Then in 1948, the most influential event in modern politics in the Middle East took place: With United Nations approval and American and British support, Zionist settlers in Jordan declared themselves to be the “State of Israel” and drove out 800,000 Palestinians from their homes (some Palestinians still have their house keys to the homes that Jewish families are living in now). Then they proceeded to occupy 50% more territory than the U.N. had allotted to them. Israel has continued to cause problems. Zionist settlers will cross the border to settle in the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip and claim them for Israel, in violation of all treaties. They attempted to take the Suez canal in 1956. They have not rehoused Palestinian refugees as directed by the U.N., families living in camps for decades. They have literally dozens of U.N. resolutions against them.

And they remain the largest receiver of U.S. foreign aid , including military, ten years after aid to them was supposed to be phased out.

And we don’t lift a finger top stop them. We censure Palestinian suicide bombers, but don’t say word boo when Israeli tanks roll through Palestinian refugee camps blowing away women and children and using our money to do it.

That’s why al Queda bombed the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Not because we are “rich and happy and free” but because we are the mainstay of Israel.

I’m not saying that the Palestinians, nor any of the Muslim Middle East, has handled Israel with honor. They have not. Nobody's hands are clean in that conflict. Nor am I saying Israel doesn’t have a right to exist. It very much does, especially given what has happened to the Jews in Europe for over a thousand years. What I am saying is "This is how they see us". The Muslims in the Middle East cannot help but view our involvement in the Middle East as biased towards and in support of the Israelis. Everything we do in the Middle East is tainted by that alliance. To Muslim eyes in the Middle East, Iraq is considered part and parcel of the American/Israeli agenda. It’s no surprise to them at all that Britain and America, the two largest supporters of Israel, are also the two primary allies in the Conquest of Iraq.

Then there is Iraq’s history itself. Want to know what happened to the puppet government Britain set up? It fell to a coup. Which resulted in political instability which broke out occasionally in Civil War. The Ba’ath party rose to power with guess-who’s-help? Yep. The Good Ol’ U.S. of A. The fact that the Ba-‘ath party was a secular party we felt we could deal with them easier than an Islamic Government. (In fact, Donald Rumsfeld was working to help out Saddam against the Islamic Theocracy of Iran in 1980’s including, it is rumored, giving Hussein the chemical weapons he used against the Iran and later the Kurds.)

So basically what the Iraqis are watching is the coming of the Crusaders and the Brits wrapped up in one package. We say we come to “free them” but out actions show that what we are really there to do is exploit their oil reserves. We are setting up a government, but one with treaties that tie them firmly to our hip.

Why no one in this government could see that this operation was simply a replay of the same British tune, with most likely the same results, I do not know. Supposedly, our President has a History Degree from Harvard of all places. I guess a Harvard Degree doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

If history has shown us anything, it is that you cannot give people peace, you cannot make them have freedom. They have to fight for it. The Serbs and Croats were fighting for nigh on 500 years before the Communist Party rolled in and made them become one nation. But as soon as the Party fell and Yugoslavia splintered back into is component countries, they went right back to killing each other with gay abandon. And you cannot just give people freedom. The blacks in this country were freed in 1865, but it wasn’t until 1955 that they realized what Jim Crow had given them was not freedom and got up to fight for it.

People have to fight for it for both peace and freedom to realize what it means. They have to get sick of fighting each other, burn their hatred out until there is nothing left but the question, “Is there a better way?”. They have fight for their freedom in order to fully appreciate what the freedom is.

So even if the Iraq conflict was about freedom, which it obviously is not, it still wouldn’t work anyway. They have to find their own way, and that is all they are asking us to do: Leave them alone to find their own way.

(Unfortunatally, I do understand that simply pulling out would be irresponsible. We created this mess and it is our responsibility to try to clean it up. But we need stop building permenant military bases, get the contractors out of Iraq so that the Iraquis can have their jobs back & rebuild a stable economic base on which to create a stable govenrment and reliquish the final veto we maintain over the decisions of the Iraqui Oil Minstry. We need to make it clear to that Iraquis that we do not have long term plans on them.)