Life, Iran, ISIS, Our Fates, and an Unknown Future

 

One need remember that Iran and Iraq went at each other for a period just short of eight years starting on September 22, 1980 and lasting until August 20, 1988 and was initiated by Saddam Hussein and was largely considered to have been a failure by Iraq as Iran stopped the initial surge dead in its tracks and slowly but inexorably backed the Iraqi troops back and they eventually returned to their initial borders. This was just a part of the history of animosities between Iraq and Iran and was seemingly inevitable that they would go after one another. The fact that it was Saddam Hussein who began the hostilities was not so surprising and he may have even been nudged in that direction by the United States who still harbored great animosity towards the Iranians for the hostage crisis which was yet to have concluded. The United States hostages were not released until after the November Presidential elections on the very hour that President Reagan was sworn in to office. One might be able to claim that the hostage release coinciding with the swearing in of Ronald Reagan might make their release his very first accomplishment as President as few would even think to claim they were released as a sign of respect and a parting gift for President Jimmy Carter. The fact that the war between the secular dictatorial forces of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Shiite Muslim Sharia Iranian State of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini fought to a virtual standstill exchanging the same patches of ground as the fates ebbed and flowed neither capable of delivering a decisive blow that might make the other reel and collapse before a superior force. This was, in many ways, a conflict where despite governments picking sides, some places such as Israel was simply glad that the war kept both nations occupied and facing some fire situation which left them so preoccupied that they had little time to think about harming Israel, something else where these two nations might have also competed to see which could injure Israel the most.

 

Two years, less a mere eighteen days, Iraq decided to invade another neighbor, this time Kuwait. Starting on August 2, 1990 it took a mere two days to August 4, 1990 for Saddam Hussein’s army to sweep across Kuwait. This not only caused Iran to worry that another attack might be in the cards from their nemesis, it also made Saudi Arabia extremely nervous about the possibility that Saddam Hussein might have them in his sights as his next victim. Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz called his good and close friend, President George Herbert Walker Bush and the wheels were put in motion to ride to the rescue. The United States formed a coalition which included a number of Arab and Muslim States which worked under United Nations approval and removed Saddam Hussein’s troops from Kuwait destroying a huge number of the Iraqi armored vehicles including numerous Russian supplied tanks and armored personnel carriers plus scores of trucks and other vehicles. The Iraqi troops caused an unmitigated ecological disaster by setting virtually, if not every, oil well in the Kuwaiti vast oil fields. It took months to extinguish and recap every well and then proceed to put them back into service. Things actually appeared to have settled down in the threats between nations, but that did not mean all was well in the Middle East. Acting on what was interpreted to be United States urgings the Iraqi Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the North made an attempt to dethrone Saddam Hussein expecting the United States to provide some level of assistance. Well, United States assistance was never considered being sent as they had refused to even chase the Iraqi troops back to Baghdad after chasing them from Kuwait. The closest the United States manpower came to Iran was protecting the Americans working in the Kuwaiti oil fields putting out well fires and recapping wells before returning them to service, a task that took several years.

 

After the 9/11 terror attacks on the twin Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and another target foiled by the passengers of Flight 93 which they brought down at the cost of their own lives before it could reach its intended target which was believed to have been either the Capital building or the White House and the beginning of the war on terror with the invasions of Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden and fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, President George W. Bush requested further authorization to take military action against Saddam Hussein in order to prevent his further manufacture of chemical weapons and to terminate his reputed nuclear weapons program. The alleged nuclear weapons program had been backed by all evidence gathered by the British, the United States, France and the rest of Europe all indicated that Saddam Hussein an advanced nuclear weapons program which could have been completed except for the Israeli attack destroying the French built Osirak Reactor before it could be fueled and used to produce plutonium for a weapon. There is the common misconception that there was none of the precursors for a nuclear weapons program to be found in Iraq during the Second Gulf War. There was a large amount of Yellowcake, a form of raw uranium used for safe transport and storage and can be transformed into uranium hexafluoride which is what is fed into the centrifuges in order to enrich the uranium. Whereas these approximately five-hundred-fifty-tons of yellowcake, that is over one-million-pounds, were from the stores logged back in 1991 and was under the watchful eyes of the IAEA, that does not mean it was impossible for those stores to be utilized to jumpstart Saddam’s dream to attain nuclear weapons had he decided to demand that the IAEA inspectors leave Iraq and then gone full speed ahead in a mad dash towards making a weapon. North Korea has stores of yellowcake which under IAEA guards until it was not under IAEA guards. Granted it might have been difficult to get the yellowcake into production before the world arrived, as they arrived despite Saddam not touching those provisions as there were suspicions backed by faulty intelligence.

 

Now Saddam Hussein is long gone and Iran has all but annexed the southern third of Iraq, the Shiite controlled area that includes the capital city of Baghdad. The Kurdish has become an entity unto themselves and definitely has autonomy if not complete independence. The Iraqi government, which appears to be weak and feckless with Iran holding the real power but only in the southern third of the nation even partially cemented under their control, has thus far refused to provide any weapons or other provisions to reach either the Kurdish militias or the Sunni tribesmen thus leaving both to their own devices in fighting against such forces such as ISIS which has been marauding and murdering anybody who does not meet their high standards for Islamic purity. This fighting has mostly taken place in the Sunni central area of what has been Iraq and that has left the Sunni stuck between two murderous powers. The Shiite military from the south performs ethnic cleansing whenever they gain sufficient areas to conduct sweeps. It appears that the main people targeted are Sunni males of fighting age. When ISIS takes control of these same areas they too pick the same group and demand that they prove their devotion to Islam by joining the new Caliphate or else suffer the wrath of the true believers. They also threaten the families of these young and middle aged men most of whom just want to be left alone to tend to making a living and caring for their families. ISIS does not care if they are fathers raising a family with young children as they are true warriors for the faith and because their cause is pure, they themselves are pure as are their acts, thus their cause is righteous. This makes their courts just, their drafting of all able-bodied men of fighting age, willingly or not, righteous, their taking of supplies such as food, even if it deprives the people of proper means, is just and all they do and how they go about performing their actions are righteous. Their being holy warriors make anybody opposing their cause or placing themselves contrary to their demands acts of blasphemy. This is why they have been holding public executions and quick trials followed by swift execution of their judgement and the sentence. ISIS has been proving to be a force on the ground with which to contend. Should they ever manage to procure an air force of any size and with even the barest minimum of competence, then ISIS will have the potential to have become at the least an entity possessing the barest minimum for being a nation in the Middle East, at least as a replacement in some ways for Syria.

 

What will add significantly to the range and broaden the abilities of ISIS would be their gaining the backing of al-Qaeda, something they appear to have been doing piecemeal thus far as one former entity which had sworn their fealty to al-Qaeda are now switching and swearing fealty to ISIS such as Boko Haram. The recent threats made by ISIS may end up spelling their demise as they may be biting off more than they can chew. Their threats to replace the Arab Palestinian Authority actually make complete sense as they are two opposing sides of the forces against Israel. Where ISIS are Islamists who follow a strict interpretation of the Quran which defines their form of the Sharia, the Arab Palestinian Authority are secularist, socialist with a small semblance of democratic principles as long as such does not threaten those in the highest places. The Arab Palestinian Authority represent the most vile and far removed form of Islamic governance that one can find, they are oil and water, or more likely pure sodium and water. Hamas, on the other hand, has a very similar charter stand for the same world conquest and placing all of the world’s people under the banner of Sunni Islam by whatever means necessary. As Hamas and Islamic Jihad might have a better than average probability of joining ISIS as a whole entity and thus giving ISIS additional manpower which has already been tested in combat. The statement made by ISIS which could prove their taking on a nut they are unable to crack was their threat to also tackle Israel. The IDF would not need to hold back fighting ISIS as they habitually have been forced into doing with every possible entity watching their every move just waiting to pounce should Israel operate without the strictest of restraints almost requesting permission to return fire when her troops come under fire. The probability that ISIS will open up a new front within its current operating theater would be tactical suicide. Currently ISIS has three fronts, their borders with the Kurdish Peshmerga Militias who are well trained and disciplined holding the northern front in Iraq and the northeastern front in Syria, the Alawites are holed up with their backs against the Mediterranean Sea in the northwest rim of Syria, IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) and the remnants of the Iraqi Army in the south of Iraq and the entirety of their eastern front is the rest of the Iranian armed forces should they push in an eastern and there have been hints dropped this week that President Erdogan has made intonations that Turkey is considering moving down into Syria to scoop up as much of the lands as they are able and that would place another front for ISIS to face off against and of course ISIS has mentioned their desire to take control over the holy cities of Mecca and Medina which would involve a war with Saudi Arabia which would also bring the Egyptians into the fray. ISIS has one service they are providing the world at this stage, they are breaking apart the Iranian crescent by destroying Bashir al-Assad and breaking the direct link from Tehran through Baghdad on through Damascus and through to Beirut or Latakia, Baniyas, Sidon, Tartus, or Tyre and then out into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. ISIS is a horrific and barbaric entity on the order of something like a Saddam Hussein who gassed thousands of his own countrymen. Saddam Hussein rivaled Hafez al-Assad, the man who had murdered more Syrian people than any enemy until his son, Bashir al-Assad, became what appears to be the last president who may have set the bar to such a height for percentage of one’s nation either murdered, rendered without shelter, made into refugees, fled the nation or been imprisoned or simply disappeared without a trace. For the sake of the Western World it would be to their advantage for ISIS to engage fully with Iran preventing them the peaceful times which would allow them to pursue their nuclear weapons program to its completion including the ICBM missiles which could easily reach anywhere on earth. Maybe it is the fate of ISIS to foil the plans and progresses of the Iranians as United States President evidently will not go so. So, once again we find that silver lining within one of our darkest of clouds. Still, how long will we live with a world where we have to rely on scoundrels to do the work of an elected charlatan?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Root of the Real Problem With Iran Deal is Trust

 

The familiar line we are getting about the impending Iran nuclear agreement is that we cannot trust Iran. I do not believe that is the most worrisome problem as much as our inability to trust the United States President and Secretary of State to be honest or even for their claims and comments on what is and is not permitted and their ramifications to even contain a scintilla of truth, and that is a major trust problem. Since I have initially claimed that trusting Iran is not the main problem, perhaps we should first discuss what I mean by trusting Iran and then we can go to the root problem of President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry and the entire support staff and how far we can even trust the major advisors to the President.

 

President Obama, as almost everyone with eyes and ears has figured out, has a serious deficit in the foreign policy department which makes his domestic policies appear to be some of the greatest achievements in all of history. To claim the President Obama’s handling of America’s foreign dealings have been a blighted catastrophe may be giving them too much credit for actual achievement. The first improvement might be for him to stop whatever he is doing and then to pursue the exact opposite track. This would mean walking out of the Iran negotiations and reapplying the stiffest sanctions and working to enjoin as many other nations and international alliances to join in this pressure forcing the Iranian regime to realize they can either enter talks with an honest intent to reach some form of agreement with an in depth set of inspection routines which also includes snap inspection at the IAEA’s preference and not the paltry attempt at appearing to allow such inspections when they are restrained to only make snap request for permission under the current stipulations being discussed. President Obama has produced a strawman which he has burned in effigy at least a thousand times and has also added an additional inferred quality to his strawman which gives it the stench of one of the most horrid and ancient hatreds of planet Earth. Going back and listening to President Obama’s own words and he interchanges the strawman of the only other choice is war with claims that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is demanding the United States risk going to war with Iran. The President has labeled any opposition to his plan as surrendering to that warmonger from Israel, Netanyahu thus invoking the specter of anti-Semitism. The problem is that we cannot expect or trust that President Obama has anything other than the surrender of the entirety of United States control or even influence in the future of the Middle East including providing any protection for Israel, or perhaps centered on neutering Israeli power by granting Iran hegemonic power in the Middle East potentially greater than Israel possesses. President Obama has already made the suggestion that if only Israel would be rid of its nuclear arsenal then perhaps there might be a possibility that Iran would immediately end their dedicated nuclear weapons programs and unless Israel were to dismantle their nuclear arsenal and potentially render their Dimona reactor inert and permanently unusable then Israel should expect to accept all blame for any deficiencies which may prove to be resulting from any Iran deal President Obama and company are capable of producing. The entirety of any shortcoming will be blamed on Israel in general and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular by President Obama and the leftist media will add the responsibility and blame for Iran becoming a nuclear power by placing the onus on Israel. That has been the message and it will only be made to be heard louder and clear as a bell when the perfidy of President Obama is committing in order to make a deal. President Obama is arranging for any positives that are reaped from his Iran deal, which will likely be defined mathematically as the null or empty set, while all blame for the deficiencies being caused by Israeli intransigence preventing a broader deal which would have made the entire Middle East nuclear free and immediately breaking out in song and flowers sprouting across the lands. That is the crux of the treachery being committed by President Obama and his setup escape clause is, ‘blame Israel’ not he.

 

Now let’s proceed on to Iran and why Iran can be trusted. Simply put, the Iranian leadership and especially Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been brutally honest, which is more than what can be stated about President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry or the dire leftist media in their reporting, or more accurately, their lack of reporting on the situation. The Iranian leadership has been very up front in denying that they will permit any inspections ever on their military facilities, period! They have insisted that there be only scheduled inspections of which they are to be given ample notice and that they hold the final say on where and what the inspectors can visit and see, control over any samples taken, and generally be permitted to skirt around any potential troubles their nuclear program inspection might pose. They have flat out stated they will be utilizing their most recent and improved centrifuges which have the capability of producing weapons grade as much as 95% enriched uranium of 3.5%, that is three and one half percent, in a single cascade thus removing the troublesome storage of 20% enriched uranium as would have been required by their previous centrifuges. Further, they have assured all that should they design and produce even more efficient centrifuges in the future which would allow for a cascade needing fewer centrifuges and thus less likely to fail, then they will be exchanging the older centrifuges with the latest and greatest centrifuges no matter what President Obama is claiming. Probably the greatest of the Iranian claims is that there will be no restrictions on their missile program which since the beginning of the nuclear negotiations came under the tutelage of President Obama and his band of merry-making advisors who may only speak of the greatness of the emperor and his new policies back in 2009 has advanced from barely being capable of reaching Greece or Egypt or placing a satellite in near Earth orbit for a few revolutions to now being capable of striking France and Algeria and placing communications or spy satellites into orbit (which potentially means they could possibly strike anywhere on the globe with a fair amount of difficulty but still within their technical abilities).

 

Then there were the comments glossed over and quickly forgotten by the Western leftist media as Iranian ‘elected’ President Hassan Rouhani had claimed, in what is dismissed as ancient history and being long before he rose to the Presidency as a new and now suddenly moderate, what he had stated in what may as well have been a former life way back in 2001, “If one day … the Islamic world will be equipped with weapons available to Israel now … the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth but would only do damage to the Islamic world.” Recounting his term as the Lead Negotiator for Iran at the nuclear talks back in 2003, when the talks included only France, Britain, and Germany, he boasted that using a smile and a few jokes he completely disarmed the European negotiators convincing them he was a moderate reformer determined to reach an amicable agreement and then proceeded to drag out the talks. When he was assigned to lead the negotiations for Iran he boasted, “The day we invited the three European ministers, only 10 centrifuges were spinning at Natanz. We could not produce one gram of U4 or U6 [uranium hexafluoride]. We did not have the heavy water, we could not produce yellowcake, our total production of centrifuges inside the country was 150. We wanted to complete all of these, we needed time.” Referring to his use of deception President Rouhani related, “While Iran has a right within the nuclear non-proliferation regime to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes it has decided voluntarily to suspend all uranium enrichment and processing activities as defined by the IAEA. The statement of Tehran in that declaration, there was a resolution that all [uranium enrichment and processing] must stop but we did not allow it.” Wearing an example of that gleaming and disarming famous smile, Rouhani boasts about Iran completing the construction of the Bushehr nuclear reactor as well as the Arak heavy water and plutonium producing reactor complex while Iran was increasing the number of centrifuges from 150 to 1,700 at Natanz facility. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu summed up the Rouhani approach and stylized deception he has packaged especially for what Rouhani perceives as Western fools easily led to there they wish to be led while delivering exactly what the Iranians desire stated, Iranian President Rouhani, “he’s criticizing his predecessor for being a wolf in wolf’s clothing. His strategy is to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Smile and build a bomb.” All it takes is a smile and a few jokes, wonderful.

 

There are other items we can be assured Iran honestly intends to follow through on and that they have announced repeatedly but the leftist media only sees the Cheshire Cat and the face away while the smile lingers. Some of the more pertinent claims include but are not limited to the following. Iran will be permitted to operate under these agreements nineteen thousand centrifuges. The Iranian military bases will be off-limits to inspectors who are merely spies for the Western powers. Iran refuses to answer the questions about previous activities which may have been operated by its military. We will keep all military activities secret and beyond the sight of the inspectors. Why is it that Israel is permitted to have hundreds of nuclear weapons but Iran is not allowed any such devices; that is an inequality which must not be permitted to stand. Iranian internal affairs are not to be interfered with by the Western Powers. And then there always is that favorite around which they have built a number of confabs which were more celebratory than they were policy in their appearance and the reporting by the mainstream media but if viewed and the speeches words were heeded, these were some of the most threatening and frightening celebratory events which targeted the conquest of the west but especially insisted that at their first possible convenience once they had the ability that Iran had a special treatment for the United States and Israel as stated in the banners and the name of these conventions, “A World Without Zionism or America.”

 

That should be sufficient to send a chill down the spine of every western democracy, republic or free society by any governance because Iran is out to conquer and destroy every last one of us. They have already started to spread their range of control which currently is taking a drubbing in Syria, but be assured that when all is over and the dust settles back on the rubble that Iran will have retained Damascus and the roads into Lebanon as that is their minimum requirement. The only way this can be avoided may be even more ominous as it would take making Isaiah 17:1, “The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.” a reality, something that may already be about to become fact as the only question is what will happen should Damascus fall to ISIS or al-Nusra. Would Iran turn Damascus into nothing more than rubble neighboring a fully functional international airport reserved for the private and military use by Iran? Of course they would as Iran is willing to put the entire world to the torch as by so doing they bring their salvation back from the well to deliver them the world for out of the chaos the Mahdi would return. The leadership of Iran is completely infested with what are known as ‘Twelvers’ who believe that only by spreading war and its misery and chaos far and wide encompassing the world will their perfect end times world be founded. They so not fear war, they worship it and that taints their every decision. This added to everything else we have seen from Iran would lead any sane person to believe that they will say anything while doing exactly what they believe is necessary to serve their ends. Many have yet to figure out their end desires despite it being unbelievably simple, it is the same destiny as proclaimed by ISIS and included in the Hamas Charter, conquest and purification, read all convert to their version of Islam or die, of society and rid it of all who refuse their superiority in all things starting with their religious beliefs. The sole difference is that ISIS and Hamas are Sunni and Iran Shiite making our final choice limited to who wins, if it is Iran we will all be Shiites or dead, if it is ISIS we will all be Sunnis (their definition which is very likely far more radical than mainline Sunnis) or dead, if it is Hamas we will all be Sunnis (their definition which is very much more radical than mainline Sunnis) or dead. There is an overriding theme to their vision of the future but there is another choice beyond the surrendering to Allah and his designated but self-proclaimed supreme leaders and authoritarian, imperial tormentors and the judgmental inquisitor of all that is acceptable and holy; we can nip this in the bud while it has not fully metastasized and their cancerous imperative spread and gained sufficient power to complete their fantasized dreams making their heaven on earth which for many, myself prominently in the category, will be someplace quite a bit less inviting and certainly quite permanent.

 

Humor me a little aside which will lead to one of my favorite Winston Churchill quotes. One has to realize the greatness that was Winston Churchill which could not be completely appreciated until recent events though some of us took his warnings to heart as we saw the coming threat far back. Winston Churchill warned the West about the rise of Nazi horrors and the true nature of Adolph Hitler’s ambitions. For some time the West, meaning mostly Europe, the United States and the other western powers have had the realization, or perhaps more of a belief, that the world could not be conquered by one nation without the total destruction of the world. They theorized that anybody even fathoming as a possible theory the conquest of the world would inevitably see the radical increase in damage and destructive consequences of war, especially the use of nuclear weapons which brought forth the Japanese surrender, this interpolating would see the folly of attempting to conquer the world as doing so would bring about its destruction and one would be inheriting a smoldering and mostly uninhabited world taken back to the Stone Age. Unfortunately, the whole of humanity has not figured this out or they have conceived of a plan by which the world will not be entirely laid waste and the conquest and subjugation of the world and its population is still possible. Winston Churchill warned the world about Stalin and Communism coining the terminology of ‘Iron Curtain’ in his speech given at Westminster College of Fulton, Missouri, where he stated,

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone – Greece with its immortal glories – is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation.”

Finally, Winston Churchill defined the threat and nature of Islam in his original writing of “The River War” when it was first published as a two-volume set edition in 1899, but this selection was removed when the book was condensed into one volume and republished edition in 1902 though no reason could be found for the reasoning other than to shorten the book a number of quotes, especially the longer quotes, as this is, were removed. The quote here defines Winston Churchill’s cognitive and conclusive notes of the pervasive religious shortcoming of resisting the advances of science but mostly he relates his observations of both individual Muslims and the overriding societal whole under Islam. Let’s let the quote speak for itself.

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

Lastly I would like to close with one final quote which addresses in its time the threat which was being ignored in Europe and the possibility of the threat becoming so overwhelming as to make victory impossible. We may be witnessing the exact same scenario concerning current threats largely because our political leaders are too intimidated to speak the truth. They have been cowed by Political Correctness which has blinkered their eyes and closed their mouths. We can either hope and pray that our leaders collectively awaken from their stupor and rub the war weariness from their eyes and see the danger lurking just around the corner should certain events take a turn for the worse and we wait too long hoping that what we fear is not what we wish to avoid so what we see we visualize as a lesser threat which can be resolved without risk. If our violence averted society rejects even the just war then we will face extermination or at the very least the inversion and destruction of the freedoms we enjoy but refuse to defend. Winston Churchill described this scenario far better than I ever will as his mastery of the language was exquisite while mine is somewhat more of a blunt instrument beating people over the head repeatedly if that is what it takes. Churchill wrote

“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

 

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

How Did This Mess Get Started

 

Looking at the world around us one has to wonder how it all got into the horrible state of affairs. There had to be a lynchpin which started the unraveling, an actual starting point which we can trace everything back to and find the culprit who made that initial error, mistake in judgement. But in order to do that one has to decide which of the unravellings we should start with as there are so many to choose from. There is Putin, or as we like to call him, Vlad the Invader (our original reference recently stolen by a Fox News commentator the erudite pontificator), who has shaken up parts of Central Asia and Eurasia and is threatening Eastern Europe, or at least there are some former nations swallowed by the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union; there is China who apart from building a blue water navy with which not only to challenge the United States Naval hegemony of the seas, a privilege formerly owned by the British, but are also building Islands in order to cement her claims to the vast South China Sea and thus control or divert much of the sea lane traffic from the Indian Ocean in and out of the Pacific Ocean; there is the financial problems in Europe threatening the stability of the European Union and the adoption of one currency with the Euro; and the final and greatest roiling and boiling cauldron, the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). There may be other problems out there but these are the most prevalent and easily identifiable.

 

Let us start with the easiest of these, the financial meltdown in Europe. This problem was a situation just waiting to happen as soon as the most disparate economic nations decided to adopt the same currency unit without permitting a central planning committee to set their financial and economic planning and other such decisions in-line with each other. There was absolutely no way the less productive economies of such nations as Spain, Greece and Portugal had any hope of paralleling the productivity, GDP and economic output of a France, Britain or Germany. Additionally, adding the former Warsaw Pact nations probably sparked an even more divergent economic growth rate as nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and others plus the reuniting of Germany allowing the already dominant economy to also feast on the same rebuilding and economic recovery from the less efficient economic model of central planning to a market driven economy which granted these nations a greatly exaggerated GDP during their basically playing catch-up with the rest of Europe and becoming modernized economies. Thus the Euro was a pipe dream which probably had hoped that through the singular monetary unit, the Euro, would lead to a centralizing of economic planning being turned over to the European Union to plan these different economies as if they were a single unit. That was highly unlikely as that would have spelled the demise of the nation states and rendered them merely states in the continental nation of the European Union. What the European Union bureaucrats were seeking was a situation very similar to a former economic model using the Union name, the Soviet Union, replacing Moscow with Brussels and otherwise retaining that centralized, top down dictatorial form of economic planning. The hope of having all the European nations of the European Union surrender that much power to centralized governance was an impossible and thankfully unthinkable centralization of power. This became first indicated when Great Britain took a vote of the people on whether or not to adopt the Euro and the people were clearly heard to say not without losing to an invading army first, otherwise reported as a resounding no and Great Britain retained the Pound but with time would accept the Euro but it would change in buying power as it performed against the Pound. The British model of accepting the Euro while retaining their own currency would very likely have been a far better solution considering what we know now. By allowing each nation their own currency while having them also accept the Euro as legal tender the individual national economic planning would have reflected in their national currency which could slide against the Euro while still having an exchange rate at which the Euro would have an established buying power. This way Greece could remain Greece and Germany could march to their own economic tune and both nations would accept the Euro but their economy would be reflected in the exchange rate which would be set in Brussels. That would provide each nation with its economic freedoms while granting the central control freaks in Brussels their power in determining the value of the Euro to the individual currencies.

 

Next, let us take Vlad the Invader and resurgent Russia. Here the answer is simple; things are as they were inevitably meant to be. Russia has always had that appetite to chew on and swallow the smaller nations around her and some more so than others. Georgia and the Ukraine both fall into the more so than others category. Eventually there would have come along a strong and imperialist charismatic leader, instead we got a shirtless man experiencing a middle age crisis and owning a Napoléon complex likely due to the shared attribute of being of diminutive size also known as vertically challenged. Thus we have Vlad the Invader slowly but inexorably making advances which could have been potentially limited in the Ukraine to the Crimea but there would have been no stopping Putin’s appetite for conquest short of tempting his readiness for war by admitting the Ukraine and any other Warsaw Pact nation into NATO as well as the European Union. Of course this would have had the effect of making any of these moves by Russia on its neighboring countries, or as Vlad sees these nations being simply escaped provinces to be reclaimed, and thus pushing NATO or the weaker European Union into backing their mutual self-defense claims of, to quote an oldie but still a goodie, their all for one and one for all defensive agreements contained in both the European Union and especially NATO. So this can be traced back to Putin’s training as a KGB agent merging with his Napoléon complex plus his nationalistic and simplistic view that Russia was dealt a cruel and unfair blow with the, as he sees it, calamitous and most disastrous and lamentable event of the twentieth century and that he was the individual given the extraordinary and heaven ordained duty to rebuild Russia to her full and former glory. As far as others fearing Russia, especially in that neighborhood, Vlad the Invader has succeeded in spades.

 

China is another historical hegemonic power in the Pacific Ocean or at least the western shores of the Pacific Ocean and at times the Indian Ocean as well. One has to remember that China used to have regular wars with the other great power of Asia, India, back when simple people power was a determining factor and has only in recent history run astride of hard times. Historically China has either been the regional power controlling all she could survey or China was broken into separate mini-states which often warred with each other thus diminishing their powers. The only other situation was when China was overrun or controlled by outside influences and she was in a slow but constant state of regaining her independence and eventually sovereignty over her invaders. China has been and remains the slow and patient survivor and eventual victor which one need but wait to see her resurgence. China has a long history of simply refusing to be cowed or defeated, merely witnessing a temporary inconvenience. China has relied on the winds of change always knowing that no matter what the calamity, be it outside invaders or internal misrule, everything changes and change is the one criteria which can be relied upon to render all things dust. China realizes that there are time when you are riding the crest of the wave and time when the wave has crashed down upon you and whichever end of that wave you find yourself, you will eventually find yourself at the other extreme so enjoy the best of times and remember them as a goal in the worst of times. For China time has been her greatest ally and greatest enemy but she also knows that time is her greatest weapon. China will rise and fall just as the ocean tides, just on a much longer cycle.

 

Then there is the Extended Middle East which incorporates the traditional Middle East and North Africa and often called MENA. We like Extended Middle East better. This area has always been a cauldron of swirling fates. One need do no more than read the Bible, the Old Testament, to realize the great swings of fate for all who resided in this area. There have been great empires which rose from next to nothing to greatness only to be blown away like the desert sands. Some of these empires blew away so completely that one is unable to find their descendants as it is as if they were snatched from the Earth itself. Probably the strangest of stories is the people of the Bible who only recently returned to their historic, ancient lands, Israel. However, this return has become the central story and burdened with the weight of responsibility for all the unrest anywhere on the globe and particularly throughout the Extended Middle East. Despite there being no actual or traceable root to the great turmoil destroying and potentially redrawing the map of the Extended Middle East to Israel, that has not prevented many from historians to political pundits to media reporters and even to governments and their agencies such as the United States Department of State from laying all of the blame at Israel’s doorstep.

 

The turmoil in the central Middle East is nothing new as it is the control point for all trade historically between three massive and divergent continents; Africa, Europe and Asia. This was the locations of a city-state which had no viable crop or natural resource and was hidden away behind a narrow splitting in a rock face and the city was entirely built into another rock face which had an outer clearing protected by tall rock walls and survived purely on trade and taking a percentage of all transactions. The city was Petra which finally and literally fell out of use after an earthquake made its further use untenable. But Petra was an indication on exactly how important the areas of the Middle East were for trade between the three continents. Tracing history in this area you find such names as Egypt, Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Philistines, Minoans, Canaanites who worshipped such gods as Moloch and Baal, Persians and entering the more modern age, the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and finally the French and British. Where to trace back the turmoil and near constant warfare of the Middle East, perhaps to Cain and Abel and the earliest recorded use of a rock as a tool of war. That might be a stretch but the earliest conflict likely predates writing by a sufficient amount of time that it also ceased being a part of the oral history and never got recorded just as the actual traceable location of Atlantis was never given (Pillars of Hercules and out in the great waters, like that helps).

 

But the recent difficulties and intermitted warfare both between nations and internal to nations is traceable to a particular intentional act meant to create just such internal strife and potentially these external wars in order to prevent the area from ever again uniting into the one promise the French and British had given to particular Arab tribal, nations and even clan leaders to persuade them into assisting them in their efforts against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, the reestablishment of the Caliphate, meaning the areas of the Ottoman Empire intact as a singular entity, and leaving these leaders as the ruling council and the ones who would choose the new Caliph. Instead, this promise was not only shattered but the lines drawn after World War I in both the Middle East and rest of the Ottoman Empire as well as the Austria Hungarian Empire in order to prevent there ever being a reunification thus preventing these powers from becoming preeminent and capable of starting the next conflagration. The division of the Austro-Hungarian Empire mostly achieved its purpose and the next war where it did arise out of Germany which was generally a previous part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had only in the late 1800s gained its unified formation independent of outside control but not necessarily free of their influences thus leading to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi efforts and Word War II. But in the Middle East we had the Sykes–Picot Agreement which made completely arbitrary borders without, or possibly intentionally ignoring, tribal lines and clans or any of the natural political alignments often splitting lands as in the case of the Kurds; who also were promised their own nation as were the Jews in separate agreements but instead the Kurdish lands were divided and became parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran; making each nation internally unstable. Iraq is probably the most well-known of these divisions which in the case of Iraq divided the lands such that the Shiites were predominant in the south, the Sunni predominant in the center and the Kurds predominant in the north. This forced each of these imaginary nations to eventually find that the only way to restore and keep the peace was the rise of a militant strongman willing to impose peace by force of arms such as was the case under Saddam Hussein. Say whatever you like about Saddam Hussein such as he was a butcher, a murderer and a hard tyrant with an iron fist, he kept Iraq from devolving into internecine warfare such as we are witnessing today.

 

The rest of the turmoil which we are suffering through today may have had a recent triggering event, namely the Cairo speech by United States President Barack Obama and his foreign policy which was centered around his campaign promise to end the wars and bring the troops home. Unfortunately for the majority of the people turned victims in the Extended Middle East, President Obama pulled all of the United States military personnel from both Afghanistan and Iraq prematurely as neither nation had developed the experience of the new governance nor the military ability to resist disorder while, especially in Iraq, the suppressed majority had some real and serious issues and grudges to settle with the minority who had ruled the nation through oppressions and they were out to get that revenge which tore the nation apart making it ripe for a force such as ISIS to tear into its midsection and even gain some support from the people there. The Sykes–Picot Agreement was designed to make the Middle East in particular and the Extender Middle East by division of who controlled what area which became independent nations with the arbitrary borders established by their respective colonizers, left the entirety of these areas as a tinder box simply waiting for that spark and it was likely the Cairo Speech and the enthusiastic attempt after the Tunisian vegetable cart vendor’s self-immolation and subsequent uprising in Tunisia being used as the trigger for President Obama’s attempt to redraw the Middle East around granting the Muslim Brotherhood preeminence over the region sharing control with Iran as the hegemon in the east and the Muslim Brotherhood in the west. Even had this plan succeeded it would have only set up a different state of conflict but this time with two very strong entities making for an even potentially greater struggle. The war right now is contained for the most part to the Greater Syrian conflict which includes ISIS and Iraq and the Iranian intervention, and the Egyptian struggle internally for the most part with the Egyptian military wresting control from the Muslim Brotherhood. The trouble in Libya is tribal and most likely to remain in Libya unless ISIS gets a firm and significant foothold and then there will be trouble as ISIS then moves to take all of Libya and begins their spread into Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria, but especially Egypt. History will likely eventually lay the blame for the current explosion of unrest and open warfare in the Extended Middle East to the United States meddling and doing so by proxy removing their personnel, especially military, from the Extended Middle East and stirring the pot so to speak and hoping for the best. They failed, or should we simply say the truth, President Obama really had no idea what he was attempting and misunderstood the players and nearly everything in the Middle East and almost every other foreign affairs which he has chosen action or inaction. Incompetence beyond measure being wielded by a self-indulgent, uninformed, narcissist with delusions of competence and wisdom that produces a boondoggle that only complete ineptitude, ignorance and delusions of grandeur could produce. I am sure there are other adjectives which would apply but for the sake of brevity shall we coin a new phrase and call such complete ineffectiveness which produces great conflagrations as doing an Obamy.

 

Beyond the Cusp