Hopelessness(as a function of indifference) + poverty + time = genocide
Read the headlines and it’s there. Killing and more killing. 5 soldiers died today in Kabul. We hear of the small deaths and are only sometimes shocked when the totals are occasionally revealed. But the carnage is so far away that we don’t understand it and the individual deaths are only small drops of blood that don’t mean anything to us. We are steeped in the worst of conditions: indifference. We are the cause of global woe because by doing nothing, we indicate to the leadership that the situation is acceptable.
The reality remains. Our indifference is, was, and will be the cause of suffering; and eventually that suffering will come to visit us on our front stoop.
To understand the aforementioned formula for genocide, I humbly ask you to consider the following historical events and economic concepts. As these are not taught in our school systems, I have provided recommended reading if you’d like to expand your awareness of this sadly unknown part of World History. Our current oil woes and military debacle in Iraq are directly inherited from WWI and WWII. Iraq as a killing field is not a new thing. Us not knowing history has doomed us to repeat it.
· How much do you know about the Treaty of Versailles? Get some background on Wikipedia; it’s enough to help you see the big picture.
· Do you know what daily life became in Post WWI Germany? Do you understand the economics of the Weimar Republic and how its collapse affected the rest of Europe? Read Roth’s What I saw: reports from Berlin 1920-1933.
· Do you understand that all parties of the war bankrupted themselves and their citizenry and the devastation and ruin of WWI lead to the Great Depression?
· Do you understand the economic concepts of Sunk Cost and Lost Opportunity and how these costs become alarmingly magnified by wars and cause economic havoc for decades if not centuries? Read Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.
· Do you understand the folly of WWI and why the stupidest, largest waste of human life (if you include WWII as a continuation) even started? Read Tuchman’s Guns of August
· Do you understand why “Peace without Victory” could not stop the conflict?
· Do you understand Imperial politics and that Globalization existed in many disgusting forms that the English, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian and French governments exploited for centuries? Any decent textbook on European History will cover this.
Our educational system doesn’t allow us to connect the dots. How does genocide get started? Is this a phenomenon just of WWII or did it happen before? Can it happen again?
Genocide is always a risk when you have weapons of mass destruction and an attitude of indifference in surrounding nations.
We are taught to be indifferent because our erroneous value system encourages us to believe that wars are good for the economy. This false notion is planted early, mainly by what we are taught about WWII.
As the “victors” we got to write the history (read Churchill’s excellent history on WWII). A typical American is taught minimally about WWI and WWII is presented in an American classroom as a “good war”. It is presented as an economic “cure” for the Great Depression. There is no such thing as a good war. And as long as we view wars as economic stimulus packages, then we are doomed to be perpetually at war, in constant conflict because we lack the ingenuity and faith to build a sustainable economic way of being. Read Vidal’s Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace
The reality of the World Wars is this: WWI was a pissing contest that went out of control between France and Germany. By its end, WWI became a relentless oil grab that had to cease due to both sides running out of men and money. They needed the 25 years in between the wars to grow more men and to raise or steal the money needed to continue the conflict and the oil grab.
But whom should we blame? If blame must be assigned, and there is plenty of idiocy to satisfy multiple theories, let us rest the bulk of it on France’s leadership. France had a global empire for centuries and pissed it away through poor stewardship and inbred management principles. Her people wised up and during the French Revolution got rid of one of the worst governments to ever curse a populace.
But the culture of ruling with the passions was instilled in France and she continued to wage war, most famously with Napoleon. (The Napoleonic wars technically were the First World War because the wars were global conflicts. America famously avoided it by not getting sucked into either side; we merely sold arms to the fighters. We sought to emulate this model for WWI, but couldn’t stay out of the fray.)
Napoleon really pissed off the Teutonic tribes by invading them, humiliating them and stealing their land. But since warfare in those days was dictated by Sea Power, the Teutonic Tribes didn’t stand a chance as they were not united and were hopelessly landlocked. This lesson was not lost on Hitler and his generals.
So now we can lay the blame on France for not being the grown-up in the Franco-Prussian/German relationship. It was up to France to bind up the wounds after the Napoleon fiasco and make friends with her embittered neighbor. This did not happen and we are stuck with the grisly inheritance of 2 World Wars with millions of dead people; death on such a vast scale that we are unable to understand or place proper value to the loss.
Since France and Germany were unable to come to a satisfactory settlement of their issues on the battlefield, the fighting continued at the Peace Conference (what an ironic thing to call it!) in 1919. Since all the European powers were bled dry to the point where they couldn’t afford to bury the dead soldiers and left the many hundred thousands of bodies to rot where they fell, one has to wonder why France got to dictate the Terms of Surrender for Germany. Both countries lost that war, but since Germany was narrowly outmanned by the combined armed forces of Britain, France and the US the war was called in The Triple Alliance’s favor.
If you are familiar with the Great Disservice to Humanity cooked up in 1919, you’ll understand the cruel and stupid terms that Germany had to agree to after the war. These terms, as you know, were not tenable and resulted in the collapse of Germany’s economy, which triggered the Great Depression. Thank you, France!
To fully grasp how bad things were in Germany before Hitler’s rise to power, I beseech you to read Read Roth’s What I saw: reports from Berlin 1920-1933. This horrifying account of the economic devastation suffered by the Germans will open your eyes to the depths that people can sink even in the “modern” world. Her neighbors were also broke, so no one tried to bail Germany out except for the US. And when Weimar failed, we ignored Germany’s plight as we sank into the Great Depression.
Isaac Newton observed that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is true of physics and of human interactions.
The economics of Post-WWI Germany was a breeding ground for war mongering. The violence of global indifference to the plight of the average German was turned into Potential Energy. This Potential Energy was turned into the Kinetic Energy of War when a man like Hitler came to power and sanctioned and focused the despair and hatred that average Germans felt because they had been treated with the worst of all human emotions: indifference.
It was indifference that allowed the stupidity of Versailles to prevail; indifference that left Germany alone so she could re-arm; indifference that lead to global pacification; indifference that allowed Germany to kill millions of her own citizens; indifference that allowed Germany to annex Austria and roll into Czechoslovakia; indifference that allowed America to be sidelined until it was nearly Germany’s game. And we only came into the war because the Japanese dared to encroach on “our” ocean ironically named the Pacific. For more in indifference, read Johnson’s What we knew: terror, mass murder and everyday life in Nazi Germany.
We all pay the price as young men who grow up in dire, hopeless poverty, turn into hating, killing machines. This is happening today on our continent in the Inner Cities of the US, and in Mexico’s drug cartels. It is happening all over the world. The Kamikazi fighting mentality is reborn in the men and women who will blow themselves up in endlessly futile gestures of violence that results in more violence.
This same economic foment is going on in Darfur, it existed for years in Somalia and Rwanda, and now in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must learn this deadly formula over and over:
Hopelessness(as a function of indifference) + poverty + time = genocide
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Tribes
Author’s note:
The author has special knowledge of neither Iraq, nor Middle Eastern studies; this puts him on a level playing field with our esteemed national Deciders.
Tribalism in Arabia and America
Based on our simplistic approach to Iraq, it would seem we have no idea about tribalism. Ironically, the US has had a long history of it. From The Hatfields and McCoys to dueling politicians to the Trail of Tears, to the War Between the States, we have had first-hand experience with tribes. It is time for us to refocus the current strife in Iraq and consider how much we have in common with feuding tribal people.
Tribalism in Arabia
Long ago, there was a great civilization in Arabia. While we wandered through morasses of pig shit in Europe, the Arabs had an advanced culture and an excellent standard of living. For reasons unknown to the ignorant author, one day, there were only Tribes in Arabia. And they didn’t get along because of limited water resources and vastly differing codes of conduct that separated the tribes from each other, similar to tribal differences that caused unending friction among American Indians.
So the tribes warred amongst one another, and the West took no notice after the Crusades. Then in the 1880s, Imperial Europe turned to the Persian Gulf, at first purely out of trade routes in case the War to End all Wars should come to fruition. After all, they had spent so much time and money on military strategies, it seemed a terrible waste to shelve them.
Tribalism in Europe
Europe was a collection of tribes cleverly disguised as nations. The balance of power in Europe was an unstable mess and Germany, a late-comer to the Imperial game, was lagging behind the other powers. She feared trade wars and being cut out of the global game, so she did something very clever. Germany befriended the Turks and the Turks welcomed German money and engineering, as they were stumbling a bit as an empire, too. Since Germany was landlocked, she came up with the brilliant idea of building a railway across the desert that would give her direct access to the East and the ability to get around Britain’s all-powerful Navy and the profit-sucking tolls of the Suez Canal. In the event of war, the railroad would move troops and fuel out of range of the pesky British gunboats.
The British and French were non-plussed at this friendship, but allowed the rails to be built, since they had no reason to stop them until the war began. And once the fighting started, and the realities of mechanized war’s dependency on fuel sank in, oil became a deciding factor in armed conflict.
The Turks had already joined with Germany, so that meant that the Arabs needed to be courted to the British side. One would think this wouldn’t be so hard to do, since the Turks were cruel overlords to the Arabs and the normal foreign policy line of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” should have applied to the Arabs and British/French alliance.
Tribalism and deal-making made this process a painful one and some tribes went with the Turks, because they believed the Turks would win and exact terrible revenge on the Arabs should they have taken up arms against their oppressors.
It is important to note the complexities for the Arabs in picking sides for WWI. The choices weren’t obvious for them then, just as they aren’t obvious now: there is no Arab identity. They are still inherently tribal. We can draw lines on maps until the camels come home, it ain’t gonna change the fundamental differences that our cultures have. Arabs don’t believe in lines on maps. They don’t stand in straight lines waiting at the market. They don’t observe traffic signs. They operate in a totally different way from us, and because the West has superior weapons technology, the Arabs have had to knuckle under to our power, but there is intense desire in them to live life the way they see fit. It is a way that makes no sense to us.
Until now, we have been the dominant culture and we have called the shots. And we are justifiably terrified that this may change because we need their crude.
The Arabs were able to unite, for a brief time, during their revolt against the Turks. The British capitalized on this and managed to eek out a victory in the East, which they added to the stalemate at the unsatisfying, and inconclusive, end of WWI.
In Paris, 1919, both sides were bled nearly dry and of course, the “victors” divvied up the spoils of war. They looked at likely places the oil would be and drew lines on maps according to the oil fields. This is how Iraq came into being.
Britain and France also denied the Arabs credit for their part in said “victory” and relegated them to being under French rule instead of allowing Arabs to have self-government. It is this essential betrayal that has fueled anti-West sentiments in this century. Let’s leave the Crusades out of this discussion.
Tribalism in America
America is a strange place. We can’t understand why Iraq is having such a rough time getting their governmental act together. But compare the arbitrary granting of Iraq’s existence at a cursed table in Paris, 1919 to the 400 year progression that lead to the formation of our nation. We evolved slowly over time. Our country was funded by British, French and Spanish sources, all of which used colonies to generate revenue for the respective motherlands.
We got this unbelievable break with the founding fathers and their ingenious system of distribution of power through representative democracy; checks and balances; separation of church and state; religious tolerance; and the Trinity of government: the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches. And these tenets of our government took years to evolve as well. And their evolution wasn’t easy or pretty. They were resultant of intellectual dogfights among intellectual giants. Jefferson was so disgusted with the process, and so convinced that we got it wrong, that after one such fight, he retreated to Monticello and didn’t talk to anyone for three years. How can we expect the Iraqis, whose intellectual base has been eroded through inprisonment, executions and exile, to suddenly spring up from oppression and start a healthy democratic debate?
We had 400 years of slave labor, which created a false economy and allowed for huge profits to be made from human labor. We eliminated Native tribalism through accidental germ warfare and military conquest. And finally, we ended American Tribalism with the War Between the States. And still, we are the red and blue states and seethe with differences.
To understand the Iraqi perspective, (and granted insurgents are mostly from outside Iraq, because the situation is so much more complex than anyone has guessed at) use the following flawed model.
Imagine, if you will, that during our revolution, the French came in. They took over operations; occupied our country with their military; and made us all eat snails; and we paid extra taxes so that the leadership in France could each buy extra powdered wig and support a mistress. How would the colonists have reacted? Maybe a few road-side cart bombs at first, but it would have escalated from there….
There is no solution to our predicament. If we leave, it will appear as though we triggered a long-suppressed civil war. If we stay, it will appear as though we triggered a long-suppressed civil war. We can’t stay. The supply lines are too long to support. Our allies are weary of us. And those we sought to “liberate” are also growing tired of our presence.
We will repeat the pattern of Vietnam. We’ll expand the war, just as we did in Vietnam (Laos, Cambodia, meet Iran). We will be chased out in disgrace. But the costs of this war are so much higher. We have lost international trust and after we get chased out, we’ll be seen as ineffectual.
To add to the mix, we are vulnerable to trade wars with China and Europe. Our currency is weak, our debts are high, our base for business has been badly eroded due to giving our manufacturing base away to our economic competitors. Our financial system, once seen as honest, transparent and trustworthy, has been wracked with scandal and financial failure. International trade and banking are shifting from New York to London and China.
Perhaps this happened to the splendor of Arabia – she lost her luster and spent her intellectual and monetary capital on things that failed to contribute to the greater good. She paid a high price, as we will.
The author has special knowledge of neither Iraq, nor Middle Eastern studies; this puts him on a level playing field with our esteemed national Deciders.
Tribalism in Arabia and America
Based on our simplistic approach to Iraq, it would seem we have no idea about tribalism. Ironically, the US has had a long history of it. From The Hatfields and McCoys to dueling politicians to the Trail of Tears, to the War Between the States, we have had first-hand experience with tribes. It is time for us to refocus the current strife in Iraq and consider how much we have in common with feuding tribal people.
Tribalism in Arabia
Long ago, there was a great civilization in Arabia. While we wandered through morasses of pig shit in Europe, the Arabs had an advanced culture and an excellent standard of living. For reasons unknown to the ignorant author, one day, there were only Tribes in Arabia. And they didn’t get along because of limited water resources and vastly differing codes of conduct that separated the tribes from each other, similar to tribal differences that caused unending friction among American Indians.
So the tribes warred amongst one another, and the West took no notice after the Crusades. Then in the 1880s, Imperial Europe turned to the Persian Gulf, at first purely out of trade routes in case the War to End all Wars should come to fruition. After all, they had spent so much time and money on military strategies, it seemed a terrible waste to shelve them.
Tribalism in Europe
Europe was a collection of tribes cleverly disguised as nations. The balance of power in Europe was an unstable mess and Germany, a late-comer to the Imperial game, was lagging behind the other powers. She feared trade wars and being cut out of the global game, so she did something very clever. Germany befriended the Turks and the Turks welcomed German money and engineering, as they were stumbling a bit as an empire, too. Since Germany was landlocked, she came up with the brilliant idea of building a railway across the desert that would give her direct access to the East and the ability to get around Britain’s all-powerful Navy and the profit-sucking tolls of the Suez Canal. In the event of war, the railroad would move troops and fuel out of range of the pesky British gunboats.
The British and French were non-plussed at this friendship, but allowed the rails to be built, since they had no reason to stop them until the war began. And once the fighting started, and the realities of mechanized war’s dependency on fuel sank in, oil became a deciding factor in armed conflict.
The Turks had already joined with Germany, so that meant that the Arabs needed to be courted to the British side. One would think this wouldn’t be so hard to do, since the Turks were cruel overlords to the Arabs and the normal foreign policy line of “enemy of my enemy is my friend” should have applied to the Arabs and British/French alliance.
Tribalism and deal-making made this process a painful one and some tribes went with the Turks, because they believed the Turks would win and exact terrible revenge on the Arabs should they have taken up arms against their oppressors.
It is important to note the complexities for the Arabs in picking sides for WWI. The choices weren’t obvious for them then, just as they aren’t obvious now: there is no Arab identity. They are still inherently tribal. We can draw lines on maps until the camels come home, it ain’t gonna change the fundamental differences that our cultures have. Arabs don’t believe in lines on maps. They don’t stand in straight lines waiting at the market. They don’t observe traffic signs. They operate in a totally different way from us, and because the West has superior weapons technology, the Arabs have had to knuckle under to our power, but there is intense desire in them to live life the way they see fit. It is a way that makes no sense to us.
Until now, we have been the dominant culture and we have called the shots. And we are justifiably terrified that this may change because we need their crude.
The Arabs were able to unite, for a brief time, during their revolt against the Turks. The British capitalized on this and managed to eek out a victory in the East, which they added to the stalemate at the unsatisfying, and inconclusive, end of WWI.
In Paris, 1919, both sides were bled nearly dry and of course, the “victors” divvied up the spoils of war. They looked at likely places the oil would be and drew lines on maps according to the oil fields. This is how Iraq came into being.
Britain and France also denied the Arabs credit for their part in said “victory” and relegated them to being under French rule instead of allowing Arabs to have self-government. It is this essential betrayal that has fueled anti-West sentiments in this century. Let’s leave the Crusades out of this discussion.
Tribalism in America
America is a strange place. We can’t understand why Iraq is having such a rough time getting their governmental act together. But compare the arbitrary granting of Iraq’s existence at a cursed table in Paris, 1919 to the 400 year progression that lead to the formation of our nation. We evolved slowly over time. Our country was funded by British, French and Spanish sources, all of which used colonies to generate revenue for the respective motherlands.
We got this unbelievable break with the founding fathers and their ingenious system of distribution of power through representative democracy; checks and balances; separation of church and state; religious tolerance; and the Trinity of government: the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches. And these tenets of our government took years to evolve as well. And their evolution wasn’t easy or pretty. They were resultant of intellectual dogfights among intellectual giants. Jefferson was so disgusted with the process, and so convinced that we got it wrong, that after one such fight, he retreated to Monticello and didn’t talk to anyone for three years. How can we expect the Iraqis, whose intellectual base has been eroded through inprisonment, executions and exile, to suddenly spring up from oppression and start a healthy democratic debate?
We had 400 years of slave labor, which created a false economy and allowed for huge profits to be made from human labor. We eliminated Native tribalism through accidental germ warfare and military conquest. And finally, we ended American Tribalism with the War Between the States. And still, we are the red and blue states and seethe with differences.
To understand the Iraqi perspective, (and granted insurgents are mostly from outside Iraq, because the situation is so much more complex than anyone has guessed at) use the following flawed model.
Imagine, if you will, that during our revolution, the French came in. They took over operations; occupied our country with their military; and made us all eat snails; and we paid extra taxes so that the leadership in France could each buy extra powdered wig and support a mistress. How would the colonists have reacted? Maybe a few road-side cart bombs at first, but it would have escalated from there….
There is no solution to our predicament. If we leave, it will appear as though we triggered a long-suppressed civil war. If we stay, it will appear as though we triggered a long-suppressed civil war. We can’t stay. The supply lines are too long to support. Our allies are weary of us. And those we sought to “liberate” are also growing tired of our presence.
We will repeat the pattern of Vietnam. We’ll expand the war, just as we did in Vietnam (Laos, Cambodia, meet Iran). We will be chased out in disgrace. But the costs of this war are so much higher. We have lost international trust and after we get chased out, we’ll be seen as ineffectual.
To add to the mix, we are vulnerable to trade wars with China and Europe. Our currency is weak, our debts are high, our base for business has been badly eroded due to giving our manufacturing base away to our economic competitors. Our financial system, once seen as honest, transparent and trustworthy, has been wracked with scandal and financial failure. International trade and banking are shifting from New York to London and China.
Perhaps this happened to the splendor of Arabia – she lost her luster and spent her intellectual and monetary capital on things that failed to contribute to the greater good. She paid a high price, as we will.
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