UI – Part 542 – Friendship and Peace among Nations (2 of 5)

Middle East Chess Board

In the Middle East, the Arab world, life is as living on an active chess board.  The pieces are always moving with one victory or battle following another, the resources of one emir taken or enhanced as a game of survival.  Production of goods and services has never been the path to wealth in that area.  The rich and powerful take from the weak, or they confront equals until hegemony is decided by the survivor.  War is part of their culture.  This I believe needs to change.  The advent, discovery, of oil in specific regions is viewed as Allah’s gift to the Islamic believers, Allah’s Will for the Iranians, Saudi’s, Iraqi’s and other oil producers.  But the bulk of that wealth rests in the hands, the bank accounts and offshore deposits, of the autocrats (and their families), emirs, ayatollahs, and mullahs that rule. The residents, the bedouins, have not enjoyed the largesse of Allah’s Will as have the monarchs, the autocrats or the theocrats.

Another outcome of the Great War was the end of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey embraced the leadership of their military genius Mustapha Kemal (Atatürk)(“the Great Turk”) who, as described by William Manchester, The Last Lion, (pg. 712, 1983 Little Brown & Co, 2013 Bantam Books Trade Paperback Edition), “had become an enlightened dictator consecrated to the transformation of his homeland into a modern state.”  That modern state is now subject to the desires of Erdogan, Turkey’s current President with broad almost dictatorial powers recently (June 24, 2018) granted at the polls.  His focus appears obvious.  He wants the Ottoman Empire restored.  He sees a large Muslim population in his area of the world, with over 57 majority Muslim nations.  Should he be able to rally them as a force, with a coalition military base, he could succeed. He has already shown his despotic posture and personal opposition to dissent by removing his critics, incarcerating and silencing them using his military and ardent supporters. He has turned from the secular nature of Turkey, a result of its modernization, to seeking the restoration of a full bore Islamic influence. Erdogan has a mysogynistic nature, a passion for Islam and Allah, and I feel certain a subliminal desire for revanche.

A concern for an Islamic coalition, a Caliphate whose caliph would be Erdogan, is the lack of industry inherent in Muslims living in Islamaland. The result is a power hungry imperialist cabal seeking treasuries, not their own, to enhance their conquests for Allah.    

Is the World Too Small?

Is the world just too small?  Hitler felt millions had to be extirpated to make room for growth.  In his mind the in-firmed, the weak, the handicapped, the mentally challenged, the elderly burdening the health system, and certain ethnic categories, should and must be eliminated to pave the way for the world as he envisioned. Also, what cannot be ignored is the elimination of any dissenters.  More land, more food, more money for the ones remaining, those healthy and acceptable. The term ‘acceptable’ broadens the scope when selecting, deciding, who stays and who goes. Also greater unequivocal support for the dictates of the Reich’s chancellor was an issue in choosing. In a recent book, The Nazi Doctors, the author Robert Jay Lifton, writes about a sordid history where he, according to a review by Charles Horton, The Weekly Standard (5/12/2008), “More equal than others?” (pg.59), discusses the “notion that people deemed defective were subhuman,” and that killing that sort was “an allowable, useful act.”  The rationale centered on “the tremendous economic burden such people cause society to bear; especially those who are young, mentally deficient, and otherwise healthy.” “Physicians weren’t killing as much as curing,…at a national level” and removing the burden of those deemed “life unworthy of life.”

Is that also the thinking of those engaged in ethnic cleansing, from Stalin to Saddam Hussein, historic leaders of China and Japan, and other autocratic totalitarian demagogues making God’s decisions?  Even if they were successful, was there or could peace be possible?  In 1935 several world leaders tended to kill those considered incompatible with the state as conceived by its leader. Mao (Zedong) of the Chinese Soviet Republic (1931-1937) killed 70-80 million people. Hirohito of Japan (1926-1989) killed 20-30 million prior to the end of WWII.  Adolph Hitler, Germany, (1933-1945) was responsible for 28 million civilian deaths.  Military deaths added millions more.  Mussolini (1922-1943) of Italy, part of the Axis Power in WWII (Germany, Japan and Italy), was responsible for only 250-400 thousand deaths.  Joseph Stalin, Russian’s communist leader (1922-1953), was active purging many, resulting in over 15-20 millions deaths (some have estimated as many as 60 million).   These were leaders serving at the early stages and throughout WWII. What was the objective of these self-serving maniacal autocrats?  Peace, or as our Constitution lays out as an objective in the Preamble, “domestic tranquillity,” would not be my answer.  It was ‘power’, ‘control’, personal ‘enrichment’, with a tinge of a preferred world order comprised of humans as these demagogues defined.

There are maniacal leaders today, men who perceive themselves as god over their constituents, to include the Ayatollah of Iran, Putin of Russia, many Muslim leaders in the 57 majority Muslim nations, to include Saudi Arabia where none other than Muslims can live, and North Korea, among others.  But the lens of the world is more open, although these leaders do all they possibly can to prevent outsiders seeing into their nations and observing their oppressive controlling tactics.

The world is a beautiful place, but given what is occurring in so many areas, war zones, the question is, ‘can the world be a beautiful place?’  Surely without people it must be.

….to be continued.  Is the animal world, no people allowed, peaceful? Do Laws work in keeping the peace?

Grace and Peace

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