Ashamed To Be An American

I never thought I'd ever hear myself saying I'm ashamed to be an American.  But, that's where Obama has driven me.  Our feckless, mindlessd positions are so indescribably stupid.

Consider the Ukraine.  The Ukrainians are up against far superior arms.  Why in the world don't we give them proper tanks and proper field pieces?  Do we expect them to clean out the Russian "volunteers" now on their soil  with machine guns and a few mortars?  If we fear that the Russians will fly over the Ukraine and bomb whatever tanks we might give the Ukrainians, why not base a few fighter plans in the Ukraine.  If Russians fighter planes fly over the Ukraine our planes could blast them.  But, that may not be necessary.  We surely must have suitable anti-aircraft equipment to do the job.

The same things goes for the Kurds in Syria.  ISIL is taking over Kurdish towns in Syria, killing their men and making sex providers of their women.  The Kurds too need tanks and artillery pieces to counter ISIL's tanks and artillery.  Why are we not helping our friends?

We now expect the Sunnis to help us fight ISIL.  Why?  We've screwed them twice.  We failed to reward them when they helped us drive out Al Qaeda.  We now want them to help us get rid of ISIL.  Why should they?  So that they can exchange the ISIL yoke for the Shiite yoke?  Is is after all the Shiites who want to dominate every one living in the mystical state of Iraq.

Ray Rice, Not A Jean Val Jean; Not Quite, But . . . .

Jean Val Jean received a stiff jail sentence for stealing a loaf of bread.  Well, we don't have anything like that today, but it can be argued that we do have something very much like mob rule that can approximate a mob lynching.  I'm thinking of Ray Rice who punched out his girl in an elevator.

At first, the league suspended Rice for two games.  Clearly an inadequate punishment.  Then the feministas got into the act.  Rice found himself banned for life.  Insane!  Clearly, taking two games away from an athlete is punishment hardly severe enough to get him to come to terms with his awful behavior.  But a life-time expulsion is clearly way, way too excessive.  Expel him for a year, and require that he take treatment for his anger and misogynistic behavior -- that would make sense.

If Rice's life-time suspension from football is intended to be a lesson to others, why not go back to hanging thieves in the public square?

A Teachable Moment: "In Defense of Christians"

The booing of Ted Cruz, the person chosen to give the keynote speech at a meeting of a newly formed group, "In Defense of Christians,"  should awaken us to certain realities of which some Americans were unaware of, and others in high places have chosen to disregard.

Why would a group despised by Muslims in various Middle Eastern countries boo an American speaker when he suggests to them that they should recognize that the discrimination and oppression they experienced in Muslim lands is shared by other minority groups?  That they should unite with other such groups that are equally despised; notably, the Jews.  Ted Cruz went further, he suggested that they give recognition to the fact that the only country in the Middle East where Christians have flourished is Israel.  And, for this Ted Cruz was booed.

How this could happen is something that Americans must begin to understand.  It all comes down to Middle Eastern clan mentality.  Under the reign of the Ottoman Empire, local fiefdoms could do pretty much what they wanted as long as tribute was paid to Istanbul.  These fiefdoms were pretty much run by local clans, or what we in America would describe as extended families.  Some clans were better, some worse, but if you wanted to get along, you didn't mess with the dominant clan.

Since all the dominant clans were Muslim, the other religious groups were obliged to work out their relationships with them as best they could.  They had learned to show suitable deference.  They were required to pay reasonable taxes (or whatever you might want to call it) to the dominant Muslim clan in your area.  And, over time, the non-Muslim ethnic entities took on the coloration of the dominant Muslim.  The shared, in large part, the same cuisine, and similar prejudices.  The fact that the Christians were as discriminated against as the Jews by the dominant Muslims was not as significant to the Christians as the fact that they shared with the Muslims equal disdain for the Jews.

A similar pattern of behavior was found among red necks in America's south in Jim Crow days towards African Americans.  The red necks (crackers) were also placed in an inferior position by the dominant, wealthier whites, but they could never accept the fact that their position in the social order had many similarities with that of the blacks.

That Middle Eastern Christians should share similar prejudices with the Muslims should come as little surprise to Jews who live in Jewish neighborhoods that have, in recent years, become home to Jewish immigrants from Iran -- or Persia as they are fond of calling the place they came from.  Mistrusting  local institutions, they often deal in cash even when the transactions are quite large.  They establish their own synagogues where long-time Jewish residents feel unwanted.  Marriages between cousins, where the marriage has been previously arranged, remains for them a popular custom.

In one instance of which I am keenly aware, a drug addicted, youth from a Jewish, but Persian, home killed another Jewish man, not Persian, as he was crossing the street.  The Persian youth was driving under the influence of the drugs he had just taken.  Jewish-Iranian families in the community (including their rabbis) did all in their power to keep the boy from being found guilty of the crime they all knew he had committed.   (I should add that this crime was not the first committed by the Persian youth.)

The Jewish families who had lost a son, and a father and the Jewish community that had lost a most remarkable doctor could not understand how other Jews; indeed, other rabbis could behave in this manner.  But, if you understand the Middle East it's not really surprising.

Getting back to the incident at the meeting of the group, "In Defense of Christians," we should note that in attendance was one of the sponsors of this group, a Dr. Zogby of the Arab American Institute.

The Ungluing Of The World

I sometimes think I've gone mad.  We're preoccupied with defeating ISIS or ISIL or whatever,  But, we give no stake to those who might become  our greatest allies.  It's obvious.  Let Iraq divide into three parts with the Kurds in the north, the Sunnis in the middle and the Shia in the south.

The Kurds would protect their boundaries.  The Sunnis, who just want to be left alone, would be the main force against the Islamists.  And, the Shia would be happy to live and make money in Iraq's south. So why doesn't this ever occur to our deep thinkers in the State Department?  (Forget about Obama.  He's off on another planet.)

Why don't we give serious armaments to the Kurds instead of asking them to soldier on with inferior weapons and inferior  military assets?  Why do we prevent the Kurds from selling their oil, and define this oil as somehow belonging to a defunct Iraq?   Why don't we tell the Sunnis that they are now free of the Shia in the south?

Of course, American policy in Iraq is not the only sign that people have taken leave of their minds.  Consider that once noble idea, a forum where all the nations could thrash out the problems of the world -- the UN.  Clearly this is an idea which has come apart.  Consider some of the world's problems; the continued abuse of women and gays, the trafficking of children, the taking of the land of one country by a more powerful neighbor, the proclamation of one country of its dedication to  destroy its neighbor, discrimination of minority ethnic groups by majority ethnic groups.  But, where does the UN focusess its attention?  On Israel, a state that offers the highest standards of human rights to women, to gays, and to minority ethnic groups within its borders.  This is not to say that Israel is free of any flaws.  But, when two fires are to be put out, one in a wastepaper basket, and the other in a house where flames are shooing out the basement windows, to which fire should the UN be directing focusing its attention on first?

ISIS or ISIL: A Really, Really Simple Solution

You won't hear this from any of TV's talking heads and don't ask me why.  But the solution to ISIS, or whatever, is to acknowledge the ethnic differences in Iraq.  Acknowledge freely that the Kurds have a claim to nationhood in the north.  Acknowledge that Sunnis have a claim to the middle and, indeed, into parts of Syria.  And, acknowledge the rights of the Shia in the south.

What's the big deal with such acknowledgements?  We acknowledged the rights of the Serbs, the Croatians, and the Bosnians in what had been formerly Yugoslavia.  That's worked out relatively well.  Why not do the same for the people of this cobbled together mess of a nation called Iraq.

Let's also acknowledge the religious dimensions of this, as is the case with so many of these failed states.  If you restrict yourself to describing it as solely a terrorist matter, you obfuscate the problem.  It is of course a terrorist matter, but it's also a struggle within the Islamic community.  (I'm not going to even try to use an Arabic word like, "uma," or "uhmah.")  The Iranians and the Saudis hold one another in contempt.  They're both Muslim countries.  Hamas and Hezbollah are both supported by Iran, but one is Sunni and one is Shiite.  The only thing that allows them to work together is their common hatred of Jews and, by extension, their hatred of Israel.

Al Queda, ISIS, and the Sunnis all share more or less the same Islamic religious views.  However, the Sunni people are a more secular people.  They do not necessarily hate the west.  Al Queda does hate the west, and, in the final analysis, was not found acceptable by their Sunni co-religionists.  ISIS is al Queda on steroids.  To win the fight against ISIS, we need the Sunnis, and that means giving the Sunnis something to fight for.  That's what the Sunni Awakening was all about.  That's when the U.S. told the Sunnis that we understood their desire to be rid of Shiite domination.  And, that's when the Sunnis began to fight alongside the Americans against al Queda.  Regrettably, the promise was not fulfilled.  (Something we should have easily foreseen.)  In other words, the Sunnis got screwed.

So why should the Sunnis work against ISIS?  Many of the ISIS military people had served under Saddam Hussein.  How driven they are by Salafist theology, I do not know.  They do, of course, fight under the Salafist banner.  And, in the end, that's all that really counts.

We really do need Sunni support.  So let's give them something to fight for and stop with this nonsense of building an Iraq nation.