System Failure

To most Americans it is obvious by now that the political and strategic results of the Iraq war are a major disaster that will hurt our country's interest for a long time to come not to mention the cost in American and Iraqi lives. The path to follow seems to elude everyone, and the people who came up with the idea in the first place are absolutely clueless. Just today Iraq was declared the second most "failed state" courtesy of the Bush administration. The next quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on King Leopold of Belgium applies as if it was written yesterday:
"It is upon the King, always the King, that the guilt must lie," he writes. "He planned it, knowing the results which must follow. They did follow. He was well informed of it. Again and again, and yet again, his attention was drawn to it. A word from him would have altered the system. The word was never said. There is no possible subterfuge by which the moral guilt can be deflected from the head of the state...
So the question for everyone that cares remains: what the hell do we do now? Granted, most Americans that have no relation to the military or have no political or historical interest are so far removed from what is happening that they simply don't care.That is one of the luxuries of living in affluent America, far away, isolated America.

A failed Civilization

While Americans, Europeans, Russians, Japanese, Chinese explore the skies and deep space with our satellites, probes, and space stations the Muslim civilization yet have to produce a decent election.
Whereas westerners, through the Middle Ages, strived to learn from the superior Muslim culture of the time when Muslims controlled most of the knowledge of the age (remember the numerous Christian translators of Arabic philosophical treatises) Muslims did not try to learn from the west in later centuries after the renaissance and during the age of exploration because you were not supposed to learn from the infidel.

After the last failed Ottoman attempt of taking Vienna in the 17th century it was obvious that the civilization of Islam had fallen way behind the west. Then the invasion of Napoleon in 1798 brought home a harsh lesson: even a small European force could invade one of the heartlands of the former powerful Islamic empire. This realization of the dire situation of their civilization and a refusal to learn from the infidels continues to this day and is a major source of resentment and hate among Muslims for the west which explains in part organizations like Al- Quaeda.
According to Bernard Lewis The discovery of the New World by Europeans was basically ignored by the powerful Ottoman Empire. A Turkish version of Columbus own (now lost) map, prepared in 1513, survives in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, where it remained unconsulted and unknown, until a German scholar discovered it in 1929 . What this tell you of an Empire as powerful as the Ottoman?

For the Ottomans Knowledge was something to be acquired, stored, if necessary bought, rather than grown or developed (from the book What Went Wrong?). I saw this mentality in Saudi Arabia to where I have been twice. I saw that most of the technical workers and engineers that work for the Aramco oil company owned by the House of Saud are not Saudi nor Arabs (with very few exceptions) but European, American, even Korean, Japanese, Indian and Chinese. Think of the different outcomes of former British colonies such as India as opposed to Pakistan and you get the idea.

By pointing out all this I am not excusing the recolonization of Islamic lands by the Bush Administration. Building an empire in the Middle East should have been an idea that smarter Americans would've had to refuse and the British could've been more open about their experience with this part of the World after WW1 but apparently they too forgot about the foolishness of military adventures in the sands of Iraq.

The Middle East need to have a profound social, intellectual and economic transformation if it wants to be a relevant civilization once again. It has to adopt a secular mentality in the western style that transforms the role of religion in the life of its citizens into a personal matter instead of an all encompassing totality. It needs to quit the idea that it has a monopoly on victimhood and grievance and outgrow it just like many ex-colonies around the World have done, and for Allah's sake: quit blowing yourself and your countrymen up!!

As an example of the gulf between our civilizations read about the controversy in Egypt about a breast feeding fatwa, and about honor killings in Europe by Muslims immigrants. It is simply incredible:
Fatwa promotes adult breastfeeding

Father found guilty in honor killing

Forgotten Lessons from past Empires

For the last 500 years western empires have dominated the world, but by the end of WW1 they were but merely shadows of their former selfs but still managed to control much of Earth. By the end of WW2 they simply were empty shells and within a few decades their colonial dominions collapsed.

It hasn't been an easy Imperium since the U.S. became a true world power after wining WW2. On the heels of Hitler and Imperial Japan came the worldwide struggle against Soviet and Chinese Communism and countless nationalist wars and revolts that threatened at one time or another U.S. strategic concerns. Against the soviet menace it won swiftly after almost 50 yrs and now the major threats are in the form of Islamic terrorism and Asian, mainly Chinese, growing economic, political and military clout. Russia too has become stronger and more menacing of late but is not the concern it was under the soviets. And the nuisance of Chavez, Fidel and Morales in Latin America are no major threats but only pesky inconveniences. Of these, Chinese growing shadow around the world is of the major concern since is happening very fast at a time when the U.S. is embroiled in a war in Iraq losing huge amounts of money, goodwill and military readiness by the day.

There is simply no solution on the horizon to the Iraq fiasco and no will left within the American public to engage Iran militarily with all the costs that would entail including exorbitant gas prices. On this, America faces perhaps the most inextricable strategic disaster of its entire history.
These are precisely the kind of circumstances that usually give foreign powers the chance to gather strength and close the gap separating them from the dominant nation. China, Iran and Russia are obviously doing precisely that and they have the cooperation of other lesser powers such as Hugo Chavez's Venezuela in bringing about their stated desire for a "multipolar" world.

The U.S. has grown increasingly dependent on resources and goods from China and the Middle East. Also, we depend on foreign investors and foreign national banks to finance our deficits while at the same time our trade imbalance grows ever larger. As many historians have argued our situation is reminiscent of Imperial Spain during the 16th century. Spain mounted impressive military feats throughout continental Europe against France, its main continental enemy, and the rebel province of Holland (think Iraq), tried to conquer England several times while colonizing the new world. But the gold and silver that was getting from its colonies was going directly into the coffers of its creditors in order to pay for more wars and was not being reinvested into the country. By the 1640's mighty Spain was no more...