The Middle East: A Fool's Errand

So the Middle East is getting ready to blow. And the hawks (by which I mean virtually the entire foreign policy establishment really, of both political parties, along with their corporate media megaphones) want to get MORE militarily involved, just as we've begun to make headway in backing out the door after decades of boots on the ground and planes in the air.

ISIS executing Iraqi soldiers

When are we ever going to learn? We have spent trillions of dollars over the last 30+ years trying to control and/or mold the Middle East into our image, and it's all been for naught. Hundreds of thousands of people there have been killed by our bullets and bombs (not to speak of their own homicidal and fratricidal conflicts) and millions uprooted, made refugees, or lives ruined. And for what?

The only beneficiaries of our involvement in the Middle East has been the military-industrial complex of the US and its allies, and those who benefit from the financial profits made there. Oh, and a few princely and fabulously wealthy elites in places like Saudi Arabia.  And 'greater' Israel, of course. Everyone else has been losers, including you and me.

Our own country continues to regress into severe economic problems and physical, human, and cultural degradation, and yet Washington is so preoccupation with trying to solve the problems of the entire world that our leaders can't even see what lies right in front of them.

Yes, we can't know what's going to happen there in the Middle East. But our military intervention has been a complete disaster in the past. So why do we insist on thinking that continuing on that course is a good idea? It's not. And while all the foreign policy busy bodies in Washington can't seem to think of anything else productive to do, the majority of the American people see this very clearly.

So, sure, let's be involved diplomatically and in efforts at reconciliation between warring groups and nations.  But to do much more than that, especially on the military front, is to be on a fool's errand.