Wiesel and Ahmadinejad at Buchenwald. Unlearned Lessons of the Wars of 1967 and 1973. An Oil Embargo but No Arab Mitternich
Buchenwald, son of Buchenwald:
Watching Obama, Wiesel, and Merkel at Buchenwald. And thinking of Ahmadinejad for some reason. For a moment I thought I got a glimpse of him (Ahmadinejad) somewhere in the background, peeking from behind some distant trees. No, no yellow star on his chest.
I saw bits of his debate with his election rivals, on the internet, and I think he may lose the election. Still, there is no accounting for the stupidity of voters whether in Iran or elsewhere (remember November 2004 in the USA?).
Another 'anniversary' of the June War of 1967:
That was the Waterloo of secular forces in the Arab World, with the military defeat of Nasser and his quasi-allies in Syria and Jordan- and other Arab states that sent token forces. It was a rematch of 1948, with more spectacular military and political results. Again, as usual, the Israelis won the war, spectacularly.
The war that set the stage for the current Arab Middle East. After that defeat they did not have anyone clever enough to be called a Mitternich. Arab regimes do not allow for a Mitternich: every dictator, every bearded (dyed jet-black) tribal polygamist potentate, fancies himself the only center of his little universe. And they are. The closest Arab to a Mitternich, in terms of influence, may be Lebanon's Nasrallah, this is no joke, not entirely- which tells you something about the intellectual state of Arab leadership.
June 1967 was the war that defeated the secularist forces, discredited them, and set the stage for the current dominance by the Saudi-Islamist alliance over the secular quasi-socialist forces. It was like Franco, actually several little Francos, winning a longer civil war by attrition.
A funny thing happened on the way to an oil embargo:
Later, during the War of October 1973, the remnants of the pan-Arab secularist forces inadvertently helped drive more nails into their own coffin. By then they had largely discarded their Fascist pretensions, but a funny thing happened on the way to the oil embargo. The petroleum potentates, who were forced into declaring the oil embargo in 1973, did not see it at first, and just went along with the loud pan-Arabists. The reluctant petroleum warriors unwillingly stumbled into the source of their own future power. And the source of the defeat of secular forces. Petroleum power.
The stage was set for those who had allied themselves in the 1950s and 1960s to the kingdom of oil. The Muslim fundamentalists from various Arab states who were waiting in the mosques, schools, and deep within the growing Wahhabi bureaucracies of Saudi Arabia. Those fundamentalist emigres waited out their secularist rivals in exile: in their homelands they were widely mocked as 'reactionaries'. They were reactionaries, as were their hosts, and they still are.
We see the results today. A vast petro-media dominates Arab airwaves, and is seeking to dominate the new media as well. You can't purchase religious sermons on iTunes yet, but the internet is teeming with the fundamentalist forces that were hatched in those early years.
As were the hills of Tora Bora. As is the countryside of Afghanistan.
As is the countryside of the nuclear state of Pakistan.
Cheers
mhg
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