No problems w/ anything you said, PB, except that this is a severe, and I mean seriously off, understatement. We are talking about problems not years, decades or even generations in the making. We are talking centuries, even millenia! 40 years of education and aid doesn't even register against that tide.pearlbeer wrote:If we REALLY want to fix it, we would probably need to sign up for 40+ years. It would cost billions or trillions of dollars, and in addition to the military, we would need to ship over a significant portion of our country's doctors, nurses, and teachers. Like most of our issues, the solution is education and that process will take a generation or two of effort. Sadly, that isn't going to happen either.
I don't think there are any perfect or even any good answers that will "solve" the middle east. To me, the best of a bad lot of options is to decrease the industrial world's dependence on oil to the point where it is not a strategic resource and it does not generate fortunes in hard currency for the regimes that happen to sit on top of it. This will not end the region's problems, of course. It will make some of the ones that "nobody" talks about even worse (e.g. extreme poverty and hopelessness of the Palestinians among others). But it will reduce the level of tension and the impact of the problems on the rest of the world, leaving the locals to work it out. When there's nothing to fight over, the fight will become much less important to everyone, even the people doing the fighting. The law of unintended consequences will no doubt assert itself in ways I can't predict but again, the stakes will be much lower. Let's remember that other than Israel (in very convoluted ways, to understate considerably), Egypt and some version of Iran, the countries of the Middle East are a relatively modern, wholly Western, creation (assuming Turkey doesn't count as the middle east). Take the Western constructs, influences and concerns out of the picture and the picture changes considerably.
Well, no, really: How can I be shocked by anything that happens in these out of control states (see e.g. NC proposed bill banning gay marriage). But still kind of shocking. I would say that I'd love to understand the jurisdiction this police dept is supposed to have but actually I'm guessing I wouldn't love it at all. Still, kind of interesting in a perverse sort of way. A church w/ arrest powers? Really?
