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The ME: "Sick Man of The World"…….

Solomonia posts an article published in the Asian Times titled “The Middle East is hopless, but not serious”. I agree with the analysis, that regardless whatever Israel does or does not do, it will have little or no bearing on the divisive issues within the Muslim/Arab world.

“For the past 40 years, the foreign-policy establishment on both sides of the Atlantic took as an article of faith the premise that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict was the key to stability in the Middle East. Frustration at the inability of the Israelis and Palestinians to come to terms has led the US Baker-Hamilton Commission and other incarnations of conventional wisdom to demand forceful intervention to impose a settlement. The voice of conventional wisdom has fallen curiously silent in recent weeks, as Saudi Arabia and Egypt align themselves with the United States and Israel to isolate Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.”

The Muslim world (as explained in the above) is split along the Sunni-Shi’ite divide, and that fact has absolutely nothing to do with the existence of Israel, any more than Israel has anything to do with the backwardness that exists throughout the ME.

“I do not think any responsible analyst now believes that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian issue has much bearing on stability in the Middle East. Which Israeli was it who began the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict? Iran’s delusions of grandeur and messianic expectations stem, I have long argued, from the simple fact that the country is entering a combined economic and demographic crisis from which it has poor hopes of recovering.”

The ME is the lone region of the world that (with the exception of the state of Israel) that has yet to experience an industrial revolution and the positive social influences it brings with it. If Turkey was once called the “sick man of Europe”, the ME can then be called the “sick man of the world”. As long as the majority of the ME’s collective population resists the move to modernity, it will remain “lock stepped” in medieval backwardness and destitution, inspite of its enormous wealth in oil.

“Bernard Lewis observed that the entire Arab world, except for oil, exports less than the 5.2 million people of Finland. The economic significance of the Shi’ites of Iraq and Lebanon is negligible; the Palestinians represent a net drain on the world economy, as consumers of subsidies. If space aliens were to transport all of them to another planet next Tuesday, world markets would not notice.”

*L* KGS

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