[Peace-discuss] America's wars in the ME

[C. G. Estabrook]

"In all, the Americans and Europeans are engaged in six internal 
conflicts in Muslim societies – in Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, 
Lebanon and Palestine – in each case providing finance and weapons for 
one faction to use against another. As I write, Hizbullah is preparing 
for the possibility of renewed conflict with Israel, and Syria and Iran 
have also reached the conclusion that conflict is a real and imminent 
prospect, and are actively preparing for it.

"When all parties begin to see conflict as inevitable, then the 
‘inevitable’ becomes self-fulfilling. Americans are fond of comparing 
the situation in the region to the 1930s and the rise of 
totalitarianism; but perhaps Europe in 1914 is a better metaphor: the 
situation is such that some small, unexpected autonomous event might 
trigger a sequence of events that even the great powers of the region 
could find it beyond their ability to control. In the past, after all, a 
car accident (in the case of the first intifada) and a cinema fire 
(triggering the Iranian revolution) have unleashed consequences that no 
one could have foreseen..."

--"Our Second Biggest Mistake in the Middle East," by Alastair Crooke, 
who helped facilitate a number of ceasefires in the Israeli-Palestinian 
conflict between 2001 and 2003 and was a member of the Mitchell 
Commission on the causes of the second intifada and a special adviser to 
Javier Solana <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n13/croo01_.html>.

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