The Western invaders and occupiers of the Middle East profess shock and horror at the chaos and bloodshed they have provoked. “These people have been fighting each other for centuries,” they say. “It is our bad luck to have inherited this mess.”
The Westerners arrogantly refuse to recognize that their own arrogant interventions created the mess in the first place, and their continued presence is making it worse. For most of the 1300 years of Islamic rule in the Middle East, there was relatively little violence between Sunni and Shi'a, Muslim and Christian, Muslim and Jew, or Christian and Jew.
There were no “Iraqis” fighting “Kurds” and “Kuwaitis,” no “Lebanon” exploding into endless civil wars. Yes, there were occasional flashes of nationalism – Egypt, Iran and Morocco did develop national identities – but nothing like the violent, ultra-militarized free-for-all that has arisen since 19th-century European hyper-nationalism poisoned the planet.
It was the European colonialists who divided up Middle Eastern populations among ethnic and sectarian lines and set them at each others' throats. Specifically, it was the French who turned the Alawite and Sunni populations in Syria, and the Christian and Muslim populations in Lebanon, against each other. The British, and later the Americans and their proxies, have incited similar sectarian splits in Iraq and Bahrain, among other places.
And speaking of Western arrogance in the Middle East: The most arrogant people on earth are the settler-colonialists squatting in Occupied Palestine. (The British occupiers, who enabled the Zionist invasion, bear much of the blame.)
Zionism is the nationalism of those who fancy themselves God's chosen. A more perverse orientation could scarcely be imagined. Half the Zionists literally believe that God handed their putative ancestors an in-perpetuity real estate deed to everything between the Nile and the Euphrates. The other half doesn't believe in God, but holds itself racially and culturally superior to everyone else, and therefore entitled to steal other people's land.
Before Zionism, Jews lived peacefully throughout the Middle East.
While the Zionists wear their larcenous arrogance on their sleeves, the Americans disguise theirs behind a veil of sentimentality and good intentions. But American arrogance is always leaking out around the edges.
The latest example: The USA's insistence on barring Iran from participation in the Geneva II peace talks on Syria. The USA, Syria's enemy, located more than 10,000 kilometers from Syria, grants itself the right to determine Syria's future – while excluding Iran, Syria's closest friend, located only 200 kilometers from the Syrian border! The cultural distance between America and Syria is even vaster than the physical distance; yet, Americans arrogate to themselves the right to dictate to people halfway around the world, people with a totally different (and much deeper and richer) culture and history.
Iran, Syria's closest ally, obviously belongs at the Geneva II talks. Russia says so; Syria agrees; and so does the United Nations. Iran, like Russia, has leverage with the Syrian government. It will play a role in any conceivable solution.
The US says it doesn't want Iran to participate in Geneva II because Iran opposes the American regime change agenda. The US wants Syrian President Assad to step down immediately. Then a new Syrian government would be created, with half the positions filled by the Syrian rebels – most of whom are Takfiri terrorists.
The US position is a non-starter. Assad is winning his war against the so-called Syrian rebels, both on the battlefield and in the hearts and minds of Syrians. He is not going to give away the store in Geneva, whether or not Iran is there.
Iran's participation would actually make it easier for the Americans to find a way out of the hole into which they have dug themselves supporting a failed, al-Qaeda-dominated destabilization operation. If the US simply treated Iran (and Syria and the other parties) as respected equals, it might find a face-saving compromise.
By seemingly going out of its way to gratuitously disrespect Iran, the US is setting itself up for cascading failures in Syria.
American arrogance is also threatening to derail its nuclear negotiations with Iran. More than fifty Zionist-owned US Senators have co-sponsored Chuck Schumer's “Nuclear Weapon Free Iran” bill, a slap in the face to Iran that would pre-emptively wreck the nuclear negotiations and turn US war powers over to Israel. Additionally, Obama has followed AIPAC's orders and nominated Israeli citizen Stanley Fischer for the #2 position at the Federal Reserve. The Israelis want to use Fischer to escalate the financial war on Iran. But wait – wasn't Obama planning to end sanctions on Iran when the nuclear deal is concluded? So why nominate Fischer? And why keep threatening Iran with war by endlessly repeating “all options are on the table” ?
In Islamic cultures, humility is a cardinal virtue, and arrogance a cardinal sin. The two main villains in the Qur'an, Shaitan and Pharaoh, embody arrogance. When Ayatollah Khomeini called the USA “the great satan” he was calling America to account for its crimes of arrogance – including overthrowing Iran's government in 1953 and installing the puppet Shah on the Peacock Throne.
When the US was thrown out of Vietnam, then Iran, in the 1970s, it should have learned some humility, and apologized profusely to the Vietnamese and Iranian people. Instead, it refused to admit its mistakes and continued down a brazenly imperial path.
As the non-Western countries, led by the BRIC nations, gradually establish a multipolar world, the US is going to have to stop acting like an arrogant world hegemon, and assume the humbler role of honest broker. Even pro-empire voices like Fareed Zakaria say we are entering a “post-American world.” A bullying, hectoring would-be hegemon has no place in that world.
Hilary Clinton's psychopathic outburst gloating about the murder of Qaddafi - “we came, we saw, he died” – exemplifies the kind of arrogance that the US is bringing to bear on Syria. But this time it isn't working. The illusion of a spontaneous Syrian uprising against Assad has dissipated, yet the US continues to support the al-Qaeda dominated “Syrian rebels” – most of whom are not even Syrian. As the Syrian people, and the world, increasingly recognize the truth, the US and its takfiri friends will continue to be marginalized.
Turkey's government is belatedly recognizing that setting up al-Qaeda camps along the Syrian border was a mistake. The US government, too, should climb down from its high horse and admit that its Middle Eastern regime-change schemes have been moral and strategic disasters.
Will the US admit it was wrong, issue apologies, and start treating its negotiating partners with respect? Don't hold your breath.
Like the Israelis, the Americans seem to believe that God has chosen them to rule the Middle East. Ironically, they would wield whatever power God has given them far more effectively if they could muster some humility.