Shakespeare wrote that all the world’s a stage. What else would you expect from an actor and dramatist? I take an analytical perspective. I say that all the world’s a lab. Just take a look around—there are real-life lab experiments going on everywhere. They’re telling us who we are and what our future is likely to be. I know that sometimes the data can be ugly and difficult to take in, but hey, don’t we owe ourselves a good look? So, steel yourself. I want to look at three of these experiments.
The first one involves the wars and skirmishes between Israel and the Palestinians. Here we have two groups of aggrieved people, each blocking the other’s path to happiness. The question posed in this experiment is, Will they ever find a modus vivendi, or will mutual hatred and bull-headed stupidity doom them to perpetual bloodshed? More than six decades into the experiment, it’s looking grim. The Israelis, for their part, abuse the rights of Palestinians who live in Israel proper and continue to appropriate land in the West Bank for new settlements. Israel no longer occupies Gaza; Hamas, a terrorist organization, governs. Even so, control of the territory remains with Israel: Gaza is fenced in, and Israel patrols the coast. Israel controls all but one of the exit points (the southern one to Egypt), so they can in effect turn Gaza’s commerce with the world on and off as one turns a faucet on and off.
That’s not to say there isn’t a good reason to fence in Gaza. If the population was at liberty to move about freely, some would surely cross the border and murder Israeli civilians. In fact, tunnels have been dug under the border, and they are used for just that purpose. The animus of the Gaza Palestinians is so intense that they are willing to endure a hundred times the number of deaths they inflict on Israel. When a cease-fire was called in the current conflict, mere hours passed before Hamas renewed its rocket attacks and began a new day of unbalanced death and destruction. This is surely mental illness on a mass scale, yet Fatah, the Palestinian party that controls politics in the West Bank, agreed last April to form a unity government with Hamas! Is it any wonder that Israel walked out of the latest round of peace talks?
America advertises itself as a “fair broker” in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but we also declare ourselves to be the unswerving friend of Israel. These two positions needn’t be inconsistent—not if we are the kind of partner that speaks up when a friend does something self-destructive. But when have we said, “Stop discriminating against Palestinians; we don’t befriend nations that grant civil rights based on religion or ethnicity”? Or, “Stop building new settlements in the West Bank, or we’ll share no more Iron Dome technology with you”? That’s not the American way. We let our fiends create a mess and then drag us into it.
The second experiment is about pride, power, and humiliation. It poses the question, When a nation of great power fragments and loses much of its dominance, does it integrate peacefully into the new order, or does it become spiteful and threatening? No, I’m not referring to Germany after WWI; that’s a similar experiment, but not current. I’m referring to the former Soviet Union, now Russia. Under its autocratic and popular leader, Vladimir Putin, it’s been bullying states that it formerly controlled. The one most prominently in the news is Ukraine, which wants closer ties to Europe and complete self-determination. Putin is determined to undermine the Westernization of Ukraine by any means, even if it means abetting a proxy war between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists.
America, of course, is put off by Putin’s saber-rattling—he has already seized Crimea from Ukraine—and favors a path of self-determination for the Ukrainian people. We’re also concerned that Putin may try the same tricks with other nations that were once part of the Soviet Union. Not wanting to go to war, we’ve appealed to our European allies to impose economic sanctions on Russia to get them to back off. The Europeans, however, attach more importance to Russian gas and oil than to freedom on their eastern frontier. They aren’t prepared to go beyond a hand slap. In this experiment, it’s the Europeans who are the friends we won’t criticize. (How satisfying it would be if Obama went to a European summit and said, “Your nations are well-respected around the world. Your citizens are well off, and their freedom is under no threat. You represent a huge political and economic bloc. Now lead, damn you, lead!” Dream on.)
We now see that the pro-Russian separatists are much like the Hamas leadership. They both possess advanced weapons—weapons given to them by nations with dangerous agendas—and they use them indiscriminately. As expected, neither the separatists nor the Russians are remorseful. In fact, it’s now the season for wild lies and delusions. The other day, I watched a series of Rooski-on-the-street interviews that focused on the destruction of MH Flight 17. When asked to speculate about the source of the missile, quite a few thought it was the Ukrainian military. Two thought they staged it with help from America. “There were Americans on that flight,” the interviewer said. “Why would Americans kill their own?” “Americans are cruel if they want something,” was the answer.
The third experiment is playing out in Syria and Iraq. Here we find numerous violent factions, large and small. Most of them despise the others and are ready to use any weapons or methods available to eliminate them. Not surprisingly, the faction that’s the most vicious and well-supplied dominates the rest. It calls itself ISIS, or ISIL. The question posed by this experiment is not, Will these madmen be able to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria or the Maliki government in Iraq? These outcomes are so improbable that the question isn’t worth posing. A better question is, Will ISIS be able to establish itself permanently as a nation—or, as it prefers, a “caliphate”—and become an unmolested exporter of terrorism? If so, they would likely pose a greater threat to world peace than Al-Kaeda did when it was well settled in Afghanistan.
Of course, that isn’t all that’s happening on Laboratory Earth, but those are certainly some of the highlights. How do you feel about them? I want to toss away my clipboard and notes, tear off my lab coat, and run into the streets with some Paul Revere-like message. That or just look away.