The Connery-Caine Dynamic Duo are very successful at first. The populations in the area is largely tribal and they all hate each other. Why? The reason is common among just about every tribe: "They piss upstream of us." Every tribe and village, therefore, is eager to march and conquer their neighbors, apparently so that they can pollute the streams themselves.
Has anything changed since then? By "then," I mean, since the days of Rudyard Kipling and the Brits in India.
One big thing, oil was discovered in some sections of the Middle East and north Africa, so a few of the sheiks and tribal "kings" got very rich. They allowed western industrialists to come in and drill for the oil, construct pipelines, and in a few cases, oil refineries. Then the westerners turned over ownership and control to the sheiks and tribes. But even today, westerners are confined to only a few tourist-oriented areas of Saudi Arabia; and in places like Libya or even Morocco (which has no oil, but is on the African side of the Straits of Gibraltar) westerners wander away from the bazaars and Intercontinental hotels entirely at their own risk. And it remains a risk.
So a few sheiks and others got really, really rich. A few of them built schools (madrases?) and hospitals, monolithic hotels and casinos for the other members of their tribe and guests from the Outside World. Other tribes, perhaps like the Palestinians, just sat and stagnated, whining that nobody loves them. Eventually these guys discovered that westerners are guilt-driven and susceptible to the whining. And, failing to inspire sufficient pity, some clever and devious members of these tribes resurrected the ages-old concept of abduction, hostage-taking, etc. etc., and rose to positions of leadership.
(You know, the word "mafia" is from the Arabic. The ancient Sicilians learned a lot from the Arabs.)
But has anything else changed? Well, there's Israel, a tiny bulwark of western civilization surrounded by loony, whining -- and armed -- tribes. Interesting that these tribes get their arms from the west, too. I mean, really, Hillary, does the Gaza Strip need $5 million to try to buy patriot missiles on the black market? Or do you really believe Hamas is importing baby formula and Bandaids with that money?
Also, Egypt, and perhaps also Libya enjoys certain groups of educated and somewhat enlightened merchants and technicians. These are probably the people who are causing all the trouble now -- but are they attracting others for the cause of really advancing development of their nations, or are they merely latter-day tribesmen reaching out to establish their own little kingdoms?
Who knows? Anyone know? The Comrade -- and others in Europe -- just can't stand to watch them killing each other.
If you look at history beyond something like "The Man Who Would Be King," a certain protocol for development does exist. It goes something like:
- The tribes are broken up mainly by each other. They beat each other up, break off the noses of each other's statuary, seize each other's assets, and rape each other's women.
- Some "giant" comes along who has some real knowledge of military tactics, or at least enough creativity to redeploy existing destructive resources in very effective ways. He takes over the whole region.
- Nobody likes waiting on this guy, so eventually he's toppled and a period of chaos ensues. More wars, mostly local, and often "civil" in nature, and especially vicious.
- Finally it occurs to somebody that no one person is going to be victorious here, so they might as well figure out some way to get along without killing each other.
- That's where John Locke, Voltaire, Jefferson, Washington came into the picture in the West.
The West has already fought these stupid battles, you know? For example, there's this other movie called "War Games," with Matthew Broderick, directed by John Badham, where this teenaged computer hacker breaks into a military computer and triggers some kind of doomsday machine. The only way to stop the inexorable march to complete destruction is to teach this computer how to play Tic-tac-toe, where eventually it figures out that nobody wins.
If the Middle East and Africa -- and every other third-world armpit -- has any brains at all, they'll learn from the bitter and useless destruction that Europe has perpetrated upon itself for the last 2,000 years and leap-frog to the end of the story, which is not really democracy, but the recognition and protection of individual rights.
History indicates that, as in physics, for every action there is an equal reaction. So Iran, for example, gets some level of civilization. And then the Shi-ites and imams go berserk and rush to re-establish some sort of traditional social-political order. Usually that doesn't last, though, because the general population has had a taste of enlightenment, and they can't really un-learn it. I mean, why would you insist on cooking dinner over a fire of cow dung when you can buy a microwave oven?
So all this crap that's going on the Middle East and north Africa seems to be either in the mold of Iran -- the "one step backward" part of development -- or it's moving toward a genuinely enlightened order that's based on the sanctity of the individual.
Which is it? Nobody really knows.
But, sure, let's go bomb the crap out of Kadaffy. 'Cause, really, no matter what the result is, he's a dangerous lunatic.
'Course, he might be replaced by an even more dangerous lunatic, like Abracadabrajab (think Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, the "giant" who wants to create a super-state). But who knows?
Save the Republic.
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