Does the situation in the Middle East seem to get stranger and stranger with every passing day?
Elections look like they'll be won by "the good guys" and then suddenly that candidate is under house arrest and the in's are still in. "Poor people in the countryside" apparently tipped the election away from the more educated city-dwellers making such a splash on Western televisions. All those green scarves and young faces were not enough to change the political climate. Haven't heard much from the Grand Ayatollah, though. Since he's the man who's ultimately in charge, it seems fair to say that Iran's political landscape has changed its haircut but not by much. Instead of a perm and a new color, Iran got a shampoo and a blow-dry.
Netanyahu says he's all in favor of a two state resolution to the Palestinian/Israel conflict, so long as the two states don't undermine his political influence at the moment. The Palestinians who are desperate for their own homeland are so poorly served by their leaders that the ultimate question, "Who speaks for the Palestinians", is nearly unanswerable. Certainly they were ill-served in 1948 by those leaders who rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state at the same time that the Zionists were accepting the sliver of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Waiting for everything they wanted led them to cutting off their noses to spite their faces - which could be the theme for all things Arab/Jew in that region. And now, when the fate of the settlements and Jerusalem and Hamas/Hezbollah/Fatah are all on the table for discussion (between anyone and everyone who wants a piece of the conversation), entrenched interests are, once again, making it nearly impossible for anyone to move in any direction without trampling on someone else's toes. President Obama's plea for the commonalities to outweigh the distinctions was beautful rhetoric that hit the ground like a pancake. A little syrup is running over the sides (Hariri's successor winning in Lebanon was certainly sweet) but for the most part the situation is sticky, stuck to the plate, and just a bit rancid.
A list of pro-US states in the region given at our CAU seminar did not include Qatar. Yet Cornell has a vibrant medical program in the country, which includes training in the US for pre-med students. The Saudi Arabian government is our ally, yet the 9/11 bombers were Saudi's. We're releasing Uighurs from Guantanamo to Palau (what a loooong, strange trip that'll be) because our list of friends with benefits (in this case, take our detritus, please) is becoming embarrassingly short. The world looks to us for solutions because, since Lend/Lease, we've become the "go-to guy" for just about everything. With the barriers fluid and the the prospects for peace dim, only an optimistic nation like ours would do more than run screaming from the show. But mucking around in a neighborhood whose boundaries were drawn by straight-edges on parchment maps is inevitably going to bring the practical face to face with the intractable.
And so, I end this post the same way I end every answer to "How was your trip? How was your class" : Fascinating and Depressing.
Showing posts with label Hezbollah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hezbollah. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
School is Wasted on the Young
Did you notice that the March 14th Alliance (formerly the March 16th Alliance but that's another story) was triumphant in Lebanon's elections this week? Their defeat of the Hezbollah/Iranian-funded-Shi'ia/(non-Maronite) Christian opposition party was a lovely coda to President Obama's Middle East visit.
TBG and I read about it in the Wall Street Journal and followed it on CNN and MSNBC and bored the Amster to tears discussing it. Two weeks ago we might have noticed it, but wouldn't have given it a second thought. Now, though, I'm thinking that a Hezbollah defeat in Lebanon might have repercussions in the West Bank, from whence Hezbollah wages war* against Israel. And that's a consideration I couldn't have made before CAU.
I did all the (excruciating) reading before we arrived on campus, and I read all the articles in the packet we received upon checking in. Every last word of every last page. Not all of it was fascinating but I read it and thought about it, and read some parts aloud to TBG and found myself asking penetrating questions of the cable news praters who managed to say nothing, although at great length. With just a little bit of knowledge I was armed for bear. I had done the reading.
I often remind people that even we perfect adults have checkered pasts. Academically, my claim to shame is the fact that, had we not closed school early in 1970 in response to the killings at Kent State, I would have been faced with the annoying little fact that I was 5000 pages behind in my reading for Anthropology 102. It just wasn't that interesting. Inuits, potshards, Margaret Mead...... there were frisbees to be thrown and wars to protest and the reading just didn't call to me.
This spring, though, I finished a novel which made its point in the first 15 pages and I plowed through essays written to justify one side of an argument I didn't know existed. There weren't going to be any repercussions if I didn't do the work. No tests, no papers, no pop quizzes - oral or otherwise. It was just the fact that the professor had gone to the trouble of assembling what he thought I ought to know and it seemed silly not to read it.
Obviously, the same argument could have/should have been made when I was 19. And, it probably was. I just wasn't in a place to hear it. I did most of the reading for most of my classes, and I never felt unprepared in any class where I might be called on, but I don't remember being as engaged with unfamiliar subject matter as I was last week. I wanted to understand the differences between the Sunni and the Shi'ia and the history of the regional conflicts over the generations, even if it meant that I really had to pay attention and take notes to remind myself of the pieces I couldn't hang onto otherwise. I've re-read those notes once or twice since we've been home, and we've stored the folders in a convenient spot on the bookshelves instead of filing them away in the CAU box on the top shelf in the closet, because we know that we'll be looking to them for answers again and again.
Perhaps the difference is that I've lived long enough so that what is history today was my life as I lived it. Current patterns are growing out of events which I remember first hand. At 19, I knew that I had everything to learn and that I had all the time in the world to learn it. Now, in older-adulthood, I know some things and can see by looking around me that my time on this earth is limited. So I am prodded to be frugal with new experiences - to get every last bit out of each and every one of them. In an age filled with chatter, the chance to dig deeply into a complex subject is a rare opportunity.
I'm glad I'm old enough to appreciate it.
*Yes, I am biased. But, it's my blog, so deal with it! It's one of the joys of unmediated media and I'm reveling in it right now.
TBG and I read about it in the Wall Street Journal and followed it on CNN and MSNBC and bored the Amster to tears discussing it. Two weeks ago we might have noticed it, but wouldn't have given it a second thought. Now, though, I'm thinking that a Hezbollah defeat in Lebanon might have repercussions in the West Bank, from whence Hezbollah wages war* against Israel. And that's a consideration I couldn't have made before CAU.
I did all the (excruciating) reading before we arrived on campus, and I read all the articles in the packet we received upon checking in. Every last word of every last page. Not all of it was fascinating but I read it and thought about it, and read some parts aloud to TBG and found myself asking penetrating questions of the cable news praters who managed to say nothing, although at great length. With just a little bit of knowledge I was armed for bear. I had done the reading.
I often remind people that even we perfect adults have checkered pasts. Academically, my claim to shame is the fact that, had we not closed school early in 1970 in response to the killings at Kent State, I would have been faced with the annoying little fact that I was 5000 pages behind in my reading for Anthropology 102. It just wasn't that interesting. Inuits, potshards, Margaret Mead...... there were frisbees to be thrown and wars to protest and the reading just didn't call to me.
This spring, though, I finished a novel which made its point in the first 15 pages and I plowed through essays written to justify one side of an argument I didn't know existed. There weren't going to be any repercussions if I didn't do the work. No tests, no papers, no pop quizzes - oral or otherwise. It was just the fact that the professor had gone to the trouble of assembling what he thought I ought to know and it seemed silly not to read it.
Obviously, the same argument could have/should have been made when I was 19. And, it probably was. I just wasn't in a place to hear it. I did most of the reading for most of my classes, and I never felt unprepared in any class where I might be called on, but I don't remember being as engaged with unfamiliar subject matter as I was last week. I wanted to understand the differences between the Sunni and the Shi'ia and the history of the regional conflicts over the generations, even if it meant that I really had to pay attention and take notes to remind myself of the pieces I couldn't hang onto otherwise. I've re-read those notes once or twice since we've been home, and we've stored the folders in a convenient spot on the bookshelves instead of filing them away in the CAU box on the top shelf in the closet, because we know that we'll be looking to them for answers again and again.
Perhaps the difference is that I've lived long enough so that what is history today was my life as I lived it. Current patterns are growing out of events which I remember first hand. At 19, I knew that I had everything to learn and that I had all the time in the world to learn it. Now, in older-adulthood, I know some things and can see by looking around me that my time on this earth is limited. So I am prodded to be frugal with new experiences - to get every last bit out of each and every one of them. In an age filled with chatter, the chance to dig deeply into a complex subject is a rare opportunity.
I'm glad I'm old enough to appreciate it.
*Yes, I am biased. But, it's my blog, so deal with it! It's one of the joys of unmediated media and I'm reveling in it right now.
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