I have no fear of tackling ugly things with a pragmatic point of view. Most things on our planet can be handled with a little compassion, some common sense and a good general knowledge of how things work.
There are some subjects I don’t like: Michael Moore in a pink ballet tutu, sitting on a photocopier, drinking a beer and eating stadium nachos comes to mind. The real horror starts when he punches 99, selects double-sided and presses the green “Copy” button. I shouldn’t have to confront that image in my lifetime, as Mike seems discreet enough, but you never know.
The Middle East is the other one that gives me The Fear.
You’ve got two sides who have brutalized each other since the dawn of time. The real, down in the DNA hate, goes back thousands of years, passed through generations like the gene for brown eyes or a propensity for bad haberdashery.
Neither is right and neither is wrong. They’re behaving like children.
Sibling brothers, around the age of 7 to 15 years of age, behave the same way. With three sons, my father developed that extra arm joint that would allow him to wallop all three of us in the backseat of the car, without taking his eyes off the road. All three of us would get nailed in unison. Then the happy and loving, “Shut up now or I’ll Stop The Car.” We became quiet immediately.
Father got so good at it (three sons means you get a lot of practice) that he could also take a sip of his coffee and light a smoke at the same time he was slapping us silly. It isn’t the same skill set as playing the cello or being able to sink one from mid-court for three, but it was his talent and he was good. I still hate sitting in the back seat of a car.
In the Middle East, it is exactly the same deal. They all deserve a quick, firm slap of International Corporal Punishment to make them stop for a moment, if only to break the cycle of knee-jerk stupidity on all sides. I have a possible solution though.
The UN has to do some typing: They issue a simple press release: The Middle East will now sit down and shut up for a week, or we, the rest of the world, embargo the whole damn area.
Ask Dubya, Zhong and Vladimir to send as many warships as they can for next Thursday. Line’em up in the Med, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Suez Canal and have them all run a blue UN flag. Canada will send our ship if we could borrow a set of jumper cables. Holland would be in, so would Burkina Faso.
Fly a few quick sorties using the fancy ordinance. An America J-DAM on a Chinese fighter dropped by a Russian bombardier strikes the right note of internationalism. Shut down the electrical grid, jam the cellphones, radio and television. Anything flying, other than the UN has ten minutes to land and park. Nothing in. Nothing out.
After seven days of no electricity, no phones, no planes, no communications and no outside influences, Kofi Annan drops by and says “Shall we talk now?” It might take a year or two, but a solution will come out when the kids see the grownups are not kidding.
Dubya, Zhong and Vladimir will do it for two reasons: One, saving the world is a great legacy, regardless of your political stripe. Promise the boys a Nobel if you have to, plus the cover of Time and an endorsement deal from Rolex: Whatever it takes.
Two, Dubya, Zhong and Vladimir know the groups in the Middle East are as crazy as outhouse rats who will blow up the world if we don’t step in.
I can come up with thousands of picayune diplomatic, logistical and political reasons why this won’t work. There are two compelling reasons why it will work that cancel out all the others.
First, it is international in scope and we do it fast, without spending years flapping our gums about it. We’ve tried dialogue with these idiots and dialogue doesn’t work.
Second, if we don’t do it, we’ll see the Middle East blow itself up in one ghastly superheated explosion. The last thing we’ll hear is some dick yelling “See! They started it!”
The cynic in me says the nuclear winter will average out the global warming.
Now, all I have to do is get that image of Michael Moore on the photocopier out of my mind.
RoadDave 