War and The Human Condition
The issue of warfare; a subject deeply entwined with the very fabric of humanity. In this seemingly peaceful age, most of us would like to believe that war on an industrious scale is nothing more than just history; with the last wars worth talking about being WW1 and WW2… At a glance one might think that war, though it’s certainly does happen today; is limited to petty squabbles and surgically precise military exercises, nothing like the gut wrenching imagery of the Rwanda Civil War, The Holocaust or Hiroshima. Surely this type of war would not endure in the 21st century with our activism and human rights movements. To live under this assumption is sadly naive, for this new century like so many others before it; has at its very beginning been tainted by the blood shed of warfare on an industrious scale!
Conflict In The East
The conflict I refer to is that of the Gulf Wars, better known today as the War on Terror. Much of this conflict is shrouded in obscurity thanks to the controlling interest of world media and propaganda. Many view this as some sort of religious or tribal conflict, mixed with international peace keeping efforts, with some oil interest thrown in there for good measure. It seems that we, despite all our implied maturity as evolved beings have managed to conjure up our own WW3.
Perhaps it might be best for a modern Middle East Refresher before addressing the substance of this war. The Sum of Which goes as follows: The war even in its present state is a complicated field of international players Chief of which are Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, America, Brittan, Russia and several other Coalition forces totaling to some 38 countries supplying arms and troops in an effort to stabilize what was once internal conflicts in the Middle East. The reason for this intervention appear to revolve around human rights violations and mainly controlling oil interests wherein the Middle East is responsible around 60% of the world’s total oil production. The conflict has been fueled with a steady stream of power struggles and deposed antagonistic dictators ranging from Saddam, Reza Shah, Khomeini, Bin Laden and Khadafi.
Where it all began
The conflict around the Middle East cannot be viewed in isolation or as the new world war; in fact it’s not even a 21st century war. This war is far older than we often give it Credit for, its heritage could be traced back as far as the 1940s in Iran or Persia, making it almost a century old! Its roots almost certainly have deeper historical penetration than the events of the 1940s, but for the sake of practicality I would like to begin the story here. I find this point in time interesting for two reasons; it created one of the first Major Power vacuums in the Middle East; and secondly it poses and interesting relationship with WW2, barely in its death rows at the time. We shall later see that these events may have had very little effect on avoiding our modern war, but I should never the less like to start there as it at the very least gives us some pretext to the events leading up to the war in our life time.
And so, in this series of articles will follow what I have come to understand as the war in the Middle East.