The streets are awash in optimism.
Bin Laden and Qaddafi are dead, democracy is running rampant in the Middle East, God’s in His heaven and all’s right with the world.
To add to this incredible opium, Senator Lindsay Graham said Libya’s new government will pay us back $1.5 billion as reimbursement to our taxpayers for our Libyan actions. Steve McQueen (Wanted: Dead or Alive) would have been proud of this bounty on the head of a bad guy.
The sad part of listening to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Lindsay Graham, and even John McCain, is that none of the above is founded in historic reality.
Any revolution, including ours of 1776, has counter revolutions that creates ebb and flow until the real truth settles out.
The belief that Libya will now move to a democratic society after a dictatorship is unrealistic.
The three tribes have been kept at bay by a buffer which has now been removed.
To believe these tribes will have a kumbaya moment and disregard thousands of years of traditional hatred is naïve at best and dangerous at worst.
Unfortunately, these attitudes prevail in many camps, both Republican and Democrat; Liberal and Conservative.
Ten years of war in Afghanistan is a lifetime for the American people, but for the Afghans it is a blink of an eye in their history and tradition.
The miracle of Germany was their rebirth following the total destruction of WWII. However, the Germans were not trying to move in a different historical direction than they had previously proceeded for hundreds of years.
They maintained their individuality and idiosyncrasies as most countries do, which is why unifying under the European Union has created so many problems.
You can’t change what or who people are.
Regrettably, this lesson has not been learned in the Middle East.
When I took my grandson to the beach one day, we spent hours building a sandcastle. He was sunburned, had sand in his mouth, and even cut his little finger.
I said “was it worth it?”
He said “Yes, Poppa, look what we built. It’s beautiful, and it will last forever so people will see it every time they come to the beach.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him or show him the next day that all our efforts would be swept away by the tide.
It was inevitable.
So to it will be for the Middle East.
No matter how much we hope, and how much we pray, and how much we wish that somehow this time it will be different.