David Brooks, "One Great Big War": Whatcha Talkin Bout, David?

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.

- Tom Lehrer, "National Brotherhood Week"

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "One Great Big War" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/opinion/brooks-one-great-big-war.html?_r=0), David Brooks concludes:

"Going forward, there probably has to be a global education effort to reduce anti-Sunni and anti-Shiite passions. Iran could be asked to pay a higher price not only for its nuclear program, but for its mischief-making around the region.

But, at this point, it’s not clear whether American and other outside interference would help squash hatreds or inflame them. The legendary diplomat Ryan Crocker argues in a recent essay in YaleGlobal that major outside interventions might only make things worse. 'The hard truth is that the fires in Syria will blaze for some time to come. Like a major forest fire, the most we can do is hope to contain it.'

Poison gas in Syria is horrendous, but the real inferno is regional. When you look at all the policy options for dealing with the Syria situation, they are all terrible or too late. The job now is to try to wall off the situation to prevent something just as bad but much more sprawling."

Whatcha talkin bout, David?

A "global education effort to reduce anti-Sunni and anti-Shiite passions"? These "passions" have been around since the battle of Karbala on October 10, 680. Good luck! But more to the point, how do you go about educating people in Egypt, for example, where the illiteracy rate is some 28 percent, or in Afghanistan, where the illiteracy rate exceeds 30 percent?

The most we can do is hope to "contain" the forest fire in Syria? And here I thought that Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Sudan and Afghanistan were also ablaze. (Turkey, with its large restive Kurdish minority, Bahrain and Tunisia continue to smolder.)

"Poison gas in Syria is horrendous, but the real inferno is regional"? Well, who is responsible for spreading those flames? Who has been arming Hezbollah, Hamas and the Assad regime in Syria? Who sought to grow intimate with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? Who has been seeking to build nuclear weapons, thereby stoking extreme anxiety in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey, not to mention, of course, Israel? Answer: Iran.

And what has the Obama administration done to control Iran over the past five years? Answer: Nothing, unless you believe that sending the EU's imbecilic (I'm being kind) Catherine Ashton  to manage the P5+1's "make believe" negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear weapons development program qualifies as "something."

"Poison gas in Syria is horrendous, but the real inferno is regional"? I would start by making Assad understand that the use of sarin against civilians is taboo before seeking to deal with the entire Muslim Middle East mess, which is far beyond repair.

Helen Thomas and "Everybody Hates the Jews"

There has been a stir of late over a satirical music video, “We Con the World” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDQ1O7tBEV8), which suggests that among the "peace activists" aboard the Gaza flotilla there were persons linked to Hamas and al-Qaeda, as was indeed the case as we are slowly learning from the Israel Defense Forces (http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/idf-five-gaza-flotilla-activists-linked-to-hamas-al-qaida-1.294546).

But rather than focus attention on this new satirical musical video, I would like to take you back some 40 years to a musical ditty, "National Brotherhood Week", written by Tom Lehrer, which even today maintains its relevance. Have a listen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY), and pay close attention to one stanza in particular:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.

Indeed, nothing has changed since 1967, when Lehrer recorded this tune.

I wish I could say that I am shocked by the repugnant anti-Semitic utterances of Helen Thomas, who stated that Israelis should leave Israel and return to Poland and Germany (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQcQdWBqt14), but Thomas is not the only highly visible journalist harboring these views.

I wish I could say that I am shocked by the failure of Obama to repudiate this horrific utterance by a member of the White House Press Corps, but then Obama remained silent for 20 years while Reverend Wright let loose similar obscenities.

I wish I could say that I am shocked by the ongoing failure of The New York Times to to take Thomas to task on its editorial page, but then why should we expect anything different from the Times, which posts "moderated" anti-Semitic comments in response to its editorial content (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2009/06/open-letter-no-2-to-clark-hoyt-public.html and more recently http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/06/anti-semitism-again-in-lede-at-new-york.html).

Is there a glimmer of hope or sanity? Yes, and surprisingly it comes from an op-ed entitled "Why is Palestine ‘a second Cyprus’ for Turks?", written by Burak Bekdil for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=why-is-palestine-8216a-second-cyprus8217-for-turks-2010-06-03). The op-ed states in relevant part:

"Istanbul’s new governor, Hüseyin Avni Mutlu, has said, “He is perfectly confident every Turkish Jew was as safe as Muslims” and that “we are certain no Turkish Jew feels threatened.”

I have an idea! Should the esteemed governor agree, we can put his “confidence” to a little test.

I suggest having the governor disguise himself perfectly as an Orthodox Jew and let him have a solo stroll on İstiklal Avenue. If he can manage to safely reach halfway on İstiklal, I’ll confess I know nothing “about my own people.”

If I am right, the government will have to find a new governor for Istanbul. If that’ too cruel, I could suggest the governor tour around Taksim in a civilian car bearing the Star of David, like millions around Turkey do with the Palestinian flag. If we go for the car experiment rather than the stroll at least the governor can have enough time to speed away.

But why do the Turks have the “Palestine fetish” even though most of them can’t point the Palestinian territories out on a map? Why did they not raise a finger when, for instance, the mullahs killed dissident Iranian Muslims? Why did the Turks not raise a finger when non-Muslim occupying forces killed a million Iraqi Muslims? Why did we not hear one single Turkish voice protesting the deaths of 300,000 Muslims in Darfur? Where were all these Turkish protestors when Israel was bombing Lebanon or when the Chinese police were using disproportionate force against their ethnic kin, the Uighurs?

How many Turks protested when there was civil war in Algeria? How many volunteered for humanitarian aid missions for Sudan? Why were the protests too thin during the Serbian atrocities against Muslim Bosnians? What makes nine Gaza martyrs more sacred than all the other martyrs?

* * * *

Subconsciously (and sadly) the Muslim-Turkish thinking tolerates it if Muslims kill Muslims; does not tolerate it but does not turn the world upside down when Christians kill Muslims; pragmatically ignores it when too-powerful Christians kill Muslims; but is programmed to turn the world upside down when Jews kill Muslims."

According to some reports, Turkey's extremely narcissistic prime minister Erdogan is now considering the possibility of accompanying a new Gaza flotilla, and not to be outdone, Iran's supreme leader Khamenei is offering to send the naval wing of the Revolutionary Guard to safeguard the next shipment of aid to Gaza.

We must wait and see if either Turkey or Iran, unhindered by Obama, succeeds in igniting the next Middle East war.

[Note the seeming inconsistency in the Hürriyet op-ed, which says that Turks only care if Jews kills Muslims, but observes Turkish apathy "when Israel was bombing Lebanon". I understand this to mean that Turks, who are Sunnis, are indifferent to the death of "heretic" Shiite Muslims.]