September 16, 2016
Jerusalem
Source: Bigstock
There is not only a law of unintended consequences. There is also a law of unforeseen ones, some of which no one might have been expected to foresee. Hitler’s war on European Jewry is an obvious example, as a result of which the determination of Jews to have a national state was intensified; it was seen as the only means of guaranteeing their survival.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 offers another example of the law in action. The Bush administration believed that the end of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny would lead to the establishment of Iraqi democracy. (They were encouraged in this belief by the assurances of Iraqi exiles, assurances that should have been treated with some skepticism; political exiles are always given to wishful thinking.)
So, remembering the law, we should be aware that any policies we adopt”any action we take in the Middle East”won”t work out as we hope they will.
The second lesson we should take from the history of this region over the past hundred years is that there is not likely to be an easy or comprehensive solution to its problems. What seems temporary may last for a very long time. Israel has now occupied the West Bank for almost sixty years. Civil wars can drag on for decades, and are all the more likely to do so if foreign intervention prevents either a government or its opposing forces from securing a decisive victory. Moreover, events may take an unexpected turn. Sixty years ago all the talk was of Arab nationalism; almost nobody mentioned Islam. Yet it is Islam in its varieties and on account of its internal divisions that is fomenting and prolonging conflict. After the Protestant Reformation, Europe experienced more than a century of wars of religion, some civil wars, some wars between states. The present Muslim civil wars among Sunni and Shia and other sects regarded as heretical may last as long.
Finally we should recognize that war is as natural as peace. Time and again over the years I have found myself quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, veteran of the Civil War and Justice of the Supreme Court. He wrote: “Man at present is a predatory animal…. The sacredness of human life is a purely municipal ideal of no validity outside the jurisdiction…. Between two groups that want to make inconsistent kinds of world I see no remedy except force. I may add what I no doubt have said often enough, that it seems to me that every society rests on the death of men.”
These are grim words, but, when you consider the Middle East today, they ring horribly true. They may even point the way to a future even nastier than the present. After all, are there any two groups whose vision of the world is more inconsistent than the citizens of Western democracies and the Islamist zealots?
