Iraq and US

Assuming that there is a way to resolve the Iraq ongoing crisis, it is likely that understanding of what is really actively involved, is likely to be very necessary.

We, The US, seem to be in the thick of it as of now, the starting point for tomorrows. Can't turn it off, like an obnoxious TV program.

Will an ever bigger Iron Fist by the world's only remaining superpower, put the lid back on sectarian violence, and hold it down? Are we simply being baited in to sap our resources? Is this like a World Class football game, sport of those who enjoy sending teams bashing at each other, for the cheers of the fans? Are all the people involved, especially the people of Iraq, all just doing the best they can, as an unleashed drama plays itself out?

We Americans, having become amalgamated from a vast number of cultures and peoples, each with a bit of ethnocentrism to meld into the greater whole eventually, assume that the groups in Iraq, indeed all of the "Mid-East," can do the same. After all, aren't they all brothers and sisters from way back? Reality testing of the vision that we, megapowerful policer's of the world, dispose of one tyrant and then be carried through the streets as heroes of a freed peoples' Baghdad by cheering throngs, shows that we clearly were not in touch with reality in such a vision.

So let's think about the "Hatfields and the McCoys" kind of phenomenon; and similarly the street gangs of inner city. Well, even of football games where a team from a foreign city invades the stadium of the home team and have it out with the local team, per the rules. Think even of the craving for drama that urges the housewife to daily soak in the soap opera midday on TV.

And think of a people in a desert land ... know what a desert land is; we who are of where milk originates in a supermarket, and where flushing the toilet dissappears messy stuff utterly from the universe? Desert is where little grows, there is only little rain to water agriculture, and most sustenance of life must be imported from where growth still can happen. In Iraq's desert, fabulous wealth comes from the sale of a mineral from deep underground in parts of their country, and not from the tending of their farms, nor craftsmanship on their remaining natural materials. Does that oil wealth get fairly distributed to all citizens of Iraq? Not that I have heard. So the citizens must find a way to make their life adequately productive ... somehow. And in a desolate land of little surface resources, has a history of population groups growing to bump into each other's territory, and having a bash for control of space. And hard feelings about those atrocities on each other, are engraved on them. The meaningfulness of those neighbor groups often is laced with toxic memories.

And so another group noses into the game, from far away and with Big Brother mentality, fat with luxurious living in a bountiful land of milk and honey. Just why, is lost in the smoke and furror, the deprivation of basic needs of even electricity often times, and living life that has each person so frazzled for so long that it is the framework for all that is freshly seen in the day.

Somehow, these people need to ease toward productive lives for all concerned, even for the gangs that lurk at the edges of the neighborhood. Where can productivity be found in the desert? What is a pattern of infrastructure that can embrace every person, a pattern that makes sense to the frazzled-much-too-long, and has adequate paths from here to there?

And how to resolve the ethnocentric beliefs that major war is inevitable between massive teams, each somehow finding such melodrama in beliefs attributed somehow to ancient leaders of peace?

How to get interesting, vigorous yet peaceful daily lives for all people, working in economic systems in the exchange of goods and services? Remembering, however, that the source of income comes not directly through the product of the agriculture and industrial use of native resources, but instead mostly through the oil pipelines sold to foreigners, and from there needs to power the overall economic system. A vision of this needs to happen in all their minds, a worthy goal-set toward which to ease, even while enduring others freaking out making an awful mess here and there, sometimes wasting loved ones?