|
The Mid East Catch 22
NMB, Florida March 12, 2002 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
THE MID EAST CATCH 22
Do you remember in "Catch 22" the scene where the soldier is in a hospital
bed? He has a drain that empties into a bag that has filled with a liquid.
A nurse comes in, takes the bag and hangs it from a post and sets it to drip
back into the soldier. We assume the scene is repeated frequently.
This is how the Mid East recycles violence and death - and now throughout
much of the world. The terrorist pounces with unexpected violence and death
results. The swift response by Israel or the US is death.
There is no sacrosanct position here. There is no secure place on high
free of blame or blood. The cycle of violence and death needs a Solomon to
show that the insanity of "Catch 22" can be broken. Both sides must be
shown that they will be sliced in two and nothing will be left if they
continue to demand what will not be.
In courts as well as in the market place there are no absolute winners.
Decisions are most often made to allow parties in a dispute to come to an
end of that dispute. A good solution is to have each side win something it
wants. Each side that allows the bloodletting in a feud to continue loses
more than it will gain and will stay in the same awful place.
The new Solomon should be the PEOPLE who are slaughtering each other.
Their leaders are stuck in the cycle and are not leading them out of it.
The people must, like Solomon, see what they are doing and stop the horror.
They poison themselves by recycling the terror and death. They must take
out the needles stuck in their veins and breathe the air of reason and THINK
instead of act and react. There is a peace camp in Israel that we hear about
here in the democratic west. What do we hear from the Palestinians and
their millions of Muslim supporters in the non-democratic Near and Far East?
The CATCH 23 is that even democracies are blinded by envy of the US/Israel
relationship and are not seeing the horror of 9/11 for what it is - the same
CATCH 22 that has always existed in the "Holy Land".
Carol's Evaluation: 9 out of 10.
|
 |
|