The Middle East is a mess. Some say it’s our fault, but it has always been a mess. If you doubt that, read the Old Testament. Tribal war was constant and nobody could be trusted. Human sacrifice, murder, slavery, incest and rape were common. Corruption was rampant and might made right.
Europe was pretty much the same except for about 700 years of Roman Empire brutal dictatorship. After that there were occasional other empires like the Holy Roman Empire that every high school pupil knows was neither Holy, Roman nor an Empire. The contemporary United Kingdom of Poland-and-Lithuania was actually bigger. Sometime about the 14th Century tribes had begun to merge into nations and become some of the countries we recognize today. One of the biggest and best managed was the Ottoman Turkish Empire.
The old world was still a mess. Most people’s lives were mor miserable than you can imagine. Governments mostly did two things, collect taxes and fight wars. Some imposed religion, often brutally. It was still tribal warfare, but the tribes and the wars got bigger. Aided with guns, germs and steel they colonized outside Europe. Amusingly they self-designated Europe as a continent even though it is just a minor promontory on the continent of Asia. The U.S., Canada, Brazil and China are each almost as big. Russia is much bigger, just Siberia is bigger than all of Europe. That’s one of those traditions that persists even though it makes no sense, like Seven-Seas: can anyone name them? Corners-of-the-Earth; really?
The European super tribes mastered the art of conquest and were able to subjugate most of America, Africa, Australia, and Asia other than China. The Coup De Grace was World War I, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and their ally Germany lost. Britain and France had some help from America so they won. They carved up the Ottoman empire with no regard for language, tribal or ethnic boundaries, just as they had been doing in Africa. Russia had a revolution and evolved into the Soviet Union in spite of a US led invasion in 1918. American servicemen starting from the east made it almost to Moscow by commandeering the Trans Siberia Railway.
If you think this is confusing, possibly incorrect, you are right. It is hard to assemble 4,000 years of history into a few hundred words, when the record has more lies than truths. That is why foreign policy often resembles middle school. The Middle East is not even consistently defined. The person using the term might include Egypt, maybe more of North Africa (anywhere Arabic is understood), Turkey, Israel, most Arab countries, Iran, all the ‘stans and sweep up small countries on the periphery. Naturally, any generalization only applies to the part where it is partly true and is probably irrelevant if not totally wrong elsewhere. Government ranges from mostly democratic to tribalism, anarchy, and dictatorships including monarchy and theocracy. However, some great original things came out of the Middle East from time to time, like writing, the alphabet, monotheism, algebra, astronomy, Arabic numbers.
In the 18th Century, a grand experiment across the sea created the first large republic, the one we live in and celebrate, America. We Americans love holidays, even though most of us have jobs we don’t really dislike. No more cutting cane or breaking rocks in the hot sun. Even those whose job is telling others what to do like a day off from it. Most of our Holidays commemorate some event in the past, real or imaginary. A battle won or birth of a child. Thanksgiving remembers one of our legends, partly true, maybe not.
The meeting of the English settlers — invaders — we call the Pilgrims and the locals whose name we hardly remember — Wampanoag — in 1621 celebrated a happy harvest feast. One hunter chief was less happy than most and prepared a special dish he thought no one would like, but the Pilgrims were town folk and they liked the chief’s recipe and named it after him, Succotash.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com.