Though not directly related to Russia, this opinion article by Rami G. Khouri published in The Daily Star struck me as intelligent and thoughtful. Whenever it seems as though Russia is beyond Western understanding, we can always take a look at the Middle East and realize how easy we’ve got it…
The end of 2009 sees the US actively involved in four wars – in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. If this is not a wake-up call for Americans, I do not know what is. But it is a greater wake-up call for the people of the Arab world themselves, who remain fractured and in disarray due to their own domestic national incoherence and the persistent need among many to actively resist American-Israeli policies and those of some allied conservative Arab governments.
This year ends with Yemen and Detroit beckoning to us to try harder and act more intelligently in understanding the root causes of our wars, conflicts and profound irrationalities and excesses, reflected in our common savageries: Arabs oppressing and killing each other and trying to kill civilians in distant lands; Israelis colonizing and killing Arabs; and the American armed forces attacking and killing simultaneously in four distant lands. Unraveling the madness starts with connecting the dots, because these are not isolated, unrelated dynamics.