They All Look the Same To Me

You have obviously studied the Mideast situation a lot more than I have, so I'll take your word for it. The only thing I can add is that our guys weren't supposed to be in Afghanistan and Iraq forever, they were just supposed to overthrow the current regime as punishment for the 9-11 attack. Then President Bush or somebody decided that they should stick around long enough to teach them about democracy. As the old saying goes: "This is like trying to teach a bull to dance, it doesn't work and it just aggravates the bull." I said at the time that all the "insurgents" had to do was lay low long enough for our guys to declare victory and go home, and then they could resume massacring each other, but apparently they didn't want to do it that way.

It seems to me that things haven't changed all that much since the days of the Crusades except that, in those days, both sides squabbled among themselves like that. I suppose that's why they call it the "feudal era". Right in the middle of a crusade, Richard the Lion Hearted pissed off some Austrian duke, so the duke took his ball and went home. Later, when Richard was on his own way home, the duke kidnapped him and held him for ransom. Back in England, Richard's brother Prince John had to really lean on his people to raise the ransom money, and they weren't too happy about that. If this sounds familiar, it's because Robin Hood, a fictional character, was added to the cast later to make the story more interesting. Truth be known, Prince John did raise the ransom money and was not holding it back for himself. He sent the money off to Austria, along with an offer that he would give the duke even more money if he would keep Richard for six more months to give time for John to consolidate his own pretentions to the crown. The duke declined and sent Richard home before John could secure his position. Being a practical politician, John saw the handwriting on the wall, submitted to Richard, and was allowed to keep his own cushy government job.

I think that's what's really wrong with those Islamic militants, they're still hung up in the Middle Ages. They have modern weapons, and they use the internet but, other than that, they're a thousand years behind the times. Not far away, in the United Arab Emirates, they are too busy making and spending money to fool around like that. These guys got their act together decades ago and invested their oil revenues in mutual funds or something, and now they've got more money than they know what to do with. They're still Muslims, but they seem to have mellowed out enough that they allow their "guest workers" to eat pork and stuff like that. People from several poor Asian countries come there in droves to take the jobs that the locals don't have time to do anymore because they're too busy counting their money. They have built, among other things, the tallest building in the world, and an indoor air conditioned ski resort. They have a high end housing project that extends out into the ocean, looks like a giant palm tree, and can be seen from the International Space Station. I don't think they have democracy there, but they sure wrote the book on decadent capitalism. We could learn thing or two from them ourselves in that respect.