The Middle East is a religious sectarian racial hellhole that has always, and will always, remain a Western threat;undeserving of the blood and treasure spent there. ~FR
One of the themes at TOO is the uniqueness of the West, which basically comes down to individualism. The great achievement of the West has been the construction of civil societies where allegiance to family, kin, and religious sect are minimized. In Western societies, the personal qualities of the individual (character, intelligence, talent) rather than these parochial allegiances are the standard of personal evaluation and in making alliances.
To be sure, the individualism at the heart of Western societies has never been perfect. There is a constant battle against nepotism, and such societies are threatened by groups such as Jews, where ethnic networking (i.e., ethnic nepotism by any other name) continues to be a major theme.I thought about this in reading a Washington Post article on the Syrian civil war (“Syrian conflict’s sectarian, ethnic dimensions growing, U.N. warns“). Syria, like Iraq, is a typical Middle-Eastern society divided along ethnic and religious lines.
The 21-month-old civil war in Syria is rapidly devolving into an “overtly sectarian” and ethnic conflict, a U.N. investigatory panel has concluded, raising the specter of reprisal killings and prolonged violence that could last for years after the government falls. … “In recent months, there has been a clear shift” in the nature of the conflict, with more fighters and civilians on both sides describing the civil war in ethnic or religious terms. … Many of the rebel fighters interviewed by the panel — including defectors and foreign volunteers — described themselves as loyal to Islamist militias or ethnic-based movements, and not to the opposition Free Syria Army, the report’s authors found. Civilians, likewise, are increasingly being drawn into the opposing camps, they said. “Feeling threatened and under attack, ethnic and religious minority groups have increasingly aligned themselves with parties to the conflict, deepening sectarian divides,” the report stated.
A report from the Foreign Policy daily email summary notes the involvement of al Qaeda:
The most severe division is between Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority and President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect, a Shiite Muslim minority. However other sects are increasing getting pulled into the conflict. Many opposition fighters interviewed in the inquiry were aligned with Islamist militias rather than the Free Syrian Army. Additionally, al Qaeda is capitalizing on deteriorating conditions in Syria and is building its presence.
In other words, there are not two sides in the fighting, but many sides reflecting the fractionated nature of a typical Middle Eastern society. These divisions have always been there; and ultimately, with the exception of the Sunnis and Shiites who are entering the country for religious reasons, the divisions are based on ethnicity. As predicted by the evolutionary psychology of group conflict, these differences become exacerbated in times of threat. People retreat into their ethnic enclaves and are forced to choose sides.
This phenomenon once again indicates the hollowness of the U.S./neocon rhetoric about bringing democracy to the Middle East via regime change. If the Syrian government falls, it will change the faces of those in power, but will not change the fundamental nature of the society. Post-Alawhite Syria will be led by a different ethnic/religious group, but the society will be just as divided as before. This is what has happened in Iraq, despite all the high-flown verbiage from academics like Bernard Lewis about democratic nation building leading up to the war.
These areas have never been part of the West, even in Roman times, as Domitius Corbulo reminds us:
The Roman world was long coming under the influence of “orientalizing” motifs particularly in the eastern areas of the Empire, Syria, Jordan, and northern Iraq. These areas were barely romanized.
Western culture was a thin veneer that never really penetrated down to the people of the Middle East. The result is that the war in Iraq and the civil strife in Syria will not change the fundamental reality that these are low trust societies:
“This crisis [in Iraq] really is caused because there is pervasive distrust and an absence of institutions that can carry this kind of transition,” said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite, has never trusted the Sunni politicians with whom he has been forced to share power, Hiltermann said.
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