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| Iraq |
| The Odds Against |
| 2015-02-17 |
| Max Fisher tweeted, people who think Christian sectarian militias are the solution to Iraq's problems could stand to read a history of the Lebanese civil war. I did, and the history of the Lebanese civil war reports that the Christian communities survived. That's probably not what Fisher meant with the phrase a 'solution to Iraq's problems' but survival is no mean feat. Militias aren't usually formed to do good or noble things. They largely exist to maximize the chances that their members will wake to see tomorrow. Most people in the West are accustomed to the idea that survival is a given, that the continuation of our civilization is a given and the sole remaining problems are ones of refinement. Francis Fukuyama even spoke of the End of History, but in fact extinction is the normal fate of a species. âNinety-nine percent of all species that ever lived on the planet are estimated to be extinctâ. Cultures within a species are even shorter lived. Egyptian hieroglyphics, Mayan script and classical Latin -- once the tongues of mighty empires of the human species -- are now all dead languages. Who knows but NBC might even stop broadcasting someday. Look what happened to Newsweek. Survival may look easy, but ask yourself if youâve seen any Roman Legions lately? If Christians -- or anyone -- don't fight to survive in the Middle East the likely result is no more of them. One of the virtues of the Cold War was it made people sit up and realize that survival was by no means assured. In those days presidents and premiers were serious and careful when they talked about nuclear weapons. For 13 days in 1962 it actually seemed like there might not be a human species if things took the wrong turn. Since the Wall fell we've hardly given it a thought. You might think our only remaining problems are where to buy a selfie-stick. But the press today is full of the man-bites-dog story that Christians in Iraq are forming militias to fight ISIS. It has the same novelty value as accounts of extremist Buddhist monks in Burma. People in their twenties probably think there is something unnatural about having to fight for oneâs existence, like living in a world before computers. But except for the short and rapidly dwindling period of the Pax Americana, staying alive was a perfectly normal occupation. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |