Screwing Up the Middle East

There is little doubt in anyone's mind that our current administration is screwing up overall relations with the nations of the Middle East. We are, after all, engaged in two wars there (one popularly supported, one not), are threatening another, and pretending to ignore the calls of several other regional states to mind our own business.

There is also little doubt that these operations are less the result of "spreading freedom" than they are of spreading American capitalism. Of course, while I don't necessarily disagree with the idea of spreading American capitalism (hey, I'm a capitalist), I do disagree with the idea of trying to do it under false pretense.

All of the problems and issues implied above can easily be blamed on our so-called "conservatives" in government, a debated fact our so-called "liberals" in government do not hesitate to point out during the current campaign season. But do the liberals have the answer to the problems in/with the Middle East? Hardly. In fact, I'd say they could only make matters worse.

Now, before you start labeling me a neo-con asshole, keep in mind that I'm not a huge fan of current foreign policy either... I'm just trying to point out some glaring probabilities that everyone seems to want to ignore.

First, the Democrats (a.k.a. the liberals) want to pull out of Iraq. Dumb idea. Yes, going in was a stupid idea in the first place and should have been done (if at all) immediately after the first Gulf War. But pulling out now? Well, despite trying to tout "save our soldiers," such an action will merely create a power vacuum that will undoubtedly cause short-term chaos in an already chaotic region. And guess what short-term chaos always leads to in that part of the world? That's right, long-term chaos.

Second, in a thinly-veiled attempt to force the Bush administration to pull out of Iraq, the liberals went ahead and declared the Turkish government (one of our main allies over there) as genocidal. For what, you might ask? Well, for actions that occurred nearly a century ago in World War I. Not only that, they were actions committed by Turkey when Turkey was controlled by a completely different government. This would be like China blaming the United States for actions that occurred in America prior to 1776. Fair? Hardly. In fact, it's morally, politically, and futilely stupid. But, hey, the Democrats are trying to make a point.

So I pose this question: is this really the direction we want to go? I would hope you say no, but given the relative uneducated political viewpoints of America en masse, you're probably jumping all over that bandwagon.

With certainty, I can say the Democrats are wrong in how they want to approach the Middle East. With equal certainty, I can say the Republicans are wrong with how they are currently approaching the Middle East. So what do we do?

One option is to leave it all alone. Sure, we can do that, but that only contributes to the aforementioned power vacuum, and for "leaving it alone" to be successful, other world powers such as Russia would have to "leave it alone" as well. Will that happen? Um, no.

Another option is to reopen relations with Iran. Iran, a surprisingly stable government enjoying said stability more or less since they overthrew the US-friendly government back in the late-Carter, early-Reagan days. Yet that appears to not be a possiblity, what with Iran being a member of the "Axis of Evil." Don't get me started on that...

I don't pretend to know the answers, but I do think I know what isn't going to work, and just about everything I've heard or read from both sides of our government isn't going to work. And until we realize that Arab Muslims don't want a government that separates church from state, nothing we come up with is going to work at all.

Until then, we're just going to keep screwing things up.

College For Everyone Sucks

A year or so ago, I learned of the existence of a post-doctoral program at an internationally-reknown American university. Apparently, PhDs are no longer the measure of who's an expert in a particular field. This phenomenon has happened before, of course. We all know that, decades ago, associate and bachelor degrees amounted to a whole hell of a lot more than they do today.

Now, however, it's the master's degree that usually dictates where in the workplace a recent college grad gets to start working. Thanks to the liberal propensity of wanting "college for everyone," the lower degrees have been devalued, almost to the point of being as almost as worthless as a high school diploma.

Of course, the conservatives/capitalists hold just as much to blame for this evolution of degree valuation as the liberals. After all, it is they that insisted on keeping the American post-secondary education system based on a business. College itself, obviously, is one huge money-making industry.

Still, every time an accomplishment becomes worth just a little bit less than it used to be, it tends to piss me off. Whether it's education, military (oh, boy... look how the military gives away and creates new medals to give away just to make their servicemembers feel better), or sports, devaluing something just plain sucks.

Many, many years ago, colleges were there to separate the intellectually egalitarian from the intellectually elite. Today they're there to continue the educations of people who are obviously underserved by the public primary and secondary education systems. Yes, there are a whole shitload of issues within this issue, and there's no way I'm even going to try to get into them all, but the end result is the same: college degrees continue to lose their value.

I say, "Fuck that."

We have, inarguably, the best college and university system in the world. We have, inarguably, one of the worst public primary and secondary school systems in the world. The catch-22 here is that, if we continue to devalue our degrees in the name of "everyone gets to go to college," we're going to lose our leg-up on the rest of the world.

Fix the public school system. Make college harder to get into. Get rid of some of these ridiculous, bullshit colleges that exist only to make money. Make our degrees worth something. Fucking Hell.