Life Is Not Purgatory

Middle East Crisis
… is this how the world ends?

If you take a look at the middle east right now you will take note that there is a whole lot that is coming boiling to the surface and it looks very much like things are going to get a whole lot more violent and bloody there before it gets any better.

For starters we have the fanatic, fundamentalist President of Iran who is stoking the furnace of international relations with his escalating war of words about Israel, coupled with his breech of the international agreement on nuclear energy that we reached by the previous administration, and his announcement that with the referral of Iran to the UN Security Council he is prepared to start the enrichment of uranium immediately, which has prompted many in the US and in Israel to openly contemplate a pre-emptive strike against Iran.

As I am wring this, the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria are still burning and on their way to becoming smoldering ruins in waves of increasingly violent protests over the publishing of a series of political cartoons in a Danish newspaper featuring a caricature of the prophet Mohammed. Islamic law is very touchy about any printed depiction of Mohammed and comedic caricature is apparently no exception.

Add to this the ongoing insurgency in Iraq, the allegations of election irregularities in what the US Administration had hoped would be a beacon of democracy for the entire region only to find that Iraq may simply have been the powder-keg that ignites into multinational warfare.

Even Afghanistan, the lonely star in the dimly-lit post 9-11 sky is starting to backslide… as the al-Qaeda fighters from Iraq are being caught streaming into the backcountry undermining the tenuous government control of the country outside the Capital of Kabul.

And they say things are getting better in the Middle East? What are they smoking... Afgani Opium?