Looking Back to Look Forward:
A Perspective on the Paris Attacks and Syrian Refugee Crisis
by Craig Kravitz
On September 28th I found myself sitting on a hill overlooking the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York. While I watched in awe as the moon rose through the pinkened sky over the Hudson River, the refrain from the REM song This is the coming of the end of the world as we know it, kept going through my head. I had truly hoped that the folks who had filled the metaphysical parts of the internet with assurances that this astrological event, an eclipse on a full “blood moon”, close to a Jewish Holiday, was a sign that the global strife that we have collectively lived with throughout human history was going to come to an end. I guess I was being naive as things have not changed, instead it seems that we are hurtling ever faster towards a time of heightened global strife. It seems that you can not turn on the news or open a newspaper without finding a story about another terror attack.
Of course the recent attacks in Paris have captured the media’s attention in this country because they took place in the heart of the capital of one of our oldest allies. The inescapable scenes of carnage that resulted from the wanton violence that took place in the heart of the city of love are being used to fuel the fire of what to me is about to become an unstoppable cataclysmic world event. I truly wish that I could find a crack in the space time continuum that would allow me to go back in time and press the great pause button and then shake a fist at the powers that be and say wake up do you know what you are doing?
But the question is what time period do I travel back too? Do i go back to 1916 and 1917 when the leaders of France, England, and Russia were hammering out the Sykes-Picot agreement that carved up the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War 1. With a little research it is apparent that much of the strife that we are wittnessing in the middle east can be traced to this agreement. For it seems as if the people who drew up the borders of the countries in this area that were high on some kind of drug that clouded their decisions. For it makes no sense to have created countries that were populated by religious, sectarian, and tribal groups who had been at war for lifetimes. Or even worse once these countries were created setting up political structures where a minority group would have total control over the majority, and then rule with an iron fist. It’s no wonder that once the power structure of the middle east was upset after the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 that things really started to get dicey.
I wish i could hop in Doc’s Delorean and go back to the future and just fill in a few thousand of those hanging chads the allowed George Bush to steal the Presidential vote in Florida and thus the rest of the country. (I’m not going to go off on this tangent as I am constrained by space but needless to say that I’m kind of scared by the remote prospect that Jeb, who was the Governor of Florida while his big brother stole the election is being considered as a Presidential candidate) because as I have said it was during Bush’s presidency that the proverbial shit truly started to hit the fan in the Middle East.
There is part of me that wants to give Bush the benefit of the doubt and say that he and his neoconservative advisors were short sighted when they charged into Baghdad, to avenge the ‘hit” that Saddam Hussein had put out on his father. That however would be doing us all a disservice because I strongly believe that was the furthest thing from the case. In fact Bush and the cadre of neocons that he surrounded himself with were masterful in their statesmanship as they succeed in steering the world towards their dream of fulfilling biblical prophecy. You read that right I just said that the President of the United States was instrumental in designing a foreign policy that has brought about the circumstances necessary to forment the prophecy of armageddon. I know as you read that you said to yourself that this dude is nuts and I don’t blame you. But i hope to prove you wrong.
In 2005 George Bush, told a delegation of Palestinian diplomats that he had a direct line to God and that “I’m driven with a mission from God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.’ And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,’ and I did.”
I’m sitting here asking myself how is Bush’s belief that he was an agent of God and was the representative of Mgog vs. Gog in a global war any different then the leaders of,ISIS who firmly believe that their formation of a great caliphate is going to usher in a messianic era? The answer to that question is that there is really none. And that is what truly scares me. For I feel that is going to be virtually impossible to pull ourselves back from the precipice that we are teetering on when the parties that are involved are acting as agents of the almighty.
The following paragraph from Isaiah 17 that George Bush and his advisors have based much of their foreign policy on. (Obama inherited the world stage that Bush et.al created and due to events that were beyond his control could not change)
See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aroer will be deserted and left to flocks, which will lie down, with no one to make them afraid. The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim, and royal power from Damascus; the remnant of Aram will be ike the glory of the Israelites,’ declares the Lord
I know that i can not go back in time and change history however i firmly believe that if we come together in the light of peace we can change the future. We do not have to let the Commissars and pin-stripe bosses continue to roll the dice for it is not us that will pay the price. They are gambling with my 11 year old sons future and I do wont let that happen as we have fucked things up enough. So join me in saying enough is enough. NO MORE WAR IN OUR NAME
