gracchusdixit

There is much hand-wringing over the looming and apparently unstoppable consequences of climate change.  As there should be.  The prospect of global catastrophe is not a pretty sight.

On the other hand, the precipitous warming of the planet does offer certain practical and psychological consolations, if we are prepared to recognize and appreciate them.  To mention but a few:

The country club memberships of a great many white, well-fed, and self-satisfied Republicans will become worthless, since there will be no water left to green up the links and lawns where they spend so much of their time, squandering so much of the planet’s resources.

For the same reason, swimming pools will disappear, ending the torment of countless homeowners who didn’t realize until it was too late that building a pool is the equivalent of flushing money down a toilet.

MacMansions and suburban sprawl will disappear as well.  There won’t be enough energy to heat, cool or light the mansions or any way of reaching them to begin with.  In time, their deserted hulks will rot and collapse, supplying centuries of sustenance for the termites, who, like the roaches, will probably outlive us all.

The problem of obesity will likewise disappear, since food production will shrivel and food prices will skyrocket, making it all but impossible for most Americans to eat their customary three or four, highly caloric squares a day.  This, in turn, will not only reduce health care costs, it will dramatically reduce the cost of clothing.  There will be only two sizes:  skinny and anorexic.

The Interstate Highway System, which we lack either the money or the will to repair, will be left to crumble into gravel, since no one will be able to afford a drive of more than a few miles.  This will spare us all a great deal of aggravation, end the plague of road rage, and have the salubrious effect of lowering both highway fatalities and insurance rates.

We will no longer have to put up with the fetishistic cult of the ubiquitous plastic water bottle or suffer endless lines in front of the recycling machines at local grocery stores.  The only water left will be undrinkable, and those who are still able to get their hands on the last few drops of the fresh stuff won’t want to advertise the fact.

Many “red” states below the Mason-Dixon line will become uninhabitable as average summer temperatures rise into the mid-100s and no amount of money in the world can keep the air conditioners running.  Of course, northern “blue” states may be disinclined to welcome a horde of white-flight immigrants seeking cooler climes.  In which case, they would be well-advised to start building border fences right now.  This will have the added advantage of boosting their economies and providing jobs.  After all, one can never have too many border guards.

As oil prices inevitably fall and the value of oil reserves plummets, the economy of Texas will collapse.  Since the oil industry is the only plausible excuse for Texas to exist in the first place, its population will all but evaporate.  If the Mexicans are foolish enough to want this boringly barren real estate back, we should wish them well and bid the few remaining Texans a cheerful adios.  Presumably, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders will have to adopt a new dress code and pick up some Spanish if they wish to stay in business.

Southern Florida will be under water, ending a century and a half of rampant real estate speculation, environmental contamination and unspeakable bad taste.  Of course, some will lament the passing of Spring Break, but by then, it will be so hot everywhere that bikinis and thongs will be de rigueur as far north as Bangor.

Lower Manhattan will also be under water.  This, once and for all, will put an end to the investment banking business, and we shall never again have to worry about bailing out the likes of  J. P.  Morgan and Goldman Sachs.  They will probably relocate to Switzerland, and the tidy Swiss can tend to them forever more.  This will give the Swiss something useful to do, since there will no longer be any skiing on their snowless Alps.

Finally, we shall at last be treated to the sound of the gods laughing.  It was King Lear who said: “As flies to little boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”  As the planet bakes and mankind broils, there will be plenty of sport for the gods to laugh at.  The best we can hope for is to laugh along with them.

When the United States invaded Iraq 11 years ago, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld invoked the phrase “shock and awe” to describe both the strategy behind the invasion and what he expected the consequences to be, i.e., a joyful welcome from a “liberated” people, a quick and painless withdrawal, and a trivial cost tidily paid for by all that lovely oil lurking beneath the Mesopotamian sands.

Things, of course, turned out rather differently.  After squandering more than a trillion dollars and at least 100,000 American and Iraqi lives, the nation we supposedly liberated is disintegrating before our eyes, and, along with it, most of the Middle East.  The shock of our invasion left behind, not awe, but an awful mess.

Now, we are at it again.

Many of the very people who advocated the invasion of Iraq in the first place—Republican neocons, Democratic “hawks,” armchair generals on both right and left—have prodded the President of the United States into involving us once more in the very quagmire we thought we had left behind.   Their excuse is that the President lacked a “strategy” for dealing with the carnage and chaos they were largely responsible for  creating.  About that, they were, and are, right.  The President didn’t have a “strategy” before and he doesn’t have one now.  But neither do his critics.  The reason in both cases is that no possible strategy exists for dealing with a situation that is hopelessly beyond our control.

The interventionists proclaim that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—a.k.a., ISIL—must be stopped.  Fine.  But exactly how?  And why do they suppose that stopping this latest incarnation of Islamic extremism—even if that were possible—is going to change anything?  We “stopped” Al Qaeda by killing Osama Bin Laden, and before we knew it, a new breed of extremists sprang up from the earth like dragon’s teeth.  Why do they imagine that quashing ISIL will have a more lasting effect?

They assert that we must take the fight into Syria.  Fine.  But then what?  The bloody civil war in that country will continue unabated, and its bloody dictator  will continue slaughtering people until another round of insurgency and revenge begins all over again.

They say that the Iraqis must take charge of defending their own country, by forming stable political and military institutions.  Fine.  But saying so does not make it so.  Iraq is an artificial country, cobbled together by the British after the end of the First World War.  It has never had a stable, reliable, or even remotely democratic government.  Miracles may happen, but praying for miracles doesn’t amount to a “strategy”.

They insist that our “partners in the region” must step up to the plate and join the fight.  Fine.  But have they taken a close look at those “partners” or given any thought to their motives?  We have supported authoritarian regimes like those in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states for decades, regimes that ignore and oppress their own populations and, behind our backs, have encouraged and subsidized the very terrorists we now expect them to condemn.

What our foreign policy elite cannot bring themselves to say is this:  the United States is largely responsible for the mess in the Middle East, and more meddling by us will do nothing but make matters more terrible than they already are.

We destroyed the Iraqi state and dismantled its institutions after years of propping up its vile dictator.  We toppled the only democratically elected secular government in the history of Iran and installed a phony authoritarian monarch in his place, poisoning relations with that country ever since.  We intervened in Libya to oust another dictator, one of the few we didn’t like, then left the country to disintegrate.  We have turned a blind eye to Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and its repression of Gaza’s Palestinian population, prompting an endless cycle of violence and retribution by Palestinians and Israelis alike.

The truth is, we have never had a “strategy” in the Middle East beyond the immediate protection of our narrow economic and political interests.  While proclaiming the values of democracy, human rights, and liberal institutions, we have done absolutely nothing to advance those values anywhere in the Muslim world.

The beheadings of two American journalists and a British aid worker were shocking and barbaric.  By all means let us put an end to the awfulness of those responsible.   But let us also put an end to the shockingly awful “strategy” that created ISIL in the first place.  In one year alone, Saudi Arabia beheaded 79 people, many for petty offenses against a repressive and medieval religious code.  If we want to end extremism in the Middle East, perhaps we should worry less about our enemies and spend more time worrying about our so-called friends.