Reading Richard Clarke’s novels may not represent the high point in literature, but they do capture plausible scenarios emanating from the ineptness of our nation to deal intelligently with the Middle East.
“The Scorpian’s Gate” deals with the emergence of Iran as the Middle East, following the scenario of an Iraq run by Shiites and the overtaking of Saudi Arabia by extremist Islamists.
“Breakpoint” projects further into the future (2012) when advanced technology is used by right-winged conservatives in the United States to achieve their extreme agendas.
I admit to projecting serious consequences to the miserable failures of the Bush Administration. Iran seems to have benefited by the gross instability in Iraq and the failure to transition from a Taliban-dominated society to an alternative form of government in Afghanistan. Iran’s dominance in the Middle East does not represent a positive outcome of our years of investment in Iraq. Thomas Friedmanaccurately captures our plight of having actually created a worse situation than existed prior to our attempts to promote our values.
I continue to be infuriated with the right-winged, ideologically-driven conservatives who somehow think that power and force represent the best, if not the only, approach to the complex world in which we live. Somehow, they seem to start from the premise that our nation is indisputably the best representative of what is good and we have the task to ensure that we maintain our way of life while promoting our values elsewhere. It does seem to occur to them that the extension of our life-style is impossible without destroying the planet. As it is, without our being able to curb dramatically our life-style, there are reasons to expect that our planet’s future is at risk.
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