The history behind the headlines

Ah, the week before an American election, and surfing the headlines shows lots of hot air and garbage. But the internet has a series of essays about the background on the headlines..

Michale Barone sees the election about an American public who had a vacation from history in the 1990's, and wishes to return to it, since the alternatives are too horrific to think about...but Barone ends with the quotation that we can ignore history, but that history might not ignore us.

Professor Phares discusses the idea of the Caliphate, and criticizes Newsweek for ridiculing Bush's use of the term while ignoring it's historical implications when used by jihadists.

Bill O'Reilly points out Bush's problem with Iraq is actually due to Iranian interference with that country, and that Bush is enough of a monomaniac to continue the course against an enemy who remembers history and figures they can outlast a weak USA.

Spengler sees Iran winning right now with it's thumbs in both Iraq's Shiite militia and Hezbollah, but notes that country is not one ethnic group and may be overextending their hand. He sees Iranian expansionism as echoing not the Caliphate but the Persian empire's expansion.

To the average American, these groups are all "ragheads", to use the deroggatory term, but the long history of the area, and the ethnic complexities of countries carved out of the Ottoman empire by the Versaille treaty are important issues behind the simplistic solutions and floating quotes/stories without context that I see on CNN Int...

Indeed, TerryMattingly who covers the press when they don't "Get Religion", again complains that the MSM fails to cover what the Sunni Shiite divide means...and that without the background of tribal and religious divides, quotations and stories fail to convey the whole story.

And in all this talk of war, David Warren notes that the press largely ignored the implications that 30 of the highest intellectual leaders of Islam accepted the Pope's apology and are stressing their agreement with a lot of what he said. And this timid dialogue of similarities shows the way to peace between religions: that God is love, and that reason is compatible with the divine.

In a hardheaded world, the joke is to paraphrase Stalin who asked how many (army) divisians did the pope have and ask how many suicide bombers does Benedict XVI have...
Ah, but the comment ignores that the fall of communism was due to a vision of hope, not due to armies....so I guess I'll have to get my rosary out and start praying for peace again...what the hell, it worked with the communists...LINK