And The Lord Hardened the Pharoah's Heart

With these words, the Jewish scriptures describe how powerful nations come to that point in their life when they no longer can recognize what is good for their own well being. The Pharoah was on the edge of deciding to grant the Israelites their freedom, after some rather persuasive arguments called plagues, but, the scriptures report, the Lord hardened the Pharoah's heart and he was unwilling to let the Israelites go. Big mistake! It landed the Pharoah and his huge military machine at the bottom of the Red Sea. Actual real history aside, it is the ancient minds way of describing a phenomena that is contagious among all nations/peoples who get to that point in their history and their power where they believe themselves to be outside of the normal cause and effect nature of reality.

This may be the only way to explain the American acquiesence to the deceptions of Bush/Cheney in the lead up to the war in Iraq, the "Mission Accoplished" mistake, and now the idea that the Surge Worked! and that we could possibly save the situation in Afghanistan. We have, in similar fashion to the Pharoah, passed the point of being able to recognize reality, including the most simple of all truths that normally guide human societies toward actions that are beneficial to their well being.

I suppose it will take, sometime in the future, a team skilled analysts to determine exactly what it is in the nation's history and psyche that drives them to this point where the heart is hardened to the point where even self interest is betrayed, but it might be a good guess that, like most self destructive tendencies, it begins with some deep insecurity. Insecurity, in turn, begins with substantial misplaced myths about oneself and the world.

In Egypt the hardened heart played right into the hands of the Israelites and allowed them a stunning victory over a superior military force, because the Pharoah could just not believe that a rag tag bunch of unwelcomed and illiterate immigrants could overcome his jugernaut of a nation. He committed a huge mistake and his power was drowned in sea of arrogant miscalculation.

The reality he could not see is that the Israelites were not his subjects, nor did they believe that Egypt was their home. Sooner or later they would leave and go back to where they had been born and where their dreams had always lain.

I want to skip right over all the classic mistakes that Bush/Cheney made in both Afghanistan and Iraq in both intelligence and national security theory and military strategy. I cannot think of a single thing they did right. To simplify we can just say that in Afghanistan they tried to kill a fly with a hammer and the only result was to squash the country while the fly went free and turned into a vulture. Everyone knows, of course that you cannot kill a fly with a hammer - you either surround it and eventually capture it in your net, or you kill it with a quick slap by a flexible instrument. In Iraq they fought a war no one was willing to fight and were not prepared and still are not to fight the war that the locals were ready to fight. Or, to put it even more simply: we forgot that it is not our country. Never will be. Someday we have to go home and then the locals will do what they want to do according to the histories, cultures, faiths and politics which are in their hearts and minds. That, more or less, is the way the world has always and continues to work. It happesn also to be true about Afghanistan: it is not our country!!!

If it seems too simple, it is. But a nation with a "hardened heart" has trouble seeing things so simple. It does not matter how many troops we put in either country, we will not win in either country and those who pretend that we can only continue the march toward the Red Sea.

Victory for us would be to regain our senses of what is good for ourselves and the world. Let the Middle East go! We cannot still get out of them what we think we need to be a successful nation. We have to find it within ourselves and our own country. If we have interests, as others in the world do, then join with others and start a dialogue that can actually have real benefits to us without putting not just our military, but also our society in the middle of the Red Sea in chariots not made to float. It is not our country and there is nothing there that we need for our security, much less for our prosperity and even more, for our sense of dignity.

What the Pharoah lost in his refusal to let the Israelites go was the possibility of good friends who might actually have wanted, eventually, to do something that was of mutual benefit. Instead the Pharoah wanted to control the way the Israelites served the interest of his nation and subject them. In the end he not only had no friends around him in the region, he had no army to defend him.

Removing ourselves from Iraq is smart. Moving more into Afghanistan is not smart because it is still the case that it is not our country and never will be and someday we have to leave and then the Afghanis and others in the region will do what is in their hearts, their history, their visions for the future to do.

We need a new way to engage the Middle East to create friends for the future who might actually want to do something of mutual benefit with us in the future. This is not isolation, this is not to leave confrontation of the terrorists to the side...this is something smart to do for ourselves, our children's world, the world and the future which could be full of promise.

For the moment we have met the enemy and it is us.