Sometimes I feel like the Middle East is really just a crazy action movie all the time that’s super depressing and terrifying but like there’s some super cool military tactics and plot twists that keep you on your toes. None of it feels totally real because all of it is so incredibly messy, sad, and insane.
I will say, however, that the tunnels between Lebanon and Israel are pretty interesting and smart, until of course, they got discovered. I didn’t even know that there was a war between Israel and Lebanon until I read that article about the tunnels breaking a treaty from that war, so that was pretty interesting to find out about. There are so many conflicts in the Middle East that it’s often hard for me to keep up with all of them.
As I’m reading all of this news, I can’t help but wonder when the Middle East is going to come out of its shatterbelt phase and stabilize. I hope it will be in my lifetime, but I feel like that’s not going to happen. I mainly feel like that because oftentimes the only way to resolve conflict is through compromise, and what happens when one side gets the short end of the stick, or grows tired of the compromise and wants what it originally was aiming for? Then we’re back to square one, and everyone is fighting again. Being a diplomat right now is probably the absolute worst job, unless you are completely devoted to and in love with your field, but being a reporter is probably really awesome in the sense that there’s always a new story to break, which means a regular paycheck.
To wrap up this analysis, I’ll do my usual tear on the United States and its current administration. It is truly baffling to me that any person–much less a group of people that make up a government–could care this little about other people, specifically less fortunate people who are in immense danger. Although we don’t necessarily have to depend on the Middle East for its oil anymore, I would think it is still a region of national interest, and if the administration isn’t going to think about the millions and millions of people that are suffering and dying, can it think about the national interest, please? Then it will inadvertently end up helping someone, hopefully. We’re a nation that is more than capable of providing foreign aid, and if Trump would stop digging the deficit hole deeper and deeper, we could be able to support foreign aid more feasibly by making some minor economic adjustments at home. All in all, I find it disgraceful that the president has brought the United States to this new low in its international affairs, and something has to be done by an outside force to help the unstable region of the Middle East, because at the moment it’s kind of just imploding and clearly needs help from the UN and financially capable and politically stable countries.