Revolutionary crisis in the Middle East

Different time, different place, similar revolutionary crisis - 1914, Europe, war leading to Bolshevik revolution - 2014, Middle East, Arab Spring wars leading to Takfeeri revolution. A history buff's humble analysis can be an over simplistic, panoramic, squint-eyed view of the present seen through the lens of the past, but just occasionally we hit the nail right on the head!

 The crisis in Iraq is bringing this revolutionary crisis into sharp focus. Arab people's are innocents when it comes to revolution and are often ignorant of the devastating impact of revolution, whether that revolution is inspired by a political and social impetus or by political religious fervour. Our peoples' eagerness to embrace the street protestors as the great, energetic force of renewal while ignoring the more extremist elements that are far more successful, is a reflection of our own lack of experience with revolution and our naïveté in a sense.

 There is so much that is similar between Autocratic Europe of a hundred years ago and Autocratic Arabia of today, the same blasé attitude of the ruling classes and their allied upper and upper middle classes we saw in Europe we see today in the Arabic speaking world. The same inept governance and lack of interest in institution building and social reform of a hundred years ago in Europe we see today in our own time capsule of the Arab World. Blithely our Statesmen, bankers, educated middle class and intelligencia dismiss the purveyors of doom and gloom, insisting all will be well. I wonder if they predicted the total collapse of the Iraqi Army and the loss of a third of the country to extremist revolutionaries in a matter of days. We live at a time of massive tectonic shifts both politically and socially and it's hard to predict what will happen next, anyone who claims they can is a fool or a liar or both.

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