THE MIDDLE EAST: WHERE SANITY GOES TO DIE

Oh great, another U.S. President turning his eyes on peace in the Middle East. We just elected this guy Obama because he was the smartest guy in the field at election time. We needed a smart person after 8 years of an evil Shadow President Shotgun Dick Cheney and his semi-literate front man Bush The Younger, possibly the stupidest man to ever hold the nominal title of president. And that goes for being president of anything, even a co-op board or a fifth-grade class. Anyway, this time around we opted for the smart guy. Only he's not quite smart enough it seems.

With all the huge problems Obama inherited from Bush The Younger, he's got a lot on his plate work-wise. Our economy is in a shambles and we're stuck in 2 wars where we already won the actual war against their armies but are sticking around for some reason letting our soldiers get picked off by suicide bombers. That's plenty enough work for any president. Why derail all that with attempts at making peace in the Middle East. Sure, the guy was a law professor and all, but did he at least study some history? The last guy to have that region halfway figured out was King Solomon, and as soon as he dropped dead his kingdom split in half.

There's just no making the people in the Middle East happy, unless you define happiness as having a bunch of people who look just like you but follow a different religion to hate and fight with until the end of time. That's what seems to make the people over there tick, and you get the feeling that life would be empty and meaningless for them without a sworn blood enemy handy. Mr. Obama would do well to study the efforts of recent U.S. presidents who have decided they are in Solomon's league with the wisdom. Turns out they weren't and the Middle East is still in a perpetual state of undeclared war. But hell, why declare something that's plain as day? Might as well declare Summer or sunrise if declarations are your thing.

Here's how it will go for Obama: He'll get the leaders of 3 or more of the contentious nations together, have them negotiate and tell all sorts of lies about how all they want to do is live in peace and love thy neighbor and then they will sign a peace treaty. You see, he's got The Plan! Photos will be taken, headlines printed and songs and poems written about this momentous event. Perhaps Nobel Prizes will be handed out and Mr. Obama and the several leaders involved will earn Great Statesman points, which are almost as good as frequent flier miles. Then everyone will go home supremely satisfied with themselves and before a week is out the war will resume.

The countries will blame the other guy, saying they were foolish to ever trust such vicious lying scum and only did so to please the latest American President. The President will say that if the warring parties had only lived up to The Plan, peace would reign forever in the Holy Land. Then he'll get the leaders back to the table where they will trade accusations and racial insults and scream at the top of their lungs that their opponents negotiated in bad faith and never wanted peace in the first place. Perhaps a short and indecisive war will break out and that will be the end of The Plan.

America will then revert to treating Israel like our 51st state and sending money and arms to various other Middle East nations to maintain the precarious and complex status quo that prevents a huge war from breaking out in the region, which not incidentally, is the main dealer of petroleum, the drug of choice for developed nations. Were it not for this vast underground sea of oil, nobody but Middle Easterners would pay much attention to what went on in the Middle East. That area of the world would get about as much international attention as it did between the decline of The Caliphate and the Industrial Revolution. That is to say, very little indeed, for hundreds and hundreds of years. Without the oil, it would take a major earthquake or something similar to get anyone to pay any attention at all to them. But we pretend to care about these insular lunatics because of the oil, and spend a great deal of energy and brain power trying to figure out what will make them stop hating and killing one another. So far, no dice.

It's sort of a rite of passage for American Presidents, and upon reflection, perhaps not such a useless endeavor as it seems. A new president of America is anointed the most powerful man on the planet from the minute he takes the oath of office. The policies he formulates and the decisions he makes have ramifications that reach far beyond the borders of the nation he governs. That could really go to a guy's head. Perhaps the Middle East Peace Dance is nature's way of telling presidents that their power is not absolute, that there is in this world the possible and the impossible and he'd do well to concentrate what is possible. He can console himself with the fact that no one else before him, no matter what their level of commitment or good intentions, has been able to bring peace to the Middle East, the place where sanity goes to die. Here's hoping this distraction won't eat up too much of a presidency that's got a lot to do; practical, possible stuff.