Conspiracy Theories – the truth isn’t out there, it’s right in front of us (if we care to look)

Lovers of conspiracy theories tend to fall into two categories: those who feel conspired against, and those who are amazed and occasionally amused at humanity’s enduring gullibility. I fall into the latter category.

I don’t believe in the grassy knoll. I don’t believe that the neoconservatives brought down the twin towers. I do believe that we went to the moon. I don’t believe that George Bush Senior is a member of a reptile elite running the world. And I don’t believe that a bunch of clapped-out politicians known as the Bilderberg Group is running it either. Roswell, alien abductions, X-files? Not convinced. And sadly, I don’t believe that the passengers of MH370 are hunkered down in a remote Pacific island waiting to be rescued from the clutches of a demented pilot.

I write this because a friend in Bahrain sent me a link to an article in a Canadian website on which he thought I might like to comment. The site is impressive and scholarly in appearance. It is run by the equally impressive-sounding Centre for Research on Globalisation, which is the brainchild of a Canadian economist by the name of  Michel Chossudovsky. The writer of the article claims, among other things, that the United States, Israel and the United Kingdom have over the past couple of decades been engaged in a strategy to re-draw the map of the Middle East according to their strategic objectives. For the US, bolstering its superpower status, for Israel, self-preservation, for the UK, who knows? England winning the FIFA World Cup perhaps.

According to the article, the three Satans are pursuing a policy of “constructive chaos” – that’s divide and rule to you and me – whereby they foment civil war across the Middle East and end up with a bunch of fragmented, exhausted and thereby compliant states that will supply all the oil required by the Satans without making troublesome land grabs, exporting terrorism or brandishing weapons of mass destruction. Iraq replaced by Sunni, Shia and Kurdish states. The Shia state to include Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province – thus slicing off the vast majority of Saudi oil revenue – and a coastal strip currently part of Iran. Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Oman inexplicably left independent. A greater Jordan expanded down the Red Sea. An “Islamic Sacred State” including Mecca and Madinah. Saudi Arabia’s southern borders shrunk to accommodate an expanded Yemen. What remains of the unfortunate Saudi state is all the dusty territory with Riyadh as its capital, under the catchy title of “Saudi Homelands Independent Territories”. Oh, and Baghdad, straddling the borders between the Sunni and Shia entities as an independent city state.

The re-drawn map in the article is the work of Ralph Peters, a former US lieutenant colonel who writes spy thrillers and has produced many articles over the years on military and geopolitical topics that have found their way into publications such as USA Today, the New York Post and even the Washington Post. An example of his views is to be found in a 1997 article called Constant Conflict:

“There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.”

Colonel Peters also recommended assassinating Julian Assange at the time of the Wikileaks exposés.

According to the Global Research article, the US is assisting both the Shia-led government of Iraq and its deadly enemy The Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Shams (ISIS) in its efforts to hasten the fragmentation of Iraq.

I won’t go on. The theory might be plausible to people in the Middle East who believe that they are victims of a giant conspiracy to keep them divided and permanently under the thumb of the United States. But to anyone else it’s a piece of garbage. The idea that the US, over twenty years straddling the presidencies of Clinton, Bush the Younger and Barack Obama, should have a coherent policy on anything is ludicrous, unless you subscribe to the well-established conspiracy theory that US administrations are puppets in the hands of an evil military-industrial complex, of which Dick Cheney and Haliburton are the current bogeymen.

This is not to say that there aren’t powerful factions and interests in America, and within the military and ex-military there are undoubtedly people as deranged as General Jack D Ripper in Stanley Kubrick’s classic cold war black comedy Dr Strangelove It was he who kicked off World War 3 by launching a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union from a British air base under his command. But fortunately the Rippers of today don’t have his ability to act unilaterally. And to suggest that the USA is in the hands of people bad enough to pursue a long-term policy of fomenting civil wars that kill millions of people is an insult to a nation whose values – despite its periodic destructive blunders and acts of malevolent self-interest on the part of groups and individuals – can hardly be considered those of an evil empire.

In the Middle East, conspiracy theories are balm for national humiliations, and convenient excuses for the stupidity of leaders. It’s easy to blame all the problems the region faces today on the Balfour Declaration, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Great Satan and all the little Satans who have interfered, exploited, fomented and grown wealthy at its expense over the past century. And it’s equally easy to believe narratives that support the idea of continued victimisation.

But just as a needy adult will blame his parents, his teachers, the environment he grew up in and any number of other factors beyond his control to explain away his present troubles, the people of the Middle East will not come to terms with their present and make a better future until they start taking a measure of personal responsibility for their predicament. Not easy, I know, as the fallout from the wave of uprisings in 2011 demonstrates.

And whatever influence overweening foreign superpowers may have on the region, I can’t see that influence being mitigated by the foresight and wisdom of leaders whose decisions are based on more than aggrandisement, enrichment and self-preservation, because there aren’t many of them out there.

I fear that the friend who sent me the link to the Canadian website that sparked off this little diatribe will not like what I’ve written. He’s a charming, well-educated person just starting on an entrepreneurial career. He has a great future in front of him because of what he is, and I hope he will understand that I’m not suggesting that the Middle East is devoid of people like him – bright, full of potential and with a sincere desire to leave the world a better place. I’ve met more idealists – especially among the young – in the Arab world than in any other area I’ve visited.

But sometimes I think that the past sits on the region like a heavy blanket – comforting yet smothering. Yes, I’m sure there are plenty of minor conspiracies out there. But if we place greater faith in our ability to see the obvious for what it is and act for ourselves, the less we will be inclined to ascribe our failures to ulterior motives on the part of others. In the big geopolitical picture there are plenty of agendas, but most of them are pretty obvious if you take the time to think about them. And that goes for just about every region, not just the Middle East.

But then if you think otherwise, you can always do little, blame others, sit back and immerse yourself in all the plots, conspiracies and alien paranoia offered up on a daily basis by the History Channel.

Sorry, but the truth isn’t out there. It’s right in front of us. In the words of Don Henley’s song They’re Not Here, They’re Not Coming:

They’re not here, they’re not coming
Not in a million years
‘Til we put away our hatred
And lay aside our fears
You may see the heavens flashing
You may hear the cosmos humming
But I promise you, my brother
They’re not here, they’re not coming

(Lyrics by Don Henley and Stanley Lynch © Warner/Chappell Music Inc)