Saturday, August 9, 2008

Coming to Understand International Relations and Middle Eastern Policies and Politics While Attending Oral Roberts U

Not every student of american foreign policy has had a doctor from Princeton University in political science who believes in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ....teaching them about the fundamentalism of the shites in Iran and how the Ayatollah Komeni become so radically powerful inside the minds of mideastern youth early in the80's...

Such was the good graces of what it meant however, to be a student studying at the feet of not a long haired jesus freak, but a shirt and tie Princeton PHD doctor of political science professor who ended the year long seminar by focusing the young student of his senior mock "NSA CONSULTING GROUP"...a name he created for those of us studying under him about the movements, the psychology and the history of the mid east...on the reality of what it meant to have a rising messianiaism occuring inside the entire world, but especially in the mid east in the end decades of the twentieth century...

....at a time, when this country was witnessing the rise of born again evangelical
activitism and its marriage to a b movie actor, from california...

it was a special study..one rigously accademic oriented and nothing to sneer at...
Dr. Repko was no jokester, and no slouch....nor some wing nut born again who was trying to make national and international relations fit into some kind of modern religious "pat robertson ready for the world" world view so tv evangelist could promote a trip to Israel or something...

....he was the real deal and he knew his ...stuff we shall say....
and like a post modern christian believer, one among many...he had his shit together...

as the modern phraseology likes to say....today...

before Ronald Ray-gun and before we knew the name Bill Clinton and Hillary, or even obama, and before we ever experienced a single "bushism"...

a group of us...hard working and accademically gifted students were sitting in very nice chairs, inside a very nice and parlanced modern new upper-story classrooms studying CIA field manuals on what made the mid-east such a mystery, so vital and yet so dangerous a place to try to venture a guess on what and when was to happen next...

one thing we learned after months of study and even more to come...was one simple but profound lesson...


no super power...ought to be running amok around inside these arab cultures...
and no western power will be long in keeping hope alive...

by trying to and ...whether sincere or not, in remaking such a cultural vastness into their image any time soon...or if in attempting to do so, w/o creating major serious upheavel..in the region and for our own western world

and sending, on a scale of a major earthquake-like, waves throughout the world...

the mid east is ancient, a holy land and also a divided and seriously fractured region...like a beautiful dark mysterious woman, she is tempting, to be sure...to any would be suiter..democratic inclined or not...

but she is a region, also not so easily imaged in the post WWII western notion of the world...democratic, in outward appearance or not...

oil money, super rich nations, with ambitions, military and social needs the size of texas, florida and california combined... with tribal leanings, ..all clothed with strategic significance beyond all imagination of their own size and own order in the world itself..in comparison to say rhode island or colorado...
the mid east we learned is no place to play "democracy now" games...for fun, even if your name ends in sh...for generations..and you're from texas....


even one of these small mid eastern nations, can ignite a world wide conflict that will send the markets of the entire world tumbling in an instant...

if the wrong signal or the wrong move is made within and/or towards one of them...[and they are not stupid ignorant people...]

and more and more inside their own nations...are becoming well attuned and have been for decades to the ways of the western super powers...including the western super power of eastern russia...

major world consequences can and will occur...

and its there we will begin, because, it was the invasion of afghanistan, that i began mainly my own studies and interests in this nation and part of the accademic world and the world at large in which today..we seem to inhabit and see so much of everyday on our television sets...

especially in light of what our 43 president has done... to that region and continues to attempt in the name of fighing for "democratic ideals" around the world...

its not for nothing, so many have weighed in on these policies and these latest american and western world attempts to reshape the mid east, in our better image...

an image and ideal that may think fits but in reality is no fit at all...to the cultures of the mid east and their historical struggle with modernity and a world view that largely does not include their own anymore....

it is to this region...and to these studies, and to the lessons learned by a senior studying his own accademic heart's leanings....

only to find himself...in the midst of his own nation's struggle w/ similar human strains of coping and coming to terms w/ one's regilious values and one's religous experience amidst a growing if not alway most informed nor intellectual approach to world events and a clearer understanding of the world itself...

charlie wilson's war...is about the hidden ways of one wayward congressman
on a mission...among his women...of his era in DC at the time

like charlie, ...there were christian students in earnest also reaching similar
conclusions...far far away from dc ...by not doing the things he was ...

but...studying the history, and the region and the influence of religious fundamentalism and the impact of western culture clashes combined with the influx of
oil's weath...into a ancient culture and civilization...

its a story that has to be written to be understood...

this is but a first febble attempt, in the wake of twenty or so years
and a three to four presidents, a world trade center bombing
and...a hollywood movied w/ tom hanks...

in the mix....to tell the story from the view of what twenty or so
students studied to a conclusion themselves...holed up in a nice comfortable
air conditioned classroom buidling on the then modern looking ORU campus
as ronald reagan defeated the only openly avowed born again christian of our
era....

[and only slowly...but w/ some reservations]

we began the to comprehend...fundamentalism...
did not...have limits...to the mid east...only.....

and the same or similar human need for certain and understanding of the world
would eventually lead us to where we are today....

....4500 dead american soldiers later...
and half a million dead iraqis and lots lots more on both sides
seriously maimed for life and several nations...burdened with an un-ending
almost intractable
war scenerio for decades to come...for the rest of our now not so
young lives
at least as young as we were
when..in 1980-81, we there in Tulsa, Oklahoma, began to learn of this
ancient and deeply mysterious region of the world...

from one very dorky, but approachable, white shirt born again believer who
looked and taught us...more like a

Wall Street lawyer and/or... a CIA DC consultant...which he could easily have
been...

but as one would clearly expect from a Princeton PHD ...

more so than a religious schools' propagator of the one and true christian
faith...and its own struggle with american late twentieth century
fundamentalism...

but from him....we learned the roots of religious fundamentalism and its ultra
seductive powerful political influence across not only our nation but the entire world...

1 comment:

richard olivito said...

One of the most important "discoveries" academically of these Halcyon days of my intellectual blossoming...and the growth of my understanding of world affairs and middle eastern history and historical forces at play in shaping our present modern world, was learning about the mid eastern scholars who have helped bring such light and understanding to us westerner's, at least this one from Appalachia ...a southeastern, Midwesterner

the name is Fuad Ajami...from John Hopkins University...

his writings were so brilliant and so filled with insight yet, he wrote them in a much different manner than the typical academician or post PhD of our times...he wrote of the Arab cultures and nations and struggle with western modernity in a manner that was more prose than pure recitation and academic rhetoric ...and for those of us, then learning of the issues of this vital part of world with all of its present day relevance and consequence...reading any of his Foreign Policy articles or his books were not simply a major eye opening but also a rare pleasure.as well....his name always remained w/ me long after graduation and long after many many years, when I began to see him appear on CNN and the Sunday morning shows and again, last year, when the "Arab Spring" which he had long written of...finally in some odd stumbling sort of way, came blazing across our tv screens here in the west... almost 30 yrs after reading his first articles...it was his voice and his style of even speaking just like his writings, that captured my ear and as I turned and saw him talking on CNN during the Egyptian uprising...it was as if I was still young and back in ORU comfortable class rooms with Dr. Repko, discussing the finer aspects of why the West needs to understand the Middle East and how it is so relevant and how the WEst has impacted these nations...as well..