Something to think about, as the slow collapse of Syria proceeds, is the ideas that created so many countries like it. Like Communism, yet another God has failed. But another one waits in the wings...
How long till we get out of the millenerarian mindset? A little humility can go a long way to making the world a much better place. It's people with a direct line to the truth who too often turn into monsters.The political and cultural landscape of the Middle East, post-Baath, will be pockmarked by blighted zones that might otherwise have been a prosperous Iraq and Syria, if only the Baathist doctrine had not destroyed those countries. A cloud of intellectual bafflement and paranoia will hover overhead, consisting of the confused thoughts of everyone across the region who, in the past, talked themselves into supposing that Baathism was a good idea. And more than visible will be the triumphant zeal of Baathism’s principal rivals in the matter of grandiose revolutionary ideology—the champions of the single Middle Eastern millenarian doctrine still standing, once the Assad regime has finally gone. These will be the Islamists.
The bombed-out remains of the Baath Party Headquarters in Baghdad. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Baathism: An Obituary / The End Of An Ideology | The New Republic
