The Horrors of Status Quo

30 years ago this week in fact, I sat in the Hotel Ukraine in Moscow waiting for a ride to the airport after a week of great interest.  The "reading room" wasn't long on English language - the only one there was the Syrian Newspaper which I found odd.  My host - or scientific host was Jewish, a brilliant scholar and man of international letters - he ran his own institute. The only English writing in one of the major hotels was little more than a translation from the Reich - a source which was a loathsome for a Soviet as anything on earth.  One supported the other but obviously had to hold its nose.

Just about as long ago as I am old - both of us post war babies of different sorts, Israel sprung forth as an incarnate nation - a home for the Jewish who survived and those who just wanted a chance.  The neighbor states invaded or tried to the day after independence.  It has been war and skirmish, border incursions, diplomacy, stupidity, pigheadedness and hatred ever since. Nothing much has changed in 60+ years.

30 years plus ago and Egyptian and an Israeli met with our President Carter and gave a treaty a shot in the dark.  It was a stunning accord of sorts and cost Sadat his life shortly thereafter.  Israel remains an opponent that no one in that area of the world will take on as such an adventure is just an invitation to slaughter and humiliation.  I dealt for a long time with the Soviet Union, the antagonists' principal supporter and now that they are gone as a puppetmaster of sorts.

So I've gone my lifetime with a hopeless situation that never resolves...a bit here and there...and then it is back to square one. Mr. Obama gave it an effort the other day to kick-start things.  No one will know for a while if it can even be discussed.  What he said or didn't or what side he supposedly came down on or didn't isn't of  concern.  What he did finally say, after all this time, was the status quo won't work. It s madness to think that just doing the same thing, players playing the same act over and over, and expecting something to work itself out. Juliet and Romeo, in the end, die and you can read the play over and over and they still die.

Obama said  we have to go back and re-write things a bit and start the scene over.  Maybe not to 1948 but surely to 1967 and give that a whirl.  Otherwise we are just repeating madness....the repeated horror of status quo.