Creative Destruction

I have to suppress feelings of hopelessness from creeping in every morning with the news. Death tolls increase daily in Palestine and Iraq. Now, the latest round of violence in Lebanon is a surprise and hard for me to understand. Tripoli seemed safely removed from the sporadic turmoil in Beirut and southern Lebanon. Searching for information to explain the violence, I found a good article by Laurie King-Irani yesterday on the electronic Intifada website, and I recommend it: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6931.shtml

I came across this curious phrase, creative destruction, for the first time last summer when Israel savaged Lebanon. I assume it means that in order to create change, one must first destroy what already exists! What a sick theory. It isn’t enough that three Middle Eastern countries have been attacked and invaded, and that two of them are still occupied. Now, there is another, equally terrifying, destruction being unleashed in the region. This new violence is indigenous and cannot be blamed on outsiders. It is the struggle for power to rule through ethnic and religious identity. It is sectarian violence and civil strife in its ugliest form. I will never understand how some people value their ethnic and religious identity more than they value human life. Will they understand that they disgrace their own humanity by disregarding that of others?

ASH