World War I was started when an Austrian duke was assasinated by a Serbian student dissident. Austria demanded that Serbia mete out punishment and the Serbs failed to comply. The two went to war and because of various interconnecting European defense pacts it wasn’t long before the entire continent was at war. Many millions of people died in the 4 years that followed, over half of them from a bird flu plague that ravaged the globe, greatly aided by all the infrastructure destruction and economic collapse.

This is what happens when one person becomes so important that the fate of all humanity hinges on their fate, and now it’s happening again.

Perves Musharraf is the leader of an Islamic nation that possesses between 40 and 50 atomic bombs and the means to deliver them. The United States has been propping him up for years because his country, Pakistan, is the primary conduit for military supplies into Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistan is also one of the least developed Near Eastern nations, with a variety of Stone-Age militant tribes reigning autonomously over their tribal areas.

Waziristan is one of these tribal areas and is believed to be the home of Osama bin Laden. It is certain that the Taliban has refuge there and operates from there.

Musharraf’s hold on power is breaking down and when, not if but when he goes, which way Pakistan will go is totally uncertain. Bush has wanted to send in troops to Waziristan to deal with the tribes and the Taliban for a long time and possibly Musharraf may finally allow it, since the Taliban is the greatest threat now to his power. Even if he does, and our troops go in, there’s no guarantee that we won’t find ourselves in a hopeless conflict fighting people who can virtually vanish into the maze of hills and mountains, as happened to the Russians in Afghanistan.

When Musharaff is toppled, if this Islamic country is taken over by the Islamic militants, they will have all those A-bombs and Iran will become a secondary issue. So add the situation in Pakistan to all the others wherein any one of which could easily trigger off World War III, and we are now even closer to nuclear Armageddon.

One man in Israel, Olmert, could trigger off the war. So could Musharraf, Ahmadinejad, Sarkozy, Putin, Bush… No doubt there are others as well that I’m not taking into account here. No nation has true checks and balances to ensure reasonable behavior including ours. The actions of George Bush are proof of that.

It sounds like things are slowly calming down in Iraq. That’s good because it looks like our military isn’t due for a rest anytime soon.

We human beings are incapable of governing ourselves peacefully. I think we all know that. Unfortunately, we are all that we have.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 11:46 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.