The Simplified Historical Perspective Club Presents:

An Evening With Two Combatants

by Analise Dubner

|| A wide open auditorium with a low-lit stage holds two plastic chairs with metal legs. A moderator stands at a podium just beneath the stage that is set somewhat to the side. The audience is packed with people. The moderator clears his throat and rustles his papers.||

“Good evening, everyone. If you could just take your seats, we can get started. Sorry about the air conditioner, maintenance has promised that they will look into it as soon as they can. In the meantime, I suppose you can just try and huddle together for warmth.”

|| Scattered polite laughter ||

“Today, we have two very special guests joining us. I will be asking them some questions, and then we can open it up to the floor.”

|| Door opens, footsteps sound on the wooden stage. Chair legs squeal on the floor as they are moved. The US is dressed in a business suit, portly with graying hair and sagging jowls. The Middle East is swarthy, dressed in flowing desert robes and headgear.||

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the United States and the Middle East. They are both quite busy these days, and we very much appreciate their taking the time to come and sit down with us.”

|| Applause||

US: No problem.

MIDDLE EAST: Of course, happy to be here.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to just jump right in. I don’t think we need to waste time with introductions, our audience knows who you are.”

US: Shoot.

MIDDLE EAST: Um… actually, before we start, I just want to point out that my name isn’t really ‘Middle East’. I know that’s something of a misconception, but … well, I guess you could compare it to calling the original occupants of America ‘The Indians’. They were really a large, completely diverse group of different cultures that, very often, warred with each other. I can’t really speak for every group represented in …

“Yes, yes. Whatever. We understand. But for clarity, let’s just go with it, shall we?”

MIDDLE EAST: Also, these clothes… not everyone in the middle east is a Bedouin sheik, in fact I would say that Iranians, Turks and Pakistanis would be very insulted to be called Arab at all …

US: (placating) Look, the United States doesn’t exactly represent one mind either. We aren’t all Hawaiian shirt-wearing, McDonalds-eating tourists. Let’s just agree that for this purpose, a single voice needs to be heard.

|| Middle East purses his lips.||

“Ok, lets start at the beginning. In the second half of the 1800s…”

MIDDLE EAST: Excuse me. It actually goes back a lot further than that. The Crusades…

US: We had nothing to do with the Crusades…

MIDDLE EAST: But it is relevant to the attitude that the Muslim world has towards the west…

US: Let’s keep to topic. We weren’t there. Not relevant. Besides, if we are going to go back to the Crusades, what about that whole Moorish invasion of Spain and France? You want to talk about that? Didn’t think so.

“Let’s just stick with the relationship between the two of you. This isn’t supposed to be a debate, just a Q&A. So. In the early days, the1800s, the relationship was actually pretty good.”

US: Well, we were doing what Americans do. You know, spreading Christianity, building schools and churches.

MIDDLE EAST: Yes, they built schools like the American University of Beirut in Lebanon and Robert College in Turkey. They were key to educating some of the elite in those countries.

US: We have always held up our ideals as important. Something to share.

MIDDLE EAST: We didn’t think that you had any imperialistic designs in our area. Unlike Britain and France, who, you know, had been marching around in our lands for a good bit of time at that point. Most of the region really liked the US back then. You represented this self-determination thing that was working so well for your country. We were tired of Europe all up in our faces, and wanted Americans involved so they could help us extricate ourselves from European interests.

US: Well, you know, we …

MIDDLE EAST: But it was a false hope. You rejected the Covenant of League of Nations… which would have given us true self-determination…

|| The US shrugs half-apologetically.||

US: We had a lot of things going on then. You know how it is. We can’t be expected to play hero for every country in the world.

“So then the US sort of vanished from the Mid-East theatre for a bit there until after WWII…”

MIDDLE EAST: Until oil entered the picture, yes.

US: We had other reasons!

MIDDLE EAST: Oh?

US: Communism, of course. Don’t pretend that the USSR didn’t have just as many designs on your part of the world as we did. Britain and France had kind of restricted us in the area before that. But when they had to pull out… you know, financial reasons, we had to fill the vacuum. It was a matter of protecting our interests, yes, but also about territory. And the Cold War.

MIDDLE EAST: Right, Communism. Well, you had to have a reason to destablize the region like you did, didn’t you?

US: You fail to understand how strongly we feared the spread of Communism.

MIDDLE EAST: And you failed to understand us at all. At every, single turn. Look how it’s all gone down. Like you wanted?

US: What’s to understand? A bunch of third world, primitive dictatorships.

“Please, please. No insults, gentlemen. Let’s get back on topic, shall we?”

|| Both parties settle back in their plastic chairs, eyeing each other.||

“So, oil.”

US: Yes. Well, we needed to do a couple of things after WWII in the region, actually.

|| The US holds up his fingers, ticking off his points.||

US: 1.) Contain the Soviets, 2.) support Israel, and 3.) protect our oil interests.

MIDDLE EAST: But after Israel was made a state, you helped create the situation there by backing off and ‘letting the state fight its own battles against the Arabs’?

US: I’m not sure what you thought we were supposed to do for them, you yourself say that we have interfered in the region too much as it is.

MIDDLE EAST: Take some responsibility? You…

“Let’s not get into Israel just yet. What about Iran? That actually came next.”

MIDDLE EAST: Yeah, let’s talk about Iran.

|| The US looks uncomfortable, shifting in his seat. ||

US: Ok.

“So, in the early fifties, Iran overthrew Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq – “

MIDDLE EAST: Actually. No.

US: Here we go.

MIDDLE EAST: It has been made clear by a truckload of documents that have been de-classified, that it was the US and Britain who actually organized and staged the overthrow of Mossaddeq in order to put in place the more malleable Shah. Pahlavi. An autocrat. Mossaddeq was nationalizing Iran’s mainly British-run oil industry, and you couldn’t have that. Certainly, it’s not the first time you people have played God with other countries.

US: Oh, and you are the epitome of innocence over there. A shining beacon of freedom and idealism. Ever hear of human rights? Freedom? Didn’t think so. Dictators and vicious regimes are more up your alley.

|| Middle East narrows his eyes, but continues||

MIDDLE EAST: Look, when you associated yourself with Britain in that way, at that time, siding with the Shah’s government, you destroyed all the goodwill that was left towards your nation. You guys came to be identified with the imperialism that Iranians had hated for the past150 years. And, as everyone knows, that identification with the shah's regime would help drive Iranian nationalism, originally secular in nature, to develop a much more religious cast. Thanks for that.

US: Oh, shut up. You have to know we couldn’t let Iran nationalize like that. What if they kicked our interests out? Look, you don’t know how it was. What with the stress of keeping the Soviets contained and all.

MIDDLE EAST: That was your problem. Not ours.

US: What? A lot of you guys went and allied yourselves with the Soviets. You did just what we feared.

MIDDLE EAST: We might not have if it hadn’t been for your blatant support for Israel. How do you think you would feel if some country with deep pockets came along and armed your enemy to the teeth? We had to do something.

US: Sure, blame everything on Israel. Don’t you ever get tired of doing that?

“Ok, ok, here we are with Israel again. Moving on. So the US pretty much started to take over Britain’s position in the Middle East, and of course, there was Israel. I don’t think we need to go into that in too much detail, there’s a lot there, and it’s pretty much the outcome that’s important.”

US: There were a lot of wars…

MIDDLE EAST: That you supplied arms for. And after ’67, you became the main supplier for Israel.

“Ok, ok. The US alliance with Israel is no secret, trust me, we see the Elephant in the room. Now, what about the Eisenhower Doctrine…”

US: Made sense at the time, don’t forget that we were in the middle of the whole Red Scare thing in America.

MIDDLE EAST: Yeah, that one. Well, it said that you guys would basically come to the aid of anyone fighting international communism. And that meant anyone. Didn’t matter how nasty the governments were. Like Saddam Hussein, for example.

US: Like I said, it seemed to make sense at the time.

“Ok, lets get into the ‘70s then. Iran comes back into the picture.”

US: Those guys are craaaazy.

|| US makes a loopy sign alongside his head with his finger.||

MIDDLE EAST: Oh please. You helped arm the Shah, you supported him. A known dictator, puppet or not. The Iranians despised the Shah. They were willing to go to any extreme to remove him.

US: You put that religious nut in his place, Ayatollah Khomeini. Remember the hostage crisis? Those were good times, huh, pal?

MIDDLE EAST: Oh, it gets better. How about your role in the Iran-Iraq war? Almost 1 million people were killed.

US: You can’t blame that on us. We just sold some weapons. We didn’t fire them.

MIDDLE EAST: Some weapons. Chemical and biological weapons. And the precursors to nuclear capabilities.

|| US rubs the back of his neck, thinning his lips||

US: Uh, heh, yeah. Well, hindsight is 20/20.

MIDDLE EAST: You took Saddam Hussein off the ‘bad Arab’ list. Figured, why not let him take care of destabilizing the newly dangerous Iran. After all, Hussein didn’t like the Soviets either. But in the meantime, you were secretly providing money and weapons to insurgents in Iran, too. You wanted to overthrow the Ayatollah.

US: Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? He was a religious fanatic. It would have been better for everyone if we had been able to regain relations with Iran… like we had with the Shah.

|| Middle East lifts his lip in a sneer||

MIDDLE EAST: Better for you, maybe. The point is that you made these decisions for us. You don't think that's going to spawn some mistrust? It's all part of your inability to see beyond the choices you make to the consequences of your actions.

“So, the Iran-Iraq war in the‘80s. There was the infamous chemical weapon attack on the Kurds by Hussein and hundred more atrocities, things that the US pretty much looked the other way for. By the late ’80s, the US and several other Arab nations had pretty well built up Iraq’s army and fighting capabilities. But Iraq was deeply in debt by the end of it, including a 14 billion dollar debt to Kuwait and a 26 billion dollar debt to Saudi Arabia. What then?”

MIDDLE EAST: We know what happened next.

US: Oh, don’t say it like that. Iraq invaded Kuwait. We only did what was right to help Kuwait. Iraq was out of bounds.

MIDDLE EAST: That sounds nice and easy. But Iraq was in deep economic crisis after spending everything they had on the 8 year war as well as going deep into debt. They felt it was only right that their war debts be erased by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A thought those countries did not share, obviously. And besides, the Iran-Iraq war had seen the destruction of almost all Iraq’s port facilities. They felt they needed the coast. What if Iran attacked? Kuwait seemed to be the only answer. Also, Iraq claimed that Kuwait had actually infringed on their borders while they had been occupied with Iran.

US: Poor justification for such blatant aggression.

“Now, now. US, what about you? What were you doing during this time? Wasn’t Iraq still an ally?”

US: Yes. Well, no. I mean… look. After the Iran-Iraq war, they were pretty bulked up. And suddenly here they were, not fighting Iran anymore, and they had all this military power and all this aggression towards Israel. And they’re making this tough guy talk like uniting the Arab world against Israel and all. We were getting nervous, sure. We had to sort of back away from diplomatic relations with them. At least, that’s what the Neo Conservatives were saying at the time. Folks like Wolfowitz and Perl. Bush sr., at that time, was keeping his options open. He didn’t want to cut ties to Iraq just yet.

“But then that US diplomat was invited down to have an unanticipated talk with Saddam Hussein… right when Iraqi troops were massing on the Kuwait border.”

MIDDLE EAST: And Hussein outlined his grievances with Kuwait at that point. April Gilespie, the ambassador to Iraq, said, and this can be read in transcript, “the US has no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border dispute with Kuwait.”

|| Middle East raises his eyebrows at the US.||

MIDDLE EAST: Now what do you take that to mean? Exactly?

US: I don’t recall authorizing anyone to say any such thing.

MIDDLE EAST: I’m sure.

US: You can talk all you want. Nothing justified what Iraq did, invading Kuwait like that. Taking hostages, controlling the media and setting up a puppet government. We had to act.

MIDDLE EAST: Nothing to do with oil interests.

US: Well, don’t be stupid. Of course it had to do with oil interests. Why else had we been involved in the region for as long as we had? Did you think we liked getting in the middle of all these ancient tribal conflicts? But it was also about freedom. It’s about democracy.

MIDDLE EAST (under his breath): Oh, suddenly you care about our freedom.

“Ok, so that was the beginning of the short lived and bloody Gulf War, a war that lasted only 7 weeks, but killed an estimated 150,000 Iraqis. We know about the sanctions that followed and the starvation in the country. But let’s back up a second to something we skipped over before.”

US: Ok.

MIDDLE EAST: Ah yes. Afghanistan.

“Right. Again with the Soviets. They invaded the region in ‘79 and the US, obsessed with stopping Communism, launched a full-scale covert operation. In fact, it was the largest scale CIA operation in US history, costing 5-6 billion dollars. True?”

US: It was all about bleeding the USSR. Creating chaos.

MIDDLE EAST: Never mind that you had no plan for what would happen later. Never mind that the Soviets had actually unseated a brutal dictator, tried to educate women, and institute land reform. Never mind that ‘creating chaos’ as you say, cost a million lives.

US: Give me a break. The Afghanis didn’t want the Soviets there either. Who were we helping to fight the invasion?

MIDDLE EAST: I’m just telling it like it is. The CIA funnels billions of dollars to these fanatical, extremist guerilla groups, not to mention sensitive weapons technology, and then walks away. When the 10 year war was over, there were a million dead bodies and a huge Afghani heroin market in the US. Oh, and a nice base of operations for a group called Al-Queda and a man named Osama Bin Laden, whom the CIA had trained.

|| US snarls at Middle East.||

US: If you think I'm going to sit here and listen to you say that we brought 9/11 on ourselves, that we somehow deserved it...

MIDDLE EAST: You might not have deserved such an attack per se, but you can't pretend for a minute to think that your actions in our region did not lead up to that event. If you had never armed the Mujahadeen, if you had never interfered in Iran and Iraq, if you had not supported Israel --

US: Will you just shut UP about Israel for one second?

|| The US is quivering with rage. The moderator raises both hands in a pleading gesture. ||

“Now, now, gentlemen, please. That’s starting to catch us up to the present. As you both know, we have glossed over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as that’s a topic that needs little backstory. It is too central, too complex, too obvious a hotpoint to bring into such a simplified, glossing over of history as we have done here tonight. Needless to say, it’s the centerpiece of most of the tensions in the area, but as we have seen this evening, there are many more factors responsible for the current state of relations between you two.”

MIDDLE EAST: And now, Iraq again.

US: Look, I’m going to be straight with you. We didn’t know what we were getting into there. I mean, come on, it was so easy last time. Chalabi said they would throw flowers at us …

MIDDLE EAST: I still can’t believe you didn’t bother to really talk to anyone else before you started a WAR. You listened to that guy? That criminal? A man who thought he was going to be installed as the head of the new government? It’s almost like you people really are that blind. You never learn. 100 years of this shit and you still can’t be bothered to pick up a history book or … I don’t know … read last week’s newspaper.

US: We thought there were WMDs there… I mean… well, you know… we gave them to Iraq, we figured they still had them. We knew we had given them the means for a nuclear program, it only made sense that Saddam had followed up on it.

MIDDLE EAST: It was a good excuse, anyway.

US: Well, you know. The Neo Cons were in charge of the white house at that point. And they had wanted Iraq for some time. After the World Trade Center it seemed like a no-brainer. Connect Saddam to Al-Queda. Besides, even you can't tell me that it was not a good thing to get rid of that maniac. Even you.

MIDDLE EAST: Sure, he's gone. On the surface, that's a great thing. He was a butcher. But now we face chaos in the streets because of your arrogance. You have brought your war against terror to Iraq's streets, made it a place for every extremist and lunatic in the region to gather in. Made your army a nice big target to shoot at. How many Iraqis would have made the decision to throw their daily lives into deadly chaos? The point is that you made that choice for them. Just as you did in Iran. And in Afghanistan. In Palestine and Lebanon and Kuwait. Don't you understand yet? Don't you?

|| The US remains silent, his eyes narrowed, his fingers clenching the arms of his chair. The Middle East's face is flushed with outrage. The moderator breaks in with a falsely cheery voice. ||

“Well. So. Yes. We’ve discussed the rise of nationalism in the Mid-East and its initial catalyst in British and French imperialism. We’ve touched on how the US handled relations in the area and what a few of those repercussions were, and we’ve tracked a couple of the wars and their causes. We are no closer to a solution towards finding some way to work together. Is it even possible?”

US: If they weren’t all so crazy… so fanatical and violent, most of these problems wouldn’t exist.

MIDDLE EAST: Well, I think it’s that kind of attitude that got us here. The fact is, we have something you need. And you don’t like that. You’ve got to control it, and you will step on whoever you have to to do so. Israel is a case in point. You overlook the illegal occupation time and again. You have never done one thing about the terrible state in which the Palestinians live, you refuse to even accept them as people.

US: We picked our side. The side of democracy.

|| Middle East is gritting his teeth. US looks belligerent. The moderator hurries to interject again||

“Um. So. In conclusion? We are out of time and it looks like we won’t be able to open up the floor for questions after all. Can there ever be an amicable solution? Middle East? I know you have important things to do...”

US (under his breath): Yeah, like blowing up a bunch of innocent people...

|| Middle East is still furious, but remains seated, staring at the US with hatred. The US looks back with contempt and disdain.||

MIDDLE EAST (grating): Impossible. There is too much blood. The US will not stop until it has usurped our culture, our religion and our land. They have proved themselves to be liars and manipulators and killers. They are greedy and they are dangerous.

“US?”

|| The US waves a hand dismissively||

US: Out of the question. They are a deadly, fanatical people with no remorse or conscience. Look at these suicide bombers for God’s Sake. Would a sane person do something like that? Do I have to bring up the World Trade Center? Do I?

|| Middle East stands up then, pushing his chair back with a screech. He points his finger at the US who leans back a bit.||

MIDDLE EAST: You have no sense of history. You have no concept of it. What happened 10 years past or what you do here today or tomorrow, for you it doesn’t affect anything else. You don’t realize that throwing a stone in a pond creates ripples that affect the entire whole.

|| Now US stands up, face red.||

US: Don’t tell me about a sense of history. I know you people have been killing each other for millennia. Cutting off hands, beheading, stoning, mutilating. You’re animals. Barely human! We have to protect Israel from you!

MIDDLE EAST: You disgust me. Israel, with their tanks rolling over old men and children; Israel, occupying land that is not theirs and building racist walls. You are an immoral, indecent, godless liar. You and Israel deserve each other. You are the same creature.

US: Fanatical, terrorist murderers. Palestinians send these cowards into civilian marketplaces and murder hundreds with their bombs. They have no honor. They are a vile, evil people.

|| Middle East flings his Arab headgear to the floor and takes a step towards US who shrugs out of his jacket. The moderator backs away from the stage, bumping up against the first few audience members.||

“Holy shit! Security!”

|| The two men scuffle, the US pulls at Middle East’s beard and Middle East gets the US in a headlock. Two security guards rush in from the sides and pull them apart. Both men are panting and red-faced and disheveled. They are dragged off the stage in opposite directions.||

US: (shouting) Your whole fanatical religion fosters violence! We have to protect ourselves against you! Murderers!

MIDDLE EAST: (shouting) You are an imperialist monstrosity that wants to devour the entire world! We will not let you! We will die first!

|| They are gone, but their muffled shouting can still be heard offstage. The moderator straightens his lapels and fixes his tie before turning back to the now silent and shocked audience.||

“That concludes our evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for coming down. Hopefully you’ve learned a little about…”

|| He falters a little, looks down, clears his throat, and looks back up, putting on a good face.||

“…About our guests. Hopefully they can work out their differences. Some day. Good night.”

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