One hundred dollars. That’s how much it may soon cost for a single barrel of crude oil. In the past week, due to fresh Mideast violence, the price of crude has soared, and with it the price of essentially all energy products. To make matters worse, the temperature in many parts of the United States seems to have taken its cue from rising gas prices and done the same. The effects are far-reaching: sustained increases in oil and gas prices force institutions, such as universities like our own, to procure additional funds for the continuation of projects like Shuttle UM and the task of heating Ellicott Hall in the wintertime. Procuring additional funds, of course, means higher tuition prices, and as we learned from my last editorial rant, financial aid is getting harder to come by. But are our hands really tied? Can anything be done?
American foreign policy. Therein lies the problem. It is rare, if not impossible, to read the daily news headlines without being bombarded with reports about deaths in Iraq as a result of sectarian violence and conflict between the insurgency and coalition troops. In the past regime, the strong, albeit macabre rule of Saddam Hussein kept occurrences of violence and sanguinary atrocities to a government condoned and facilitated level. In the absence of the Sunni Muslim despot, the majority Shiite Muslims have engaged their now-unprotected Sunni neighbors in pitched battle. Mosques, shrines and holy places have been bombed, women have been raped and the country has fallen into chaos as the two Islamic sects, seemingly united only in their distaste for the United States’ existence and their perplexing abhorrence of their Kurdish neighbors with whom they share both a religion and centuries of common history, exchange broadsides in what has recently been termed as a civil war.
As the plainclothes soldiers on the home front watch and read the dismal battle dispatches from our couriers in Iraq, what originally began as a barely discernible muttered resentment has developed into full-blown mutiny. Although President Bush and his team of advisors have denied that the situation is anything near civil war level, such denials have been difficult to sell to the skeptical customer that is the American public.
Our presence in Iraq – and in Lebanon if we were to attempt to send in peacekeepers – is being used as justification for terrorism by the United States’ enemies and seems to be the spoon that stirs the Iranian pot as it bubbles over into uranium enrichment and points the world toward a possible second Cold War. Add the northern half of the Korean Peninsula onto the stove, blend in the puree of al-Qaeda training operations in Southeast Asia, dash in the growing international resentment toward what is being termed as modern imperialism, and perhaps we will find ourselves preparing a meal a bit too heavy for our tastes.
This may have already begun. In the past week, the world has watched the Israeli military pound Lebanon and its radical Hezbollah militants into submission, but the United States’ already tense relationship with Middle Eastern nations has rendered it virtually helpless to serve any real diplomatic role. It seems the most we can do is observe, charge American citizens fees to be evacuated from the crumbling war zone around them by their own military and discuss the situation in expletive-laden terms off camera at purposeless summits in Moscow. And since 14,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the first half of 2006, with 5,800 deaths and 5,700 injuries in May and June alone, the United States cannot realistically afford to send troops into yet another Middle Eastern country without running the risk of prompting the Middle East to rid itself of sectarian strife and unite against the United States.
It is unfortunate, but it seems as if the United States is left with very few options to choose from in this fresh wave of violence. Israel cannot be blamed for asserting its right to exist and defend itself, but the United States can only watch. And we at home, with our self-centered limited scopes, can only bemoan our rising gas prices.
“Quandary, n. A state of uncertainty or perplexity. See synonyms at predicament.” The American Heritage Dictionary may have had the conflict in Iraq in mind when it developed this particular definition. Because that is what the situation has become – a perplexing, uncertain predicament. And an uncertain future in this uncertain world can lead to uncertain problems with uncertain conclusions.
Of that we can be certain.
Ademola Sadik is a sophomore finance major. He can be reached at asadik@umd.edu.
