Pivot from the Mideast
By Mowahid Hussain Shah

The overriding principle of real estate is location, location, and location.
In an article, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that “the United States stands at a pivot point” and that, from then on, American focus would shift from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region (“America’s Pacific Century”, Foreign Policy, October 11, 2011). Martin Indyk – executive vice president of Brookings Institution – wrote in Foreign Policy, June 20, 2012: “The ‘pivot’ to East Asia will probably be Obama’s most lasting strategic achievement … it is Clinton’s too.” But is it?
Was it meant to be a pivot from the core Palestinian problem?
Then, what happened? Syria imploded. Iraq fragmented. ISIS happened. Yemen bombarded. Egypt derailed. Libya unraveled. The refugee exodus overflowed into Europe.
Russia – fuming over Western incitement in its own sphere in Ukraine –conducted combat operations in the Middle East for the first time since the end of World War II.
Steps have consequences. It’s easy to say that the Mideast is not important. But saying so doesn’t make it so. The sheer weight of history, geography, heritage, and destiny suggests otherwise.
The Middle East was the epicenter of monotheism. It is the hub of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The first Pope, Saint Peter, was from Syria. And, according to the New Testament, Saul became Saint Paul when he saw light on the road to Damascus, where he was heading to persecute Christians. The Prophet Abraham was born in Iraq. The Prophet Moses rose against the tyranny of the Pharaoh in Egypt. That heritage, seen as integral to Western Civilization, is not rooted in London, New York, or Paris.
Middle East blunders have splashed across the globe into Europe, unleashing the greatest humanitarian crisis after World War II.
A quarter million Syrians have died and 12 million have fled (CBS Evening News, September 30). The ensuing chaos spawned the refugee crisis in Europe and emergence of ISIS, which now holds one-third of Syria and Iraq. During a recent trip to a remote part of Nova Scotia, Canada, I came across the “Chronicle Herald,” a local paper, whose September 14 issue highlighted on its front page the efforts of Rany Ibrahim, an Egyptian immigrant, calling on Canada to open its doors to Syrian refugees.
When the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989, America had a brief window of opportunity to stamp its imprint through policies guided by good sense and fairness. Instead, over-clever, over-scheming games continued to be played on by hubris-imbued small men of a great country. Parenthetically, note how systematically US spokesmen exclude and exempt Israel from the Mideast crucible as if it had nothing to do with all of this.
Closer to the subcontinental region, errors made in the Mideast have been replicated in Afghanistan where, 14 years after 9/11, much has come to naught.
At the end of the day, despite vast resources, technology, and military prowess, there is absolutely no substitute for human wisdom, plain common sense, and moral direction, which comes from discerning right from wrong.
What one does with what one has is always more important.