Blogging Tidbits, Over Breakfast

UPDATE

A LITTLE WORLD HISTORY AND PERSPECTIVE ON MUMBAI WITH YOUR POACHED EGGS?

It's always fun to stay in the homes of friends and family rather than hotels when away from home. And when they're interesting, knowledgeable people, people who are virtual walking encyclopedias of history, then it makes it even more fun and often fascinating for me---the country mouse ---to be around such erudite people. They have a way of putting the present in such salient perspective.

(I'm now back in D.C. for a few days, before going back to New York before coming back to D.C then running back to Nashville before coming back to the East. You get the drift and the driftiness of this. So I plan to blog sporadically at best.)

This morning over breakfast one of my favorite relatives turned to me as he smeared strawberry jam on his raisin toast, "I say, my dear, this attack in Mumbai, India worries me a lot."

It's awful, I responded over my poached egg on a bed of greens. But tell me why it worries you so?

Don't you remember the history of the start of World War I? he quizzed knowing there would be a blank look on my face and knowing he would be asked to elaborate.

Actually I did not recall what I had learned in school about all that. I sat straight up in my chair waiting for what was sure to be a history lesson I needed to hear.

Well, he began, it all started with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914... from there the topic turned to the Serbs and Croatians of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then to the Russian Czar and the German Kaiser. From there it went on to all the other countries that took sides as our world teetered on the edge of the abyss.

I sat transfixed for forty minutes as my relative recounted history as if we were in a time travel machine. As I cleared the table and scraped dried egg off the dishes, we had to put the rest of the conversation on hold until a few hours later when I drove with him to see a friend in Shepherdstown, West Virginia on a chilly, sunny November afternoon.

As I clicked on my seat belt, I asked the question he'd been waiting for: So how does all this World War I history that started with the assassination of the Archduke and heir to the Austrian throne relate to what's happening in India today?

And then he began to instruct me again: "There's an uneasy peace now in Iraq, thanks to your man, George Bush. Al-Qaeda has been disgraced and in essence is defeated there. They know that if the Americans turn there sights on Afghanistan now, as Mr. Obama has threatened to do, they'll be defeated there too. Remember, Bin Laden has purchased the loyalties of many unhappy dissidents there and in Pakistan.

"So what better game plan to forestall and divert the attention of Americans in Afghanistan than for al-Qaeda radicals to provoke a war between Pakistan and India. In July, 1914, the Serbian government engineered the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand to undermine the position of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Balkans. The resulting missteps by the European powers ---Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Austria and England---destroyed four ancient empires (German, Russian, Turkish and Austro-Hungarian) and brought forth the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini.

"Do we stand at a like-crossroads in the Sub-Continent today? Is this war? Again, it's to al-Qaeda's advantage to create global chaos wherever it can . And war between Indian and Pakistan would put the ball in play and divert U.S. and world attention away from Afghanistan."

As we drove on I started to understand what he was getting at and found myself agreeing with his deeper concerns over what has happened in India the past few days. Could he be right? Both of these countries are minor nuclear powers with huge populations. And if Pakistan were destabilized even more, how could we Americans even get thorough to Afghanistan? If war breaks out, who would we support? Which country would we be allied with?

The options were increasingly depressing on this chilly, sunny day outside Washington, D.C. even as the national scaffolding (no pun intended) was being constructed for the great inauguration in front of the Capitol in January. What will this country face as we go into a new administration with untried leadership who wants to be popular all over the world? With an axis of chaos and evil that will stop at nothing to destabilize Western civilization. Will Bush one day be seen as the hero he is in foreign policy and ever be appreciated for having prevented another terrorist attack on American soil? Will we be so fortunate in the next administration?

It's been a long day of talking, thinking and learning about history from my very smart relative for me since breakfast. Tomorrow, I think I'll just take some wheat toast in my room alone. I want a few hours of peace and quiet.....and wait another day or two for my next history lesson over poached eggs. Too much hisitorical perspective be a wonderful and very disquieting thing to behold.