Yemen: This is the Middle East on Drugs

Yemen seems to be arrogant for no reason except history. Although the people are friendly and nationalism can be laudable, they are mainly friendly when influenced by qat and looking around their country, there is not much going for it. Towns and cities are devoid of running water and sanitation and a deadly fight could erupt at any time. Disrespect for others is rampant; whether for a woman’s body during sex, a foreign boy’s while riding a dangerous camel or a Jew forbidden to wear shoes. They care for nothing not wearing a sword while chewing narcotics, yet what is so great about that? They seem to pride themselves on resisting Westernization, yet have produced no viable alternative. Instead, they claim Shakespeare as their own. That they do admire Westerners proves that they are afraid, not scornful, of Westernization. They hide behind glorious and proud traditions: carrying swords and eating in the desert in order to provide reasons not to Westernize. But these reasons are false shadows of their real lives; they really use guns and live in luxurious apartments. It seems perhaps that in their pride, they are ashamed to admit that they were wrong to shut out change and thus champion isolationism even more. Yemen is a cautionary tale of not only pride before a fall, but that pride causes a refusal to accept the truth (that Yemen comes up short to Western human rights and technology), which creates a hyper yet falsely traditional society which creates only chaos. According to “The Road to 9/11,”, this is the story throughout the Middle East, a story of a society already acclimated to tradition, but ravaged by chaos, turns easily to religious fundamentalism. Strong, angry ideas have taken hold in formerly proud but later devastated societies, such as post-WWI Germany, as a way fuel their wounded pride by saying “We are right and everyone else is wrong.” a.s