Divergance

Among a significant sub-set known as the ‘neo-cons’ was an idealistic belief that America had a moral imperative to try to remake the world, especially the Middle East. For too long, the US had prized ‘stablity’ in the region over ‘democracy’. That had meant allying themselves with tyrannies (as they once had with Iraq) or seeking to contain rogue states (as they had with Iraq since the Gulf War).

The neo-cons argued that America had a mission to spread democracy and by the force of arms where necessary. This would have the happy by-product, so they thought, of creating pro-Western governments in a region where so much of the world’s oil reserves were concentrated.

The revolution they proposed had a name: ‘The Project for the New American Century’. Several of the leading ‘revolutionaries’ now occupied key positions in the Bush administration. Their aims were crudely, but not inaccurately, summarised by one of their adherents:

If the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein next, it could create a reliable American ally in the potential super-power of the Arab world. With American troops so close, the Iranian people would be emboldened to rise against the mullahs. And as Iran and Iraq built moderate, representative pro-Western regimes, the pressure on the Saudis and other Arab states to liberalize and modernize would intensify.

It was a version of the domino theory. Once the dominos had fallen in the Middle East, so dreamed the neo-cons, the entire region would be under the sway of an even more hegemonic United States. ‘An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein….would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe the Romans.’

Andrew Rawnsley, The End of the Party

Ocean Dragon; Penetrated Stone

As far as dreams go, it couldn’t have got much stranger, and that’s saying something. For a start, it was vivid – as real-seeming as the waking day – and for a second it was so utterly weird that it scared me the next day to even think about it. I thought I’d already out-weirded weirdness, but it seems not; my inner capacity to completely surprise myself is still very much intact. It began like this:

At the moment I became fully conscious, I found that I was travelling across the grey ocean at an incredibly rapid pace with the utmost sense of urgency. I wondered for a split second just how it was that I came to be travelling so quickly – surely I couldn’t swim that fast?! – but so very quickly was I moving, that before I had to think for longer, I’d arrived at the shore.

I know that I stood upright, and before looking ahead cast a glance back over my shoulder at the water, which was neither completely calm nor especially stormy; an ordinary day at sea, I would say. Why did I look back? Well, a very quiet voice in my head told me there might have been a whale in sight, but what Icaught sight of was a creature I called a ‘Dolphin’, but which in fact looked nothing like one of those creatures. The gigantic grey hump covered in upright triangular fins was actually more dragon like, resembling no other animal that I’ve ever seen before. I would have been surprised or looked for longer if I hadn’t become almost instantly – and acutely – aware of some terrible danger afoot on the shore.

As I looked ahead at the land for the first time, the sense of overwhelming urgency and danger struck me once again and it was then that I had first realised that the scenario was – even for a dream – remarkably surreal, for the simple reason, perhaps, that it seemed so palpably real. Somehow I was there, but what was I to do? My sense of being on some sort of undefined mission was as intense as the feeling that I must act with lightening speed. Why, I do not know. Here is what I saw in front of me:

It was broad daylight and the sky was blue. Directly in front of me was a wide but dusty path that together with the clarity of light gave me the impression of the desert or Middle East. Perhaps the sense of location was symbolic, because I had a definite impression of being in some kind of war zone, that I – or anyone else in the vicinity – could be shot down dead in an instant. Who by? Although I could not see the enemy – or fierce guardian of that dry territory – I had a definite impression of there being snipers that were lying in wait very nearby, but evidently out of view. This was not all I saw.

Directly ahead, standing partway along this path in the middle distance, was a man with short dark hair and a long white robe, who rather than looking at me, was staring into the middle distance. The site of him filled me with an unfathomable combination of awe and near panic, and all I knew was that I needed to negotiate the minefield in order to be myself where this uniquely statuesque spirit was standing immobile, watching the moving sea. As fast as it’s possible for one to move, I went in his direction.

The next thing I knew, I was inside a stone that was located just behind the place where he’d been standing. The stone was rectangular, like some kind of box, about the width of two people and high enough inside for me to crouch but not stand. A gap of about 10 inches at the bottom gave me light enough to look around at the inner walls of that cold, dry stone, and with a shiver I wondered if it was the kind of place where insects would be hiding. I nervously looked at the left wall, the ceiling and the right wall, noting with some relief that there did not appear to be any cockroaches keeping me company. At a certain moment I wondered if ‘he’ was still standing outside, in front of the stone, and bent my hand to look through the gap. Time to get out, I thought, registering a moment later that the coast was clear.