A scorpion and a turtle stood at the edge of a river early one morning. As the turtle prepared to swim across, the scorpion asked, “would you give me a ride across?”
“Absolutely not,” the turtle responded. “You’re a scorpion, and you will sting me before we get to the other side.”
“No I won’t,” the scorpion responded. “That wouldn’t make any sense, stinging you would mean that both of us would drown and I intend to make it across. Why don’t we work together on this?”
It took a while, but the scorpion ultimately convinced the turtle to let him ride on his back as he swam across the river. As they drew close to the opposite shore, the scorpion raised his tail and stung the turtle.
“What did you do that for?” the turtle cried. “Now we’re both dead!”
The scorpion just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Welcome to the Middle East.”
During my third year as an undergraduate student, I took part in a course focusing on the politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This very tale, as elementary as it may be, was used by my professor in an attempt to provide students with a primer into the variability of Middle Eastern politics.
However true the aforementioned may be, one thing remains certain – American involvement in the Arab world has enough gravitational pull to reign in president after president, either making a tenure or breaking one. There is no exception for POTUS 45. It is, to put in layman’s terms, Capitalism’s next frontier.
During this installment during the hiatus period, The International Review will highlight an article, written by The Independent‘s Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, analyzing the relationship between Middle Eastern dictator and their western allies.
The International Review 