I’m in the mood today to solve some of the world’s political problems. Having Israel sitting smack-dab in the middle of Arab country has been a constant problem ever since some genius came up with the idea about 60 years ago. And the accelerating Islamization of Western nations has more recently been seen as building toward a dramatic confrontation between two very different cultures. My solutions to these problems are simple in theory but difficult to implement — which seems to be a prerequisite for world-changing ideas these days (democratize the Middle East, end world hunger, stop the use of illegal drugs, invent a thermostat for the earth). I expect some resistance to my plans, but here goes:

Israel: Move all the Israelis to Wyoming. Let the Arabs fight over what’s left behind for the next hundred years or so. We can stay out of it because we won’t have a dog in the fight (and neither will Michael Vick). We can forget about Iran for several more years because they will be busy developing the capability to deliver their nukes to Wyoming. By then our missile defense system should be able to take them out anyway.

But what about the people now in Wyoming you ask? No problem; there aren’t that many there. They can choose to stay and become Israelis or move to neighboring states and remain Americans. Those cowboys aren’t likely to organize and start lobbing rockets and mortars across the border. Some (most?, all?) of them will resist but they will have to just suck it up and take one for the Gipper.

The Israelis can rename Cheyenne to Jerusalem and Casper to Bethlehem. I think they should leave Chugwater, Ten Sleep, Tie Siding, Bar Nunn, Crowheart, Gas Hills, Lost Cabin, Point of Rocks, Bill and Cora alone. But these names might not sound as colorful in Hebrew.

With Israel located in the heart of the USA it should be a lot easier and less expensive to protect them. And it would take away one of the biggest gripes that the Middle Easterners have with us.

With the implementation of my next plan there will be no Muslims in the USA to bother the Israelis.

Islamization: Turn Europe over to the Muslims. Move all the non-Muslims in Europe to the USA, Canada and Israel* — liberals to Canada, conservatives to the USA, Jews to Israel. Move all the Muslims in the USA and Canada to Europe. Require all Muslims that want to leave their hopeless countries to emigrate to Europe.

Some of the European countries are projected to go majority Muslim within the next few decades anyway. When that happens non-Muslims aren’t going to want to stay there and the Muslims will be glad to see them go. This will give the Muslims an opportunity to establish the Caliphate that they seem to want. They can just pretend that Europe and Asia constitute the world.

Besides heading off a tragic clash of cultures, this can become a gigantic socio-economic experiment. I’ve always wondered, if an Islamic society is so great, why do so many Muslims want to go live amongst the infidels. I’ve come to suspect that it is because an Islamic society is simply not conducive to strong economic development. But then it might be just part of a grand plan to Islamize the world. Anyway, turning Europe over to the Muslims will give us a chance to see what they will do with it. Will they send its economy into the crapper or will they prosper? Some, though, might argue that this won’t be a fair experiment because Europe’s economy is already headed for the crapper.

If you have a better plan, tell me about it.
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*Remember, Israel is now where Wyoming used to be.

I’ve heard a lot of claims in the last few months about one or another ethnic group having a right to some particular piece of the world. Sometimes it is claimed that they have a legal right to the land. When that doesn’t seem supportable it is claimed that they have a moral right to the land.

Some Arab groups claim that they have a right to the land occupied by Israel, while the Jewish, and other, citizens of Israel believe that they are the rightful owners. Each side states that the history of the land supports their claim.

The Kurds in Iraq claim that part of Turkey belongs to them — or that it belongs to their fellow Kurds in Turkey. In either case they believe that the Kurds of Iraq and the Kurds of Turkey should be united along with the lands on which they reside. Of course the government of Turkey vehemently disputes their claim. And the new government of Iraq doesn’t favor relinqushing its Kurdish territory.

Back in 1990 Saddam Hussein staked a claim on the region known as Kuwait, and set about to reacquire it. A major military offensive by a coalition of more rational governments around the world convinced him that he could get along very well without Kuwait.

Various apologists for the natural actions of the human race claim that the ‘Native Americans’ had their lands stolen from them and that it should all be given back to them. Some of it has been. Congress is now trying to create another nation within a nation for ‘Native Hawaiians’.

More recently some Mexicans have staked a claim to major parts of the United States. And millions of them have come here illegally. Most of them have done so to find work so they can send money home to their families. But some of them, along with their supporters here, are engaged in promoting their claim to our land — using catchy slogans like “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us”.

It’s hard not to see the absurdity of such claims. We can’t roll back time. We can’t right wrongs that occurred hundreds of years ago. We can throw Saddam out of Kuwait when he’s only been there a few months, but we can’t give the lands of the United States back to the ‘Native Americans’ and the Mexicans. It would create more problems than it would solve. For instance, how would the ‘Native Americans’ and the Mexicans then resolve their conflicting claims?

Most parts of the world have been occupied and ruled by different ethnic groups and by different empires at various times in the history of the earth. I suppose we can all agree that we don’t have to give Europe back to the Neanderthals. And it seems likely that the Ottoman Empire is not going to assert any claim to the territories of Israel/Palestine. But the Jews and the Arabs are quite clearly willing to defend their claims to the same territory. Does either one, and only one, of them have a convincing legal and/or moral right to the territory? I’m convinced that the answer is no. There is precedent throughout time and the world for conquered or settled lands to be considered the legal property of the conquerors or the settlers. So what can be done?

I suppose it’s at least theoretically possible to move all the Israelis to Wyoming and let the Arabs have ‘Palestine’, but it’s not going to happen. We have to do one of two things: We either have to come up with a solution that the Arabs and the Israelis can forever live with, or we have to let them fight it out to the finish. It is clear to me that the former option is going to take a better crop of leaders than we have today or have had in the past. How many more peace prizes will it take before someone realizes that UN resolutions and cease fires and appeasement are not working?