It was one of those nights where for some inexplicable reason I just could not sleep. It may have been the heat but it surely wasn’t over eating or late caffeine in-take. Maybe it was the Munich shootings. Poor Germany. If any country does not deserve to be attacked then it’s Germany. It has done more than its fair share to build a pacifist stance towards war since the Second World-War and so far that has been working. Occasionally you might hear of a German aircraft striker, or ship, heading out to the Middle-East but it’s very low-pro. In the light of the refugee crisis when thousands were making their way across Europe to flee the wars in Syria, Angel Merkel made a well-meaning statement about refugees ‘being welcome here.’ This to me felt like a teenager posting a private party at their parents house on Facebook, and then thousands turning up and trashing the place. What I mean by that is that by making her country welcome to ‘all refugees’ in the day of social media, is not such a wise thing to do. Refugees without doubt need assistance, and are the victim of colonial turf wars being played out at this time. But still. Making outlandish claims on global social media without being unsure of the outcome seems naive and out of touch.

The problem is not refugees. It’s refugees fleeing war, traumatized, fearful, and poor. Any commitments made would have to be backed up for a good ten years. There are already many refugees or migrants sleeping on the streets of England despite ‘refugees are welcome here’ signs stuck to living room windows across the lands. There is a difference between idealism and rationalism. The other major problem as you know is we are at war with various factions in the Middle-East and without doubt a small percentage would have manged to sneak in to this wave of migrants, and now we are starting to see the ramifications of that in France and Germany. There is a clear disturbing cycle of exporting war and then dealing with the consequences that land on our doorstep with no end in sight. Politicians seem quite certain that we’ll be in these wars for decades!

Somehow an answer needs to come from the Middle-East out of this debacle of chaos and terror. Dare I say a Lawrence of Arabia type character. No not white. And no don’t laugh. But some inspiring moderate Arab or Islamic voices that can be visibly seen to offer an alternative to this endless madness. Unifying figures that can bring the moderates together and quell the extremism. Maybe a global effort to build up Middle-East forces on the scale of The Manhattan Project instead of spending billions on more wars. I know it’s a dream what with the Russians and the US squabbling over Syria, but it comes to a point when you think how many more people must be massacred for the sake of boundaries and global posturing. We are now in a more multi-polar world and it might be good for all nations to taken an even stance in policing the planet. Otherwise it will be just more continued aggression with no end in site. Let’s hope for a more peaceful solutions through dialogue and that the old dogs tire of their twentieth century wars.