The Middle East

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

I agree. We can't fix it, even though we've been a major contributor to the problem, along with the British Empire. The modern problems started in 1917, when rule of most of the Middle East passed from Muslim control under the Ottoman Turks to British control. Had Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points formed the basis for the peace treaty that ended World War I, and the people of the region had been allowed the right of self-determination, you wouldn't have had democracy breaking out, but you'd have had a larger number of shiekdoms develop, and while there would still be fighting and disagreement, but the insurgencies and terrorism of fundamentalist Islam grows out of the oppression of foreign rule. The British, with the help and support of the French, divided up the area for their own benefit, for political control and economic exploitation. The US stepped in when the British proved to be too weak to hold onto it without our help following WWII. Ostensibly, we were supposed to be a "presence" there only until self-determination could establish stability, but it never has become stable, and we started feeding off the riches of the economic benefits. "Protecting Israel" cropped up in the middle of all of that, mainly as an excuse to stay.

Most Arab Muslim terrorist organizations have formed to oppose British and Israeli occupations of territory. ISIL or ISIS filled the vacuum left behind by the destruction of Saddam Hussein, and its formation is a direct result of the US invasion of Iraq. If Bush had listened to Henry Kissinger, and had any inkling of an understanding of Middle Eastern history, and how things worked, and not gone into Iraq, not really having a legitimate reason to do so any way, there would be no ISIS today. The imbalance that was created by the fall of Iraq, when combined with the effects of the Syrian revolution that weakened the Assad dictatorship, was the catalyst in the formation of ISIS. That's a mistake that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, in their thirst for vengeance, now own as a legacy.