Can we all agree that the Middle East is fucked up?

[trumad]

And always has been?

And history tells us there ain't a damn thing we can do about it except maybe fuck it up more.

[RKP5637]

1. I agree! ... been that way my entire life. Some days I really wonder what it would be like today

if the US had never stepped foot into the ME. Often I think we enable the conditions to make things worse.

[pampango]

2. "And always has been?" Define 'always'. Something defective about the people there? Unfortunately,

for the vast majority of people in the Middle East, they have a 2%. The same 1% we do - dictators, oligarchs, generals, ultra-rich and ultra-powerful (generally more interested in power and money than in religion - kind of like our 1%), but they also have a 1% of religious fanatics with a culture of violence. This second 1% is interested in power and money too and sees religion as a means to achieve it. (We have that same second 1% too, but ours have proven to be - so far - more controllable.

The average Syrian, Iranian or Jordanian is not much different from you and me. There but for the luck of the geographical birth lottery go I.

[rock]

4. Since there's no time that it wasn't fucked up

That 'always'.

[pampango]

6. Your definiton of "always" is 100 years, 1000 years, 5000 years? Was Europe 'fucked up' 100 years

ago? 1000 years ago? Is it 'fucked up' now? How about the US?

If every place in the world meets your definition of "fucked up" and always as, then fine. I suppose the Middle East can join the "fucked up" club. Personally, I don't think the average Middle Easterner is more "fucked up" than the average North American or European.

[Chan790]

10. Because it hasn't always been fucked up.

Learn some goddamned history.

It was generally not fucked up, at least no more so than Asia or Europe...then the Crusades happened and fucked it up. Then the peoples of the Middle East largely fixed it. Then, contemporaneous to WWI, the British and French did a hackneyed job partitioning the faltering Ottoman Empire and fucked it up again. The Middle East is what happens when two global powers partition a piece of land ignoring existing borders, native populations, and with a mindset to settle old grudges while working implicitly to fuck each other over.

It goes back to the Princep postulate of global relations:

For any major global event, uprising, or conflict occurring on-or-after 28 June 1914, traced to its root-causes, it is ultimately the sum of fault which lies with Gavrilo Princep.

Try me. Name a global conflict since the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Princess Sophie, I will link it back to being Princep's fault. If he'd missed, the amount of bloodshed of the 20^th-century would have been quartered.

WW-I, WW-II, Korea, Vietnam, Every war Israel has fought in its short existence, Iran-Iraq, the Serbian Conflict, Russo-Japanese War, both Sino-Japanese conflicts, every war in Afghanistan, Grenada, Nicaragua, the Russian Revolution, the Maoist Revolution, I can even link the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK to being the fault of the Serbian secessionist and anarchist.

[RKP5637]

5. Excellent points! We have the same 1% or 2% here, whatever small %, that would do the same. The US

has quite a few authoritarians, control freaks, religious fanatics, uber greedy, sociopaths and the like that would turn the US into a horribly oppressive place given the chance. It's generally a very small percentage that rise to the top and turn countries into a horrible mess and oppress the masses which often have a lot in common across earth.

[cali]

3. It hasn't "always" been fucked up- not really.

but it has been fucked up for a long time, and the fuck up we see is attributable in large part what Britain, France and the U.S. have done in the region.

[newfie11]

9. +infinity

Exactly! We will never know how the ME would be today without meddling from outside countries.

[trumad]

13. True...

Always is err always..meaning forever... at least in my lifetime.

[davidn3600]

7. Yeah, but it has oil

Once the oil wells go dry though we won't care anymore.

[anamasrey11]

8. Can we all agree that the Middle East is fucked up

sorry !!! idont know

[el_bryanto]

11. Yes - the people there are just animals. Right? nt

[ipfilter]

12. Can anyone recommend a good history

book on the subject of the ME and how it ended up in this mess? I've read bits a pieces around the web but have not found a comprehensive book on the subject.