We can't have it both ways.. and I do not have a simple answer for any of it..

[Skidmore]

16. The past does matter and history needs to be told.

However, what is occurring now is not exactly the same thing as what occurred a decade ago or a century ago no matter how some try to make it so. The dynamics of the ME has shifted as much as the sands over the centuries. It is a very fluid region with some strange allegiances and enmities. Religion binds but does not and the same is true for boundaries and tribe or clan. It runs deep and, in the West, we never truly learn to understand how business is conducted. I lived for two decades in an extended family and not simply as an expatriot living abroad. Even with those close ties, I was forever learning nuances of relationships and affiliations. We have nothing in this nation that will ever rise to the complexity or which corresponds to the deep sense of history you find there. We just don't.