in History, International Situations, Terrorism, War 248 Words

Sowing the seeds of conflict in the Middle East

Time for the old professor’s historical perspective (something you all have been dreaded for a long time)…..

The Middle East….some will pass around the bullshit that it has always been a violent and destructive region….that is what they want to believe and no amount of disputing evidence will change their minds….because they know all and see all….

Some experts will have you believe that all the problems started with the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot Agreement…..my opinion is that it was the beginning but not the sole reason for the violence.

But now onto the perspective……

Whatever else they were guilty of, the two authors of the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, George Bush and Tony Blair, displayed an astonishing ignorance of history.

Many people, understandably, are perplexed by the violence and disorder of the Middle East. They look at, say, the conflict in Syria and ask: how did it come to this?

Part of the problem is that the media focus on the crowded foreground and neglect the all-important historical background – in particular, the formative period in the emergence of the modern Middle East, in the age of empire.

Source: Sowing the seeds of conflict in the Middle East | openDemocracy

A little reading will help you understand…that is if you want to understand or to stand by your idiotic perspectives…….

Damn!  I love history and the perspectives that can make understanding so much easier…..but only if you want to understand…..

19 thoughts on “Sowing the seeds of conflict in the Middle East”

  1. “Understanding” is a relative term and one person’s “Understanding” is no more or less valid than another’s because the reading of “History” is always slanted by preconception and individual bias. It is almost the same as the reading and “Understanding” of guiding religious principles. It is all open to interpretation and it is all interpreted freely and contiinuously. Even academic credentials that ordinarily tend to validate a given perception are subject to argument because the credentials of one institution are always going to be different than the credentials of another because all such educational institutions are based on qualifying academia and it all tends to conflict except in rare cases of accidential agreement. This is one of those myriad cases where the term, “Believe what you want to belive” can be applied as a convenient dodge if someone is so inclined as not to want to extrapolate and explain.

    Reply

    1. You can paint it with any brush you want to paint it with but the real fact of the matter is that all the conflict in that region of the world we are witnessing today is nothing more or less than a continuation of a 14-centuries-old conflict between the Sunni and The Shia. It has never ended and it will never end and no amount of wishful thinking will make it end.

      Reply

      1. That is the same argument that will be used constantly….we could say something similar about our treatment of blacks….

      4. That depends on what you believe….for some they are and for others they we just men traveling thru this world like the rest of use peasants.

      5. No matter the debate, it always resolves to what somebody “Believes” doesn’t it? This authenticates my original argument that all political pronouncements are always biased to one degree or another and that there can be no set-in-stone un-challengable facts regardless …. Everything is always viewed through one lens or another.

      1. I have failed….I have just replied to someones inane statement as ‘Bollocks’ That’s me down& Out!
        must have more gonads than I thought!

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