Posted by Matt in December 16th, 2007
The Middle East looks like Europe circa World war I.
The United States invaded Iraq in April 2003 for multiple reasons, but the most ambitious was a desire to remake a whole region. The Middle East, it was argued, was full of political and economic underachievers, driven to violence by a Muslim/Arab inferiority complex. Replacing Saddam Hussein with an exemplary democracy would begin a domino effect, spreading American values to Iraq’s mostly undemocratic neighbors.
Oh dear. Iraq is now in the midst of a civil war—already one of the world’s biggest since 1945, with the kind of escalating tit-for-tat killings and ethnic cleansing that can last for years, even decades. Debate currently centers on how quickly the United States can wind down its involvement in Iraq and on whether neighboring countries can be persuaded to help stabilize it.
But what if it is Iraq that destabilizes its neighbors? The irony is that America’s ill-executed intervention may yet remake the Middle East. But not quite in the way neoconservatives intended.
Read More…
No related posts.
Map for Baghdad, Iraq
[Countries link to CIA Factbook. States link to Wikipedia.]
Flickr Tags: Middle+East+Niall+Ferguson
YouTube Related Videos for Tags: Middle, East, Niall, Ferguson
|
Roots of Conflict in the Middle East
Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2008/04/28/Niall_Ferguson_and_Peter_Schwartz_on_Human_Progress
Historian Niall Ferguson debates futurist author Peter Schwartz on the historical roots of modern-day conflicts in the Middle East.
-----
Niall Ferguson and Peter Schwartz present Historian vs. Futurist on Human Progress as part of The Long Now Foundation's Seminars about Long-term Thinking.
Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University. He is a resident faculty member of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.
He is also a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
He is most recently the author of the books The War of the World:...
Tags: arabia, arabic, arabs, conflicts, history, iran, iraq, islamic, israelis, mideast, muslims, oil, palestine, palestinians, saudi, wars
|
bad link……