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What World War I Did to the Middle East
Spiegel ^ | January 31, 2014 | Bernhard Zand

Posted on 02/03/2014 8:59:32 AM PST by C19fan

Damascus, year three of the civil war: The 4th Division of the Syrian army has entrenched itself on Kassioun Mountain, the place where Cain is said to have slain his brother Abel. United Nations ballistics experts say the poison gas projectiles that landed in the Damascus suburbs of Muadamiya and Ain Tarma in the morning hours of Aug. 21, 2013 were fired from somewhere up on the mountain. Some 1,400 people died in the attack -- 1,400 of the more than 100,000 people who have lost their lives since the beginning of the conflict.

........................................................

That, though, is likely only to surprise those who saw the rebellions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria as part of an historical turn of events for the Middle East. To be sure, the unrest was a bloody new beginning, but it was also the most recent chapter in an almost uninterrupted regional conflict that began 100 years ago and has never really come to an end.

(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: arab; middle; war

1 posted on 02/03/2014 8:59:32 AM PST by C19fan
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To: C19fan

“The so-called European Civil War, a term used to describe the period of bloody violence that racked Europe from 1914 onwards, came to an end in 1945.”

When I read that bit of drivel (typical of Spiegel writers) I quit...Nonsense is nonsense no matter the source


2 posted on 02/03/2014 9:19:26 AM PST by Nifster
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To: C19fan

Interesting article.

Would have been better had the author shared his insights on the borders that would have NOT resulted in ongoing problems.

The only alternative mentioned was a nation-state composed of all of what is now Israel and the Arab Middle East.

It seems fairly obvious such a state would have fallen apart quickly, and there is no particular reason to believe that the region would be any more peaceful today.


3 posted on 02/03/2014 9:19:40 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: Nifster

Right. It is nonsense.

Europe has been in a state of very nearly continuous civil war since the Dark Ages. Interrupted by 100 years of (mostly) peace from 1815 to 1914, and by general peace since 1945.


4 posted on 02/03/2014 9:22:48 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: Nifster

The author apparently thinks the terms battleship and warship are synonymous.


5 posted on 02/03/2014 9:24:01 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: C19fan

seems to me central Europe has a long and glorious history of being at war? Going back centuries prior to 1914. Wonder why that is?


6 posted on 02/03/2014 9:28:47 AM PST by faithhopecharity (C?)
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To: C19fan

It’s very doubtful that the story about the Syrian army gassing children was true. There were all kinds of contradictions involved. Several reports said that it was false. And at least some of the children in the photos were Druz and Christians, kidnapped and murdered by the al Qaeda revolutionaries.


7 posted on 02/03/2014 9:38:20 AM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: Cicero

I would not put this beyond either group.


8 posted on 02/03/2014 9:42:10 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: C19fan

While I don’t completely agree with the article, I agree with its central theme:

Europe screwed up the middle east.

They did - and now they have a very annoying ‘holier than thou’ attitude when the US tries to fix it. As noted in the article, much of the violence in the middle east centers around Israel. I’ve got no problem with Israel. They are a shining example of democracy in a sea of ignorance and poverty. But....why is there an ‘Israel’? Why isn’t the region inhabited by a small number of nomadic herders, like it was 100 years ago? Frankly, its because of Europeans...Europeans who apparently couldn’t stand to live side by side with jews, exterminated them (not just the Nazis either), and gave a ‘consolation prize’ to the survivors whose property and belongings had been stolen. Yet Europeans now, at best, want to ignore problems in the middle east, and at worst actually oppose Israeli moves to continue their very existence. And of course, people from the US are encouraged to ‘not dress American’ while in Europe, or some garcon will spit in your drink...all because we are supposedly the heathens for supporting Israel.

Anyway, on some counts I agree with the article. Yes, the region would probably had plenty of their own wars with or without European intervention...but Europe’s negative impact on the region is not nihl.


9 posted on 02/03/2014 10:05:39 AM PST by lacrew (Mr. Soetoro, we regret to inform you that your race card is over the credit limit.)
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To: faithhopecharity; Sherman Logan; Nifster; C19fan
seems to me central Europe has a long and glorious history of being at war? Going back centuries prior to 1914. Wonder why that is?

My read of history is that man’s natural state is the state of war.

It is peace that is the aberration.

Civil war is the case most often where two dissimilar cultures or tribes have been forced together by a conquering force for some time and the natural inclination of the two groups to go there separate ways has reasserted itself.

10 posted on 02/03/2014 10:50:40 AM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: Nifster

““The so-called European Civil War, a term used to describe the period of bloody violence that racked Europe from 1914 onwards, came to an end in 1945.”

When I read that bit of drivel (typical of Spiegel writers) I quit...Nonsense is nonsense no matter the source”

What do you expect for the lefties at Der Spiegel. European history did not begin (for them) until a few decades before German unification. That is a notoriously short time-horizon when compared to the ageless agony of the Levant.


11 posted on 02/03/2014 11:07:18 AM PST by Tallguy
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To: Pontiac
another FReeper, had as his Fr_tagline,
"Peace, Is when both sides reloads" (their weapons :)

12 posted on 02/03/2014 11:10:07 AM PST by skinkinthegrass (The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun..0'Caligula / 0'Reid / 0'Pelosi)
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To: Tallguy
That is a notoriously short time-horizon when compared to the ageless agony of the Levant.

Nothing particularly ageless about it. These things go in cycles. By historical standards, this is actually a pretty peaceful period, for the region and just about anywhere else. Heck, the Vietnam War's death toll comprised about 4% of the Vietnamese population. The press is whining over the death of 0.5% of the Syrian population, and talking this up as if it were a rerun of the Mongol sack of Baghdad.

Has the Middle East ever encountered anything like the 100 Years' War, which saw France's population cut in half from start start to finish? 100K dead is peanuts out of a population of 22m. Wars in antiquity and the medieval era used to routinely kill off anywhere from 10% to 70% of the population via famine and famine-induced disease. The amusing thing is that those casualties did not lead to pacifism, whereas the relatively minor, by historical standards, death tolls of WWI and WWII, has led to worldwide pacifism. I suspect a great deal of it has to do with most of the world's population no longer living on the edge, just a bad harvest away from famine.

13 posted on 02/03/2014 12:22:40 PM PST by Zhang Fei (Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.)
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To: Zhang Fei

“I suspect a great deal of it has to do with most of the world’s population no longer living on the edge, just a bad harvest away from famine.”

Interesting thought, that!


14 posted on 02/03/2014 1:35:27 PM PST by Tallguy
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To: Tallguy

true words


15 posted on 02/03/2014 1:44:30 PM PST by Nifster
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To: Nifster

Thanks for saving me the time to read something that is so clearly calp trap.


16 posted on 02/03/2014 6:30:43 PM PST by Sequoyah101
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