The Mediterranean Region - Great Food and Bad BloodToo many people are woefully ignorant of the part of the world we have squandered so much blood and treasure over for the last five years...Not the people who read this blog, of course, but the readers of this blog are painfully aware of that tragic fact.
The region is steeped in history and historic rivalries. The history of the region predates the overthrow of the Shah and the seizing of the American Embassy. It predates the Munich Olympics massacre. It predates the overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddegh by a CIA-backed coup. It even predates the British Mandate!
The people of that region have fought over scarce resources and religion for thousands of years, and the rest of the world pretty much ignored the Middle East and left them to their internecine rivalries.
And then some British geologist discovered oil in the region, and the race was on...
Who could meddle first, who could meddle best, who could meddle most effectively, and who could screw the natives the hardest? (It was nearly always the British, for the record. Those Brits really knew how to run an empire back in the day.)
For a century now the western world has been sticking their noses into the affairs of the region, overthrowing heads of state, hoarding the regions one resource and in general, sowing all manner of ill-will and planting the seeds for a bumper-crop of hatred and animosity among the people of the region.
Sending more troops into a region we should be withdrawing from is folly. Instead of extracting them from this clusterfuck, the president wants to send in even more and ramp up the death and destruction, and that is criminal.
What the hell kind of sense did it ever make to declare war and send in the military to fight a transitive verb, anyway?
