Who started all this trouble in the Middle East anyway?

If you have ever seen the great movie, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, you know the primary source of our problems in the Middle East today. Essentially, the Ottoman Turks conquered all of what we know as the Middle East and subjected it for about 400 years. When World War I started, the Ottomans sided with Germany. The British sent T. E. Lawrence, an Arabic scholar, to organize the local Arab tribes in a revolt against the occupying Ottomans. In return, the Arabs were promised freedom and self rule. After the Arabs and Lawrence of Arabia routed the Ottomans, they went to Damascus to form a new free government. The British and French however, had already decided to divide up the Ottomans' former territory (the Sykes-Pecot Agreement) and prevented the Arabs from proceeding. All the Middle Eastern countries we know today - Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon -  were created in 1922 as a way for the French and British to divide the spoils. The British also created Afghanistan in 1823 and Pakistan in 1947. Thank you very much.

Apparently, when Mr. Sykes and Monsieur Pecot drew up their map they were more interested in geography than sociology. Iraq, for instance, was cobbled together to include Kurds, Shi'ites and Sunnis, three groups not inclined to share a tent, much less a country. The Kurds are a separate ethnic group, yet the British and French gave them no country of their own, instead dividing them up into Iraq, Turkey and Iran, where they have caused constant trouble for those three governments ever since. The Shi'ites and Sunnis have fought for 700 years, so there was no reason to expect they would stop arguing as a favor to the British who forced them to share a common border. The British had all kinds of problems in Iraq as a result, successive governments with successive coups. The only time in its short history that Iraq existed in relative peace was under Saddam Hussein. He figured correctly that fearing him would keep them from fighting each other. When we went into Iraq and successfully removed Saddam, well, you know the rest.

Afghanistan? The brilliant British cartographer who laid out that map must have suffered from geographical dyslexia with its 20 some odd nationalities, languages, rivalries and only 12% arable land, most of which is used to grow poppies for export as heroin to the US and Europe. Actually, the best chance Afghanistan ever had to succeed economically was when the country extended south to the Indian Ocean. But again, in their infinite wisdom, when the British gave India its freedom they had to resolve the long-standing conflict between Indian Hindus and Muslims, so they created Pakistan as a Muslim homeland. Only problem was, they created it out of southern Afghanistan, eliminating its only route to the sea and insuring that Afghanistan, Pakistan and India would never share so much as a cup of sugar.

The proverbial last straw in this successful effort to alienate forever Arabs everywhere goes to the United Nations. Not satisfied with betraying the Arabs and just about every other ethnic group in the Middle East after World War I, The UN "graciously" agreed to give the Jewish people a homeland after World War II and created the State of Israel. Of course, Israel was created out of the existing Palestinian Arab homeland.

So there you have it folks, the mess we call "The Middle East," brought to you by two of our closest allies. With friends like that we don't need enemies, but unfortunately, we have those too.