Thursday 11 February 2016

Are we white Westerners in any way responsible for instability, turmoil and warfare in the Middle East?

From our track record of warfare, around the globe, in every single year since, at least 1914, we are probably killing more humans in Syria and Iraq than Islamic State is.  Did we stir things up in the region in the first place, over ten decades of cheeky, oil motivated, military intervention in the Middle East?  Especially, since the end of our war in Afghanistan on 31 December 2014, the end of our warfare in Iraq and our support for rebellion called the Arab Spring?

Unlike Western behaviour in their region, at least Islamic State with their conquests, give the inhabitants the choice of staying put and remaining Muslims if they convert to their fundamental interpretation of Islam or, converting to Islam if not Muslims or, paying taxes to Islamic State or, moving out.  The Western way was to bring God, guns and germs to the original inhabitants in the case of our North American conquests of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Killing the adherents of Islamic State in an attempt to exterminate the lot of them, seems to me to be a rather tall order.  Indeed, futile.  Far better to stop our violence and aggression and to welcome those fleeing Islamic State and Western/Russian air strikes.  At least, we can then be sure that all the refugees are fleeing Islamic State and not Western/Russian bombs.

Western policy is to remove the legitimate government in Syria and to extinguish Islamic State.  Russia policy is to support the Syrian government.  You could argue that we, once more, are over throwing a government down the barrel of a gun and the communist/capitalist Russia are upholding the lawful government.

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