Quote:
Originally Posted by Rochard
But that's just it. There is no proper solution. We help them, we get attacked because we have Americans interfering with Muslim matters. If we don't help them, then we failed to help the Muslims. So now the proper solution is to "help them a little bit". This way when they say "you interfered with Muslim issues" we just say "but we didn't invade or put boots on the ground" and when they say "you didn't help" we can say "oh, but we did help".
Their problem is they refuse to separate religion from everything else. Take Americans out of the problem, and it's Shites against Sunnis. I don't walk into a business and say "Gee, the business owner does not share my religious beliefs so I cannot buy from him and must instead stone him to death".
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Oh yeah - it's a clusterfuck with no easy solution, no doubt about that.
Much of the problem(s) over there can be attributed to - and this is a gross oversimplification, I don't have time to discuss in detail - the current national borders in the Middle East were in many cases arbitrated by departing colonial powers (UK, France, etc) in the 1st half of the 20th century. They don't reflect historical cultural & societal boundaries so when the central power holding society together by force is weakened (Assad, Hussein, or Lebanon for decades, etc) there are just a bunch of different factions (Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, secularists, fundamentalists, whoever) crammed together with differences on who should be in control, and where, and how. If the ME were arranged into its natural divisions the map would look very different and there would probably be a lot more stability, possibly even enough to get some breathing room & develop a real democracy in a few places. The Kurds in particular seem to have the right idea, if they could ever have a state of their own rather than getting kicked around by the dictators in the various countries they're stuck in.
Similar dynamic happened with Yugoslavia after Tito died - and that was a bloody fucking war smack in the middle of civilized Europe, with religion playing very little role.
Now that Syria's fractured and different groups have a toehold in different fiefdoms there, I seriously doubt it can be put back together. Even if Assad can remain in power he doesn't have the strength to dislodge the rebels in the north, I have a feeling the ME map in 10 years will be quite a departure from today.