It is really easy to blame the Americans for the current situation in Iraq, but it really goes back to the careless carve up of the Middle East by the French and English after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1917.
This is a quote from Gertrude Bell who had no small hand in setting the borders of today's Iraq and Syria:
"We rushed into the business with our usual disregard for a comprehensive political scheme," she wrote, upon arriving in Basra in 1916. "Muddle through! Why yes, so we do - wading through blood and tears that need never have been shed."
She also later remarked that 'drawing maps and making countries is so much fun'.
The British left Iraq for much the same reasons the Americans did 90 years later and throughout the 20th century the history of Iraq has been one endless story of conflict and war.
The American intervention tore apart a fragile state held together by Saddam Hussein's brutality and now we have this mess.
Nor are they Turks blameless, allowing jihadists fighters and supplies to enter Turkey and then cross over the border into Syria. Almost all the foreign fighters in ISIS came via Turkey unhindered. Now the situation has blown up in the Turks face with the prospect of two independent Kurdistans (Iraq and Syria) AND a Taliban mini-me state on their southern border.
This is a quote from Gertrude Bell who had no small hand in setting the borders of today's Iraq and Syria:
"We rushed into the business with our usual disregard for a comprehensive political scheme," she wrote, upon arriving in Basra in 1916. "Muddle through! Why yes, so we do - wading through blood and tears that need never have been shed."
She also later remarked that 'drawing maps and making countries is so much fun'.
The British left Iraq for much the same reasons the Americans did 90 years later and throughout the 20th century the history of Iraq has been one endless story of conflict and war.
The American intervention tore apart a fragile state held together by Saddam Hussein's brutality and now we have this mess.
Nor are they Turks blameless, allowing jihadists fighters and supplies to enter Turkey and then cross over the border into Syria. Almost all the foreign fighters in ISIS came via Turkey unhindered. Now the situation has blown up in the Turks face with the prospect of two independent Kurdistans (Iraq and Syria) AND a Taliban mini-me state on their southern border.
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