Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Why is the Middle East such a mess?

Meteor Blades at The Next Hurrah offers a really good historical take on the event that set most of the Middle East onto the road that has brought us the Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian theocracy, Iranian intransigence over nuclear fuel, and the nasty relations between the U.S. and Iran.

My best current guess about why Bush and Cheney were so hot to invade Iraq is that Iraq was to have been a staging ground for pressure on Iran, while also permitting control of the Persian Gulf and letting the U.S. remove troops from Saudi Arabia where their nearness to Medina and Mecca was a real problem. 9/11 was an excuse the Bush administration used to push for the invasion, but Iraq wasn't the real target. Iran was. The recent stories that chemicals have been moved from Iran to the insurgents in Iraq suggest that the Iranians also think that is why we invaded Iraq. The Iranians are providing material support to the very Sunni Iraqis who fought the extremely nasty eight year war in the 80's.

But Meteor Blades goes back to describe the event that set the modern problems up. Go read and see what you think.

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