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Europe actually had more regional wars for a long period than there were in the Middle East because the Middle East was basically controlled by the hegemon of the Ottoman Empire or the Calipahte and European was tons of smaller states and various alliances. If you look at the current borders of Europe, a lot of that was the result of years of wars and bloodshed.
Most of the wars in the Middle East throughout history were one invading power fighting a previous power. Persians vs the Greeks or Romans, Byzantine Greeks vs the Arabs, Seljuk Turks vs. the Arabs and Byzantine Greeks, Mongols vs. the Arabs, Crusaders vs. the Turks and Arabs(and even the Byzantine Greeks), and so on... Being at the crossroad of three continents means that invaders or outside powers were always seeking to control the Middle East and likewise the powers of the Middle East would come into conflict with Europe. There's never been a long enough time for local rule to be established and institutions of nation-states created until the last century, and it's been a messy process. There was no Syria or Lebanon or Iraq or Israel 150 years ago, it was a mix of provinces under the Turks ruled from Istanbul.
For a long period being the key word.
Europe has had relative peace. ME till this day has never had true peace.
Even in the days you mentioned I am sure the Shias and Sunnis hated each other.
Imagine if the borders of Europe got re-written by a victorious Ottoman Empire at some point in history. They ignore a lot of the real ethnic/tribal boundaries of older territories(dividing up the Kurds and Levantines and Shiite Arabs across several states). They then leave but then maintain influence and try to pick the winners and loser and which dictators stay in power. Imagine what that mess would've looked like.
That's the Middle East, post-World War I in a nutshell(also Africa). The whole region is just sorting borders out via bloodshed as has been the case in most of history. We like to pretend war and conflict is something new. Look at SE Asia and most of Latin America and 30-40 years ago and look at them now, these things happen very quickly.
Count me as someone else who agrees with this wholeheartedly. We, the Western powers, made one more mistake-- created the Jewish state. Now, I greatly admire what the Israelis have done there...but in addition to arbitrarily drawing country borders that had nothing to do with the people who lived in the area, the British promised Palestine to the Jews in 1917...only to promise it again to the Palestinian Arabs in 1939, and then to Syria after WW2 (sorry, no links). That said, how much worse did we make the Middle East by creating Israel out of others' land?
As for how to solve it-- work very hard at getting over our need for oil, so as to cut our need to police the place...then embargo the whole place, including making it a nuclear-free zone (yes, that would mean Israel too), and let them work it out among themselves, by force of arms or through negotiation. Easier said than done, to be sure, but problems that the rest of the world foolishly created aren't easily resolved. The most important first step is to render the place's oil far less valuable and important to the rest of the world than it is.
Or get ready to send your children over there to die.
Yea lets just lets millions of people be displaced, killed, etc.
That is the hard part but unquestionably our recent influence has not yielded positive results.
Perhaps we should limit our activities more to promoting peace and less to arming favored strongmen/rulers.
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