Vice President Joe Biden, as a US Senator and Presidential candidate in 2008, projected that the best future for Iraq was for the three warring, contending groups to become separate states, as the Iraq created by the British and French after World War I was unsustainable.
Biden was ridiculed and attacked for his statement and view, but it now looks more than ever, with sectarian violence among the Shiite and Sunni Muslims, along with the national ambitions of the Kurdish people in the Northern part of Iraq, that the best hope might well be a three state solution.
The only problem now is that extremist terrorist groups in Iraq and neighboring Syria, where a civil war has raged for more than three years, endangers not only such a scenario, but also the whole Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as American interests.
Since the Shiite and Sunni branches of Islam have been at war for more than a thousand years in the Middle East, the best that can be hoped for is such a three state solution, with the hope that the extremism and terrorism can be contained and lessened.
This is all the outgrowth of the unnecessary, unwise, inexcusable war initiated by the George W. Bush–Dick Cheney–Donald Rumsfeld administration on Saddam Hussein, who despite his horrible regime, was not a direct threat to the United States.
Now the Biden idea, with a quelling of the terrorism aspect, is the best hope for the future, so let us salute Joe Biden for, once again, more than one realizes, being perceptive in foreign policy.
We could do far worse than Joe Biden as our potential 45th President of the United States, as the man has great knowledge, vision, and perceptions that make sense in foreign policy!
Hello Professor,
I was listening to a program yesterday regarding Thomas Edward Lawrence. (Lawrence of Arabia)
He started as a civilian in the Mapping Room in England during WWI. Through attrition and the loss of British officers in the trenches of World War I, Lawrence became the senior personnel in the mapping room. When a general came to be briefed on the terrain for an upcoming battle in France, the only person to speak and discuss battle plans with the General was Lawrence.
The General refused to be briefed on military matters dealing with the battle plan topographical maps from a civilian but he insisted Lawrence be made an officer in the British Army. I should add the Lawrence had no military training what so ever.
Later as a British Army officer he was assigned to a position in a liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, and the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule.
The French and British saw WWI as the opportunity to divided up the declining influences of the Ottoman Empire. The British sent Lawrence to gain the trust and convince the different Arab factions to revolt against the Ottoman Empire with the promise of obtaining their own country in the end.
It was not until towards the end of his successful campaign when he found out the truth. The British and French governments planed to divided the Ottoman Empire up to their advantage.
Lawrence not only felt betrayed himself, but he knew that it was the trust and friendship from those whom he befriended were being lied to, and used by the British and French governments. A fact he felt much guilt from that day on until his death from a motorcycle accident in 1935.
He is one of the very few Englishmen who have ever refused both the Victoria Cross and a knighthood.
So to conclude, the current events revolts in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran we are seeing today is not only the religious civil war that has been going on since 600 AD, but compounded by the British and French artificially dividing up the area after WWI, but more recent the Bush/Cheney administration’s Iraq War with the thought of gaining the Iraqis’ oil assets.
As I had expected, the bobbleheads on Fox “News” are blaming Obama for Iraq.
Here is an article talking about what Engineer mentioned:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/groundtruth/ISIS-iraq-sykes-picot-WWI
I watched the Young Indiana Jones Adventures TV series in high school. An episode about the Paris Peace Conference brought up about how the British and French divided up the area.