The true history of the mess in the Middle East is seldom told or written about. You should already know, since this post is part of my ongoing series about economical myths, that this story is all about money, power and oil, and has absolutely nothing to do with people hating our western freedoms.
This is going to take a while, but I hope you're willing to read to the end, because I think it'll lead to a better understanding of the explosive situation in our world today. Most of us already know that nobody hates The West for it's freedoms, but I bet only a few really understand how deep the rabbit-hole goes. What I hope to establish here is to grow a better understanding of the history of the region, specifically our Western influence on it which has been devastating for the people who live there, when their only "crime" is that they live on the world's most wanted resource.
source: flickr
First thing to understand is that war is almost never waged between two or more people or cultures; war is almost always waged on behest of the leaders. Couple this with the understanding that all western democracies have since long been ruled by shadow-governments consisting of their largest industries and banks. We have "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy".
The people will not fight another people if the King says he wants or "needs" extra land and riches; it can't be a simple land-grab, or oil-grab. The King knows that if he wants their people to fight and possibly die for him, he'd better give them a damn good reason. And that's always where the lies start and the mutual hate between people and cultures begins.
It's simply impossible for governments to be honest to their people about the reasons for war. Smedley Butler explains why:
"There are only two reasons why you should ever be asked to give your youngsters. One is defense of our homes. The other is the defense of our Bill of Rights and particularly the right to worship God as we see fit. Every other reason advanced for the murder of young men is a racket, pure and simple."
source: War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler
Governments do everything they can to build around their military some sense of adoration, be it with beautiful parades full of neatly dressed and beautifully decorated soldiers, or via books and movies that seldom focus on the hardships but always emphasize the heroism, honor and glory associated with military life and service to one's country or flag. In few empires this has taken such deep root as in today's United States of America, where the burning of the flag is seen as betrayal, and where refusing to stand up for the national anthem leads to a giant media-circus full of condemnation. It almost makes you wonder: who are the fundamentalists here..?
source: Wikimedia Commons
The war over the oil in the Middle East has been going on for approximately 120 years now; yes, it took us over a century to transform that region of the world into the beautiful profitable mess it is today. They don't hate us for our freedoms, if they hate us (and I don't believe they do) they hate us because of this:
"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses."
source: War is a Racket by Major General Smedley Butler
Major General Smedley Butler knew it. And soon you all will. We all learned in school that The Great War (First World War, 1914-1918) was started after the asassassinationby some terrorists, of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria... See how long that terrorist-angle has been used? One small terrorist group kills one minor royal from some minor country and the whole world fights over it... yeah right...
In the late nineteenth century, the greatest empire was England, with the worlds largest fleet and the most profitable colonies all over the globe: it was "the empire on which the sun never sets", a position that was handed over to the US after the Great War. Since it's opening in 1869, the Suez Canal was England's main trade-route to the colonies in and around India, and to keep control over it, their military interventions began then, to "pacify" Egypt and Sudan.
Around that same time the world learned that coal are far inferior to oil, and the mighty English fleet was beginning to power their ships with oil instead of coal. In fact, all European countries at the time had some colony somewhere that produced at least some oil. The only otherwise mighty and advanced European country without oil or other foreign riches, was Germany. You guessed it.
The Germans started to plan a railroad to the region hoping they could strike a deal with some of the local leaders to get permission to drill for some oil of their own: the railroad was supposed to run from Berlin, all the way to Baghdad and the piece up to Constantinople was already there, called the "Orient Express". They only had to lay the last 900 miles of track to reach Baghdad. But there was of course major opposition to this plan by the main European forces: England, France, Belgium, Holland, Russia, they were all opposed. Germany was not to reach Baghdad because it was feared they would break up the nice cartels the other European colonizers already established there.
source: Google Maps
So the very first military actions of The Great War were scrimmages in Basra between British and German-Ottoman troops. In fact, The Great War should be thought in schools as the beginning of the war over the oil. Or as the first invasion of Iraq which it was. For the oil. Just as now. Did you ever notice the many straight borders between North-African and Middle-Eastern countries? That's because the same European colonizers divided the region between themselves and their oil-producers.
We skip to 1951; Iran was a secular democracy back then. They had an elected prime-minister, named Mohammad Mosaddegh:
He was the head of a democratically elected government, holding office as the Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 until 1953, when his government was overthrown in a coup d'etat aided by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service.
Because Mosaddegh ran a campaign in which he promised nationalization of the oil fields that were then exploited by British Petroleum (BP) and traded with American Dollars, he had to go. So the British Secret Service and American CIA staged a coup d'etat. See, it's all public knowledge if you look for it, it's just never shown on TV or thought in history class. Also notice how far back the marriage between the current and former World Leaders goes: England and America were brother's in arms long before the relationships between Reagan and Thatcher in the 80's and more recently between Bush and Blair...
We put the fanatical Ayatollah regime there. We divided the region drawing straight lines, creating countries where there were none, dividing and uniting tribes who didn't want to be united or divided. Placing puppet-regimes that suppress their own people to not get in the way of our economical demands of oil traded for Dollars. Remember Bush's "Axis Of Evil"?
The phrase axis of evil was first used by U.S. President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, and often repeated throughout his presidency, to describe governments that his administration accused of sponsoring terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction.
source: Wikipedia
In fact these countries, Iran, Iraq and North Korea all had plans to trade their oil, and in case of North Korea all other resources, not in Dollars but in Euros. Later Venezuela was added when Hugo Chavez proposed something similar during an OPEC meeting. The true, purely economics and power based reasons for war are never discussed with the electorate of our western democracies. We're always, always always always, lied to. But we believe the lie so bad that we actually seem to fall for the "they hate our freedom" slogan.
This is getting too long a rant. You must get the point by now: don't ever ever ever believe in any war your government says is necessary, bet it "the war on terror", "the war on drugs" or "the war on cancer". War is never never never the answer to any perceived conflict or problem. Like Yoda said in Star Wars, "war does not make one great". I could go on about how the wars in Afghanistan is over routes for gas- and oil-pipes, how Osama Bin Laden was never officially accused for the 11 September 2001 attack on the WTC or how he was trained by the CIA in terrorist tactics to fend of their Russian enemies in Afghanistan. How a country whose main export product is weapons, ammunition and espionage-technology, has the economical need for a war to be waged all the time.
I'll end with another quote from Major General Smedley Butler:
"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism."