[muawiyah]

Not quite sure what you are getting at, but one of the legacies of WWI still causing everybody lots of problems is the type of government the French and English established in the parts of the Former Ottoman Empire under their control.

Almost to a nation these supposed exemplars of democratic governance set up dictatorships!

Again, as usual, it is falling to the United States to precipitate democratic reform throughout a region, much as we did in the core areas of the Former Third Reich Empire!

If we work this right, Islam will have no more meaning to, or influence over, government and economic matters in the Middle East than does Lutheranism or Catholicism in Germany and France.

[norton]

Sounds good, but there is absolutely no basis for democracy in any of these states. The only cohesion they might possess outside of the sham religion they profess has to come from tribalism or intense government security forces.

One way or another, they are either fragmented little clans or they are dictatorships. Iraq is itself an attempt at a secular dictatorship (versus the fundamentalist dictatorship of Iran) and it appears to be rooted in physical oppression.

It is true that the post WW1 construct was flawed and intended to sustain western control. So what? The issue today is not Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Syria. It is islam; it is the mass hallucination of ignorant and resentful barbarians being told that their god wants them to hate even more, so long as the hatred is aimed away from the people actually oppressing them.

Reduce them (back) to tribes, let them wander and grub as they did before the 'great war' and oil gave them status they did not earn. At least in that role they only threaten each other.