Ah, history!

Submitted by Peter J. Herz (Taiwan), Apr 13, 2004 at 20:03

It's interesting to note that the wars the US totally and undoubtedly won involved inflicting extensive destruction on the enemy--World War II and the War Between the States (where Sherman gave us the "War is Hell" motto as he marched through Georgia). It appears that our war in Iraq seems, so far, to have uncovered more bodies from Saddam's mass graves than it has from the collateral damage our forces inflicted in bombing cities, etc. It further seems that the last non-Muslim people to "tame" the Muslim world were Hulagu's Mongols (some of whom may well have been Nestorian Christian "Crusaders" in their own minds)--at least before they converted to Islam themselves. Lesson: this is a part of the world the US can handle only if it is willing to stop being the USA.

As for the colonial powers avoiding the Islamic world, Russia did not (and see what Russia has reaped!). But a good part of the problem was, that as Europeans sought a way to trade with the Far East without going through the Muslim powers was that the Big Number One imperial power of the 16th-17th centuries was not Spain or Portugal, but Ottoman Turkey.

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