New England Patriots Forums - PatsFans.com Patriots Fan Messageboard - YOUR OPINION OF BOOK's Theory: "Churchills Folly: How WC Created Modern Iraq"

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/lifes...DDLE_EAST_.asp

Interesting book that came out last year.

IMO a book like this coupled with the study of Ayatollah Khomeini would make some great theories. Bush's blunders aside...these people (hardliners) are determined to run their country their way.
Hard to argue that they don't deserve to run their ancestral homeland except the whole world has their claws in Iraq.

Quote:

Christopher Catherwood's book, published by Carroll & Graff Publishers last year, examines the factors that led to the creation of this unwieldy state. These same events later led to the 1958 military coup against the Iraqi Hashemite government, which had been imposed on the people. Thereafter a series of bloody regimes ruled, until the ultimate rise of the Ba'ath party, which prevailed for decades under Saddam Hussein.
Churchill's Folly will give the reader a clear understanding of the historical background to the problems the Americans now face in Iraq. Author Christopher Catherwood is a historian and scholar based at Cambridge University, with links to the University of Richmond, Virginia. He has also been a consultant to the Strategy Unit of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet.
The book of some 260 pages is divided into seven chapters with an illuminating introduction, a speculative afterword and an extensive list of sources and notes. The overall theme is that much of the conflict and mayhem in the Middle East is the direct result of Western European powers squabbling among themselves for influence and territory in the Middle East after World War II. While Catherwood's main thesis deals with the creation of modern Iraq, from time to time he digresses to discuss issues in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
He argues that two major factors contributed to the Middle East confusion of today. Firstly, the break-up of the once mighty Ottoman empire. Their leaders made the mistake of aligning themselves with Germany in World War I. With Germany's defeat in 1918, that once great empire was shattered. What follwed was a wave of nationalism and the strong desire of self-government.
Secondly, squabbling between the victorious Allied powers and their actions in the Middle East