Yes, I have appropriated and adapted two of Barbara Tuchman’s famous 20th century histories to create that title, because they are so sadly apt in the current world climate. First, let me get a disclaimer (or several) out of the way: I am opposed to suicide bombing especially when it targets innocent people going about their everyday lives — I call that murder, and a particularly vile kind of murder at that. Second, I do not for one moment believe that there is a war against Islam. That is a paranoid religious interpretation put with often unhelpful consequences on conflicts and tensions that arise for much more mundane reasons. Angry Muslims should have a bit more faith in God’s ability to look after himself. No-one is in the slightest bit interested in Muslim countries or Muslim minorities in other countries unless they happen to be sitting on or near a very large oil reserve. I will come back to that in a moment. Third, the state of Israel is the most destabilising factor in the Middle East, and I say that as, in general, a supporter of Israel. But it should never have been allowed to settle Gaza and the West Bank. Fourth, much of the talk of democracy in the Middle East is open to criticism on the grounds of hypocrisy, as democratic choices that go the “wrong” way are vigorously rejected: Gaza (in vile dehumanising Newspeak — resist this worst abuse of human language with every fibre of your being — now an “enemy entity” like a microbe or a cancer cell or It Came From Outer Space) and Iran are two cases in point. Finally, I am not a great admirer of the current Iranian regime.
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