[Rutland Herald] There is one basic reality in the Middle East. The region contains a number of "countries" that were created out of whole cloth during the 19th and early 20th centuries by European colonial powers to suit their own purposes. The artificiality of those "countries" makes for a very unstable region.Those "countries" are not in any sense internally cohesive, and many contain the seeds of their own disintegration. Historically, those "countries" have been governed repressively simply because the tribal, sectarian and national mixtures of residents are sufficiently volatile to require relatively strict repression for the maintenance of cohesion and public order.
The divisions that exist within those "countries" go back decades, centuries and millennia. Internal conflicts now exist where central, often repressive control has disappeared, as in Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Where open conflict has not broken out, some form of repression continues in force, as in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt (for the moment) and the Gulf States.
The American compulsion to export democracy and concomitant peace to that world has been proven incredibly naive, largely because the only elements in the region that matter -- tribal, sectarian and national -- have no experience with democracy and are largely unprepared for and do not seek its introduction.
And in the midst of this instability, we find ourselves required to deal with ISIS. Some Americans believe that we are capable of "beating" ISIS and its allies and support boots on the ground. That may or may not be, but that is not the real issue. The real issue is, what comes after the defeat of that enemy?