Bonesaw Wielding Gog and Magog

[Dr H]

Atlass, we would love nothing more than to leave the middle east entirely. But sorry, with Sunnis and Shiites, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and Israel at each other's throats. Maybe it would be better if both Saudi Arabia and Iran to give up on their religious run governments.  Europe went through their Christian version during the Dark Ages, and even in America because of religious bullshit, even we treated Native Americans and blacks and women like shit.

None of what I said means America gets everything right. But you are over simplifying a complex region full of many different sects and powers that are still unfortunately stuck in a dark age religious past, including too many Israelis.

The three religions have been fighting over that region for centuries. Maybe Muslims and Jews and Christians need to face the fact religion is a very easy way for powers to get their respective societies to die in these wars.

And yes Atlass, land is fought over, not just for religious reasons, but for control over resources. Other species fight for control over resources too. Mammals like elephants, and lions, especially males, can be very territorial. Humans are no different.

What you say about religions fighting each other in the region is true.  But it's only part of the picture.  A good deal of the current tension in the Middle East can be traced directly back to US and UK exploitation of the region a century or so ago.   

When these essentially colonial powers pulled out they drew up a bunch of artificial borders -- without regard to existing cultural or ethnic populations -- specifically to provide a convenient means of retaining western (primarily US and UK) control over resources (like oil) from the ostensibly "independent" countries that emerged.  When any of the resulting countries tried to take control of their own assets they were slapped down by western interests.  

The overthrow of Iran's government in 1953 by a CIA supported coup, and the subsequent installation and support of Pahlavi's puppet government by the US, to protect western oil interests, is just one example.  People got so fed up with the resulting brutal 30-year dictatorship that they were willing to do pretty much anything to get rid of it, including opening up their otherwise progressive country to a strict theocracy, by inviting Khomeni back.

Western (meaning European and US) colonial powers did essentially the same thing to sub-Saharan Africa, and with essentially the same result.