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> We really should stop looking to the GD as a lesson for today’s problems. We don’t use the 30 Years War as means of explaining religious conflict or the Crusa

> We really should stop looking to the GD as a lesson for today’s problems. We don’t use the 30 Years War as means of explaining religious conflict or the Crusades to explain the state of the middle east. I don't know anything about the Thirty Years war, but I doubt that there's any major recent act of stupidity that was caused by excessive cleaving to (or knowledge of) historical experience. I suspect we'll keep on looking back at the great depression until it ceases to seem salient. Oh, and the Crusades explain quite a bit about the state of the middle east.

douche 11y ago
Maybe if every western country decided to shithouse ISIS for their brutalities with their younger sons. And all of Occupy Wall Street banded together behind some charismatic idiot and marched over there without warlike equipment to fight the Arab/Turk.
douche 11y ago
If you really want to see an explanation of the Middle East, look at the way France and the UK divided up the region in the wake of WW1, and then abdicated their responsibilities after WW2.
- Tloewald 11y ago
  Yeah we've all watched Lawrence of Arabia.
  - douche 11y ago
    I was thinking more about Leon Uris' Exodus. Most of the faults of colonialism seem to come from how poorly the handoff between the imperial powers and the local population went. It's an interesting dynamic, since almost all of the traditional colonial powers were a shell of themselves by 1945, while the two ascendant powers were the USA and USSR, who really hadn't been involved in the Victorian era colonial land-grabs, at least to the extent that the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, and even Italy were.
danieltillett 11y ago
>I don't know anything about the Thirty Years war, but I doubt that there's any major recent act of stupidity that was caused by excessive cleaving to (or knowledge of) historical experience. Let me introduce you to Balkans war(s) of the 1990s. People who had been living side-by-side peacefully for decades decided to rehash hundreds of years of historical conflicts which to outsiders looked insane. >I suspect we'll keep on looking back at the great depression until it ceases to seem salient. The Great Depression is no longer relevant since we don't live in a world on the gold standard. The factors that drove the economy into the ground in the 1930s (massive deflation and bank failures) are not going to happen again. Deflation because countries can print as much cash as they like (Greece excepted), while in regards bank failures we now know banks (and bankers) are too big to fail. >Oh, and the Crusades explain quite a bit about the state of the middle east. Nothing about the middle east today is the result of the Crusades except some misguided people thinking the Crusades are relevant.
- foxhedgehog 11y ago
  No, the OP is correct about the Crusades, particularly if you care about the POV of the political actors in the Middle East itself.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    Some actors in the middle east like to claim that any involvement of the west is another Crusade, but no western country is interested in “freeing the Holy Land” from non-christians.
    - nl 11y ago
      You are correct of course. Unfortunately some Western leaders have been a little unwise when speaking publicly: "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." - GW Bush[1]. "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."[2] It's pretty easy to paint a picture of attempted cultural (if not religious) domination by the West even without quotes like that. Add that stuff in and it is harder to explain how it isn't the same. [1] http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html [2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa
foxhedgehog 11y ago
You are correct about the Crusades. And the below commentators act as though you have to somehow choose between the post-WW2 context and that time period for explanatory power, when of course Middle East history is lengthy and rich and has room for both and a lot of important additional contexts besides, including the Ottoman empire, the Persian empire, the breakup of the original Caliphate, etc. etc. "Those who cannot learn from history," and so on.

douche 11y ago

Maybe if every western country decided to shithouse ISIS for their brutalities with their younger sons. And all of Occupy Wall Street banded together behind some charismatic idiot and marched over there without warlike equipment to fight the Arab/Turk.

douche 11y ago

If you really want to see an explanation of the Middle East, look at the way France and the UK divided up the region in the wake of WW1, and then abdicated their responsibilities after WW2.

Tloewald 11y ago
Yeah we've all watched Lawrence of Arabia.
- douche 11y ago
  I was thinking more about Leon Uris' Exodus. Most of the faults of colonialism seem to come from how poorly the handoff between the imperial powers and the local population went. It's an interesting dynamic, since almost all of the traditional colonial powers were a shell of themselves by 1945, while the two ascendant powers were the USA and USSR, who really hadn't been involved in the Victorian era colonial land-grabs, at least to the extent that the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, and even Italy were.

danieltillett 11y ago

>I don't know anything about the Thirty Years war, but I doubt that there's any major recent act of stupidity that was caused by excessive cleaving to (or knowledge of) historical experience. Let me introduce you to Balkans war(s) of the 1990s. People who had been living side-by-side peacefully for decades decided to rehash hundreds of years of historical conflicts which to outsiders looked insane. >I suspect we'll keep on looking back at the great depression until it ceases to seem salient. The Great Depression is no longer relevant since we don't live in a world on the gold standard. The factors that drove the economy into the ground in the 1930s (massive deflation and bank failures) are not going to happen again. Deflation because countries can print as much cash as they like (Greece excepted), while in regards bank failures we now know banks (and bankers) are too big to fail. >Oh, and the Crusades explain quite a bit about the state of the middle east. Nothing about the middle east today is the result of the Crusades except some misguided people thinking the Crusades are relevant.

foxhedgehog 11y ago
No, the OP is correct about the Crusades, particularly if you care about the POV of the political actors in the Middle East itself.
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Some actors in the middle east like to claim that any involvement of the west is another Crusade, but no western country is interested in “freeing the Holy Land” from non-christians.
  - nl 11y ago
    You are correct of course. Unfortunately some Western leaders have been a little unwise when speaking publicly: "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." - GW Bush[1]. "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."[2] It's pretty easy to paint a picture of attempted cultural (if not religious) domination by the West even without quotes like that. Add that stuff in and it is harder to explain how it isn't the same. [1] http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0919/p12s2-woeu.html [2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa

foxhedgehog 11y ago

You are correct about the Crusades. And the below commentators act as though you have to somehow choose between the post-WW2 context and that time period for explanatory power, when of course Middle East history is lengthy and rich and has room for both and a lot of important additional contexts besides, including the Ottoman empire, the Persian empire, the breakup of the original Caliphate, etc. etc. "Those who cannot learn from history," and so on.