Iran

Wouldn't bother me if someone wanted to assess peace and stability in the region starting 2000 years ago.

There was A LOT of fighting in the area in Old Testament which goes back much further than 2k years. But if someone wanted to exclude those millennia, I wouldn't quibble.
And then compare it to Europe over the same time period.
 
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Why? Toothpaste out of the tube? Oil money driving jealousy? US would still be meddling? Other?
Maybe a little of all of the above. The way the world is now the Middle East is going to end up being someone's bank account.

I do think if Israel wasn't there we probably would care about as much about Palestine as we care about, I don't know, the Congo.
 
Why? Toothpaste out of the tube? Oil money driving jealousy? US would still be meddling? Other?
So maybe I need to revise the answer to your first question, because I think there would be stability in "Palestine" because there's not anything there worth fighting like this for at this stage, unless we're actually going to start waging religious wars.
 
So maybe I need to revise the answer to your first question, because I think there would be stability in "Palestine" because there's not anything there worth fighting like this for at this stage, unless we're actually going to start waging religious wars.
Last heuple-thetical, if the oil dries up, will any 'superpowers' care about the region?
 
Last heuple-thetical, if the oil dries up, will any 'superpowers' care about the region?
Why would they care about desert and limited farmland? I don't see any reason they would.

The Arab states pre-oil were destitute wastelands full of nomads and baby princes for most of their history. That's why they did all the conquesting.
 
Why would they care about desert and limited farmland? I don't see any reason they would.

The Arab states pre-oil were destitute wastelands full of nomads and baby princes for most of their history. That's why they did all the conquesting.
Then the problem is self limiting. That's good.
 
Wouldn't bother me if someone wanted to assess peace and stability in the region starting 2000 years ago.

There was A LOT of fighting in the area in Old Testament which goes back much further than 2k years. But if someone wanted to exclude those millennia, I wouldn't quibble.

About the only time the ME has been stable is when it was colonized by foreign powers.
 
Obviously. Let’s try it from another direction. When 95% disagree with your opinion, it’s a pretty good sign you’re wrong. And especially if D4H is the only one that agrees with you. Nothing else needs to be said.
Eh, trusting the general consensus to be automatically correct is quite a fallacy. We could probably look up an infinite amount of examples in retrospect.
 
Then the problem is self limiting. That's good.
I mean, eventually...

I want to add a little more.

I think a lot of what's going on now is driven more by religion on all sides than anything. The land of Israel itself is largely worthless aside from religious significance, which I suppose certainly matters in that it is a factor to be understood behind all of this. We've had Crusades and pilgrimages and all sorts of things, so sure, it does have some older roots. But I think if you dig a little bit, even most (if not all) of those old conflicts were driven less by religious zeal and much more by things just like we see today- a king or leader losing face and wanting to bolster support, an opportunity to fundraise and build a coffer in the name of the good fight, etc.. Even the foundation of the modern state looks more like an opportunity for power and money than a desire for a real religious home, if you read some of the documents and history from ~1918-1948.

In the end, it's my belief as a Christian that Jesus is present everywhere. I don't need to go to modern Jerusalem to have an experience with Him. I don't need to support a modern state in the Middle East to be in communion with God. I don't need to stand behind people that I see as doing evil (again, opinion based on what's going on in Gaza now) to find blessing and salvation. I don't see anywhere in the Scripture that tells me I have to do these things, yet there are many people- Christians and Jews alike- that will use a single verse in the Old Testament to beat me about the head and shoulders and condone heinous actions by a lot of people using it. I guess at the end of the day the abuse of the Word is something that's happened since the time of Paul's letters, though.

I don't like modern Islam, I don't like modern Judaism, I don't like much of modern Christianity- I think we've all lost the plot and are circling a very depressing drain. I'm very un-tactful, I get it, but with a newborn at home and seeing a world that looks like it's going to **** I'm more than a little mad about it all. Especially when you can start to see that this stuff is totally unnecessary on all accounts.
 
Eh, trusting the general consensus to be automatically correct is quite a fallacy. We could probably look up an infinite amount of examples in retrospect.
I would normally agree with you but overwhelming consensus is radically different from general consensus. My main point was that your argument is in trouble if D4H is agreeing with you. That’s a sure sign of a problem.
 
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I was thinking if there was going to be any kind of ground war Saudi Arabia is the one that would do it, if this keeps up anyway. Of course, it depends on how much influence the US has over Saudi Arabia.
Saudi has a large military budget, but I don’t think they have that many troops. I don’t think they’re going to want to get in a ground war.
 

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