It's Not Just About Land

"For about the last half-century, globalization has passed most of the recalcitrant Middle East by -- economically, socially and politically. The result is that there are now few inventions and little science emanating from the Islamic world -- but a great deal of poverty, tyranny and violence. And rather than make the necessary structural changes that might end cultural impediments to progress and modernity -- such as tribalism, patriarchy, gender apartheid, polygamy, autocracy, statism and fundamentalism -- too many Middle Easterners have preferred to embrace the reactionary past and the cult of victimization.

At one time or another, they have welcomed all the bankrupt ideologies that traditionally blame others for prior self-induced failure: fascism, communism, Baathism, Pan-Arabism and, most recently, Islamic fundamentalism.

When there is high unemployment, corruption, zero economic growth, endemic illiteracy and no freedom, mullahs, dictators and jihadists of the Middle East always seem to fault the ancient colonial power -- Britain, France or Italy (though rarely Islamic Turkey) -- that supposedly set them back over a century ago. Or they try blaming the omnipotent United States whose oilmen developed the riches of the Gulf and whose military has saved Muslims from Kosovo to Kuwait."

Read It's Not Just About Land By Victor Davis Hanson