mrswdk wrote:Dukasaur wrote:Isn't that cute. China's shill comes rushing to the aid of the Arab League shill.
Nice to see the American/Israeli shill responding to the points being made rather than resorting to ad hominem.
There were no points being made. There was some red herring about "colonialism" but it was not worth responding to.
Colonialism may have been a factor in much of the world, but the Middle East was not colonized by the European powers. In the early stages there were deals made with sovereign powers, where sheiks in the area bargained trade concessions in exchange for European military aid against various enemies. The resulting protectorates were not colonies. They remained completely self-governing locally and only gave up their right to control their foreign trade.
In the later stage everything changed after the Ottoman Empire joined the losing side in WWI. The British and French had been supporting the Ottoman Empire since the Council of Vienna in 1815. They had even fought the bloody Crimean War to keep the Ottoman Empire alive when it looked like the Russians might dismember it. So it was quite a surprise for them when the Ottomans jumped in on the German side in World War I. After that perfidious act, it's no surprise that they pushed a very draconian peace treaty on the Ottomans and took huge territories in 1918. Even so, the land was only held temporarily, under League of Nations mandate, with the restoration of full sovereignty as the goal right from the opening bell.