The Middle East dreamed up at the Republican debate doesn’t really exist

The Middle East dreamed up at the Republican debate doesn’t really exist

By Ishaan Tharoor at the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/12/16/the-middle-east-dreamed-up-at-the-republican-debate-doesnt-really-exist/

"SNIP...............


Judging from the debate, these countries are not sovereign nations with complex societies and failing governments but rather springboards for a dangerous and all-encompassing "caliphate." It's a worldview the jihadists themselves espouse. (Trump, to his credit, did acknowledge that precipitating a lot of the current crises with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was perhaps a bad idea.)

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, had his own quixotic attempt at policymaking when talking about what to do with Syrian refugees. Fresh from a trip to a refugee camp in Jordan, Carson made the salient point that most refugees don't want to leave their homes but are forced to by the circumstances of war.

But he then went down yet another rambling path to justify Republican opposition to resettling Syrian refugees in the United States. Carson suggested that refugees, with no attention paid to their background or city of origin, be moved to Hasakah province in northeast Syria — "an area that's as big as Lebanon," as Carson observed.

.....

"It's controlled by the Kurds, the Christians and the moderate Sunnis. And there are airstrips and hotels. You could settle a lot of people there," he said.

This is not a serious proposal, not least because Hasakah is still a theater of war and the site of clashes between Kurdish militias and the Islamic State.



..................SNIP"