Once again, the USA is turning its interest to the Middle East. This seems to happen whenever there is an upheaval in the middle east. Karl Meyer has written quite a bit on the Middle East This is a very short excerpt from one of his articles.

Karl E. Meyer is a third generation journalist. He received a Master of Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Priceton University, and then a PhD in Politics also from Princeton. 

The following is an excerpt from a series he wrote for The World Policy Journal in 2005/2006. In this excerpt, he cites an article that I wrote in the late '70s based on my 1970 dissertation on the French in Syria.

Meyer writes: "Few countries are . . . so compulsively fascinating as Syria. . . . To spend a fortnight in Syria is to span the millennia from the early Bronze Age, sharing routes once traveled by Abraham, continuing through the glory years of the Silk Road, followed by the din of the Crusades, before lurching incongruously into Latakia, the pampered equivalent of Iraq's Tikrit for Syria's ruling Baath Party. The landscape is everywhere strewn with surprises. On a day trip from Aleppo, which together with Damascus lays claim to being the world's oldest continuously inhabited city, we proceeded to the Byzantine basilica honoring St. Simeon Stylites, who dwelled for decades atop a pillar. We then navigated among hundreds of enigmatic Dead Cities, each a barren shell abandoned by early Christians, the result conjecturally of climate change, deforestation, or earthquakes. On returning to Aleppo, we paused in the musty taproom of the Baron Hotel, still much as it was when T. E. Lawrence left an unpaid chit for champagne, or when his royal ally Prince Feisal spoke from the hotel balcony in 1920 to proclaim Syria's independence (prematurely, to be sure, since Feisal was peremptorily deposed by the French, compelling his British patrons to create a new throne in Iraq). . . .

"Nevertheless, in a self-delusory trance," Meyer continues, "the French saw their occupation of the Levant as a success, as measured by improved rail networks, modernized ports, newly built schools and factories, and other indices of presumed progress. Hence the shock in 1925 when a revolt raged through Syria and Lebanon, precipitating the bombardment of the ancient city of Damascus. "When the smoke lifted," writes the Harvard historian Joyce Laverty Miller, in a detailed analysis, "much of Damascus was in ruins; the reported loss of life and property appalled world opinion and galvanized Arab dissidents. A torrent of violent and emotional criticism was unleashed. In some quarters, it was even hinted that the League of Nations would remove [its] mandate from French control." Yet within a year, the insurgency ebbed, and the world's attention moved on.

"According to Miller, writing in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (vol. 8, 1977, pp. 545-63), the roots of the revolt lay in the imposition of an artificial nation-state on Syria's divided groups with their long tradition of self-governance in local affairs under the Ottomans. In her words: "The early French administrators in Syria, in their efforts to develop and modernize a Syrian nation were of necessity inflaming groups which had always mistrusted one another within the Ottoman Empire and had coexisted only because 'the nation,' the empire, was weak. In short, the revolution of 1925 was not the nationalist revolt of a united people against a French oppressor but a power struggle among and within divisive groups in an artificial state who could agree on only one thing: the French must go."
. . . 
"Doubtless much has changed in Syria and Iraq since the 1920s. But one is struck by the persistent tunnel vision among those who presume to know what is best for foreigners whose language they cannot speak and whose customs they cannot comprehend."

I couldn't agree more!