homelandfrom where the enemy was born and lose the peace afterwards. Therelationship between the Middle East and West has historically beencomplicated, divisive and all-too-often bloody. Since the days of the Crusadesit has been a history of racist imperialism and religious intolerance. Theimmediate history of what is fast becoming a quagmire of cultural conflict iseasy enough to trace and begins with Osama Bin Laden. Unfortunately it does notend with his death. If the same strategyI have suggested for the present conflict against ISIS had been adopted against Bin Laden and hisorganization, Al Queda, it is arguable that things never would have reached theexplosive stage they have now. Just as if Germanys grievances before and afterWorld War One had been appreciated and assuaged the Second World War would nothave been so inevitable, so too if the grievances of the Arab world had beenaddressed more sympathetically before and (especially) after the events ofSeptember 11, 2001 the present crisis might also have been averted. Whilegoing after Bin Laden and the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistanwhich housed and supported him was arguably justified and sadly unavoidable theWest, in the form of American President George Bush and his conservative administration,made little effort to understand what forces had compelled Bin Laden to marshallhis limited forces for a one-time attack against the United States. Bin Ladenmay have called for a Jihad against the West but he must have known he himselfwas doomed from the start. And thats probably what he counted upon, dying as amartyr and somehow inspiring a larger movement against the infidel West he andmany others had so come to hate. In this sense he achieved his aim. The beliefthat their purer Islamic culture was being diluted by the alien culture ofthe West had reached a boiling point and Bin Laden decided he would be the onewho would take action, if no one else. Whateverefforts were made to win a war and then establish peace in Afghanistan failedwhen the United States illegally, insanely and unjustifiably decided to invadeIraq after Afghanistan. This was the worst thing the West could have done.Rather than isolate the threat against the United States in Afghanistan andsurgically deal with Bin Laden and his Taliban cohorts the United Statesproudly (or greedily) over-reached themselves and threw themselves into anunnecessary power struggle in neighbouring Iraq, again without muchunderstanding if any of the tribal and ethnic politics at play there. How could anyone, especially in the MiddleEast except Israel, interpret the invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraqas an effort to win peace in a region already alienated and long persecuted bywestern powers? TheInvasion of Iraq was unconvincingly justified by the Americans as necessary torid the region of a despotic dictator, Saddam Hussein, who was practicinggenocide on his own people AND was in possession of mass destruction with intentto use them against Western enemies. Now as a United States-backed dictator onecan only wonder who those western enemies could have been! The cruelty andruthlessness of Saddam Hussein may have been very real but the allegations ofweapons of mass destruction have since been proven false. It is far more likelythe US