President Trump made great play when he came into office with his return of a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office, presenting the move as a symbol of his admiration for adamantine patriotic resolve in pursuit of patriotic ends. Presumably, Trump was thinking of Churchill in 1940, not Churchill in 1915-16 when he was the leading advocate of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in which the Turks decisively defeated the British army with great slaughter.

Trump is reputed to seldom read books or show much interest in history other than that of his own life and times, but it would be worth his while reflecting on Gallipoli, because Churchill was only the first of six British and American leaders to have suffered political shipwreck in the Middle East over the last century. The prime reason for these successive disasters is that the region has always been more unstable and prone to wars than anywhere else in the world. Mistakes made on its battlefields tend to be calamitous and irretrievable.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-middle-east-isis-about-to-start-a-war-a7572891.html