'Today, only Middle East specialists know of the King-Crane Report, but in hindsight it represents one of the biggest lost opportunities in the recent history of the Middle East. Under pressure from the British and the French, but also because of the serious illness which befell Wilson in September of 1919, the report was hidden away in the archives and only publicly released three years later. By then, Paris and London had agreed on a new map for the Middle East, which diametrically opposed the recommendations made by King and Crane.'<blockquote>'In October of 1918, World War I came to an end in the region with the Armistice of Mudros. The Ottoman Empire had been defeated and, with the exception of Anatolia, was divided among the victors and their allies. The "peace to end all peace" was forced upon the Middle East -- for an entire century.
When US President Wilson arrived in Paris in early 1919 for peace negotiations with British premier Lloyd George and French leader Clemenceau, he became witness to what for him was an unexpected show. The heads of the two victorious powers were deeply divided and engaged in a biting oratorical duel. The French insisted that they be given the mandate for present-day Lebanon and for the region stretching to the Tigris, including what is now Syria. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, after all, guaranteed them control over the area.
..
In August, King and Crane presented their report. They recommended a single mandate covering a unified Syria and Palestine that was to be granted to neutral America instead of to the European colonial powers. Hussein's son Faisal, who they describe as being "tolerant and wise," should become the head of this Arab state.
Today, only Middle East specialists know of the King-Crane Report, but in hindsight it represents one of the biggest lost opportunities in the recent history of the Middle East. Under pressure from the British and the French, but also because of the serious illness which befell Wilson in September of 1919, the report was hidden away in the archives and only publicly released three years later. By then, Paris and London had agreed on a new map for the Middle East, which diametrically opposed the recommendations made by King and Crane. France divided its mandate area into the states of Lebanon and Syria while Great Britain took on the mandate for Mesopotamia, which it later named Iraq -- but not before swallowing up the oil-rich province of Mosul. Between Syria, Iraq and their mandate area of Palestine, they established a buffer state called Transjordan.
Instead of the Arab nation-state that the British had promised Sharif Hussein, the victorious powers divided the Middle East into four countries which, because of their geographical divisions and their ethnic and confessional structures are still among the most difficult countries in the world to govern today.
..
..the unresolved conflicts left behind by World War I, combined with the spill-over effects from the catastrophic World War II in Europe -- the founding of Israel, the Cold War and the race for Persian Gulf resources -- added up to a historical burden for the Middle East. And they have resulted in an unending conflict -- a conflict that has yet to come to an end even today, almost 100 years after that fateful summer in 1914.'
- Bernhard Zand,
Century of Violence: What World War I Did to the Middle East, January 31, 2014</blockquote>
'...Wilson['s] illness .. was never diagnosed..'<blockquote>'..Wilson also made compromises in subsequent talks. Then, following an illness that was never diagnosed -- suppositions range from the flu to encephalitis to a series of small strokes -- the president's behavior changes. Once so predictable, Wilson now began giving his underlings confusing orders, and he complained that the furnishings of his Paris villa offended his sense of color. He had the staff rearrange the furniture until all pieces of one color were on one side of the room, while those of other colors were placed elsewhere.'
- Hans Hoyng,
'We Saved the World': WWI and America's Rise as a Superpower, January 24, 2014</blockquote>
'..the tendency to rate models higher than data may have been reinforced by the massive effect of the devastating First World War (1914-1918) on collective psychology. In its most general form, this effect entailed a retreat from accurate and detailed observation of reality, often whimsical, into the relative safety of abstraction and distortion .. the great military conflicts of the 20th century seem to have further motivated a retreat away from factual observation into unfettered abstraction and mathematics among scientists and artists alike.''<blockquote>'Finally, the tendency to rate models higher than data may have been reinforced by the massive effect of the devastating First World War (1914-1918) on collective psychology. In its most general form, this effect entailed a retreat from accurate and detailed observation of reality, often whimsical, into the relative safety of abstraction and distortion. In art, this trend is seen in such movements as modernism, expressionism, Dadaism, surrealism, futurism, cubism and Bauhaus, continued after the Second World War (1939-1945) by the likes of pop art, minimalism, and abstract expressionalism – all of which shared an aggressive contempt for naturalistic painting, sculpture or writing. While the wars’ influence on art is widely discussed and recognised, perhaps the trauma affected science similarly – encouraging an escape from testable facts, coupled with an embrace of the magical, unthreatening world of numbers and unobservable entities, a world in which regularity, predictability and uniformity could be postulated with impunity and any form of large-scale destruction simply denied. Thus, the great military conflicts of the 20th century seem to have further motivated a retreat away from factual observation into unfettered abstraction and mathematics among scientists and artists alike.'
- Rens Van Der Sluijs (
Context)</blockquote>
Context ‘..lack of affective con?rmation..’ - Veldman (Affective Introspection)<blockquote>
(The Electric Universe) - '..to revisit the potential of electromagnetic cosmologies – and transform it into current thought.''..the First World War was the death knell of the century of bourgeois liberalism.'Polar Wondering - By Rens Van Der Sluijs</blockquote>