"They did not learn then, and have not since, that war breeds only war."
Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wednesday, 2 March 2016 As we've reported elsewhere in these pages, we were intrigued by a comment written some time ago by Patrick Cockburn, who, along with Robert Fisk, provide consistently the best reporting and reflections on war in the Middle East in the English language. Cockburn has mentioned more than once that Westerners who make bombastic judgments about the Middle Eastern conflicts with characteristic extreme self-righteousness -- the product of superiority in war technology and historical ignorance, the old imperial duo -- ought to read a good history of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).