I got this crazy idea

[Alkarii]

If that became an Olympic event, I'd hate the Olympics a lot less and clear my schedule to watch that.  To quote Haggard from Battlefield: Bad Company, "I just like it when stuff blows up."

Anyway, as far as the thing with the folks in the Middle East being pissed off at the US, it's pretty much the same as what happened to Germany between the World Wars.  Germany got a really bad deal at the end of it, and Hitler, who from what I've read was bullied by a jew, managed to come into power in Germany, and then said it was the jews who did it.  Being the kick-ass speaker and leader that he was, they went with that (not to say I agree with his ideas; not a fan of facism).  And apparently, something similar almost happened to us during the Great Depression.  I think that was the Red Scare or something like that.  It's been a couple years, and I haven't really had to use any of that information since I graduated, so I forgot.  Probably wrong, but if I'm right, then there's some similarities between all that and the Middle East.

[Reese Tora]

Germany got a really bad deal at the end of it, and Hitler, who from what I've read was bullied by a jew, managed to come into power in Germany, and then said it was the jews who did it.

The long history of persecution and prejudice against the Jews in Europe certainly helped there...

And, actually, the creation of modern Israel stems from, basically, western Europe's persecution(much more complex than that, of course), so WWI and WWII are partially responsible for the current strife in the middle east. History is a hugely terrific tapestry of interwoven and interconnected plots.

[superluser]

that sounds like a rewarding hobby and should be made into a spectator sport and/or Olympic event

Like javelin catching?

Anyway, as far as the thing with the folks in the Middle East being pissed off at the US, it's pretty much the same as what happened to Germany between the World Wars.

Kinda.  As the Cold War started to de-escalate, the Soviet Union started to agitate in the Middle East and began trying to wage war in Afghanistan.  We sucked up to Afghanistan, hoping to keep the Soviet Union bogged down there and to keep it as a firewall to prevent the Soviet Union from going any further.  It sort of worked...until the Soviet Union collapsed and we started ignoring them again.

At that point, our involvement in Iran-Contra and then the Persian Gulf War began to look (from the Middle-East's perspective) like we were just funding the people who weren't in power so that we could play the parties off of each other until they all died and we could take over.

A lot of it does go back to the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire.  The boundaries chosen had little to do with religious, ethnic, or linguistic boundaries, and instead had a lot to do with the boundaries that were in place before Alexander the Great conquered Asia.  Another source of the boundaries came from TE Lawrence, who wasn't exactly unbiased when it came to his opinions on the Middle East.  Here's a map of Lawrence's vision of the Middle East.

Ardent supporter of Israel though I am, I have to admit that the Six Days War was probably not a smart move.