Robert Fisk on the ironies of "liberating" Middle Eastern nations. So many times before westerners have promised to "free" Muslins from the yoke of dictators -- and always out of altruism and never for profit.

So what happened to all these fine words? The Crusades were a catastrophe in the history of Christian-Muslim relations. Napoleon left Egypt in humiliation. Britain dropped gas on the recalcitrant Kurds of Iraq before discovering that Iraq was ungovernable. Arabs, then Jews drove the British army from Palestine and Lloyd George's beloved Jerusalem. The French fought years of insurrection in Syria. In Lebanon, the Americans scuttled away in humiliation in 1984, along with the French.

And history, of course, will repeat itself, as it always does.