Unrest Across the Globe Due to Misguided History?

This opinion piece begins by noting the failure of a dumbed down population to remember history. The he uses the analogy of selective history for his argument. The Balfour Declaration in 1917 was only about 1100 year after the beginning of the religious wars of the Middle East began. If the argument over who owns what land is the issue, one historian makes the case that all people came down from Russia across the former Aleutian Bridges. That means we are all Russians. 

[From article]
Because memory, particularly historical memory, fails unfailingly, this summer feels like a uniquely horrific season of dissolution and blood
[. . .]
President Obama was asked how he could claim that Al Qaeda had been “decimated” when jihadi flags were now aloft in Falluja, he resorted to a blithe formulation. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” the President told this magazine.
[. . .]
As Bernard Avishai wrote on our Web site last week, “You can unspool this vendetta back to the Balfour Declaration, in 1917.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/aflame-2

Comment AUGUST 04, 2014 ISSUE
New Yorker

Aflame
BY DAVID REMNICk