@Ionus,
I agree with nearly all of that. When they weren't worried about or fighting each other, bringing down the Ottoman empire and exploiting its remains had been the more or less constant objective of the British, French and Russians since the start of the 19th century. The world is still dealing with the unhappy consequences of the destruction of that Empire by the Allies in WWI. Wilhemite Germany also tried hard to influence the Ottomans, mostly through commercial and cooperative military ventures. That only exacerbated the ambitious rivalries of the Allies. The Ottomans had their faults, but what has followed has been far worse.
That said human history is a series of tragedies, punctuated by occasional brilliant achievments. Unforseen consequences are the rule, not the exception, in the actions of great powers, and none I am aware of has has escaped this fate.
There is an air of complacent, self-satisfied piety in the "politically correct" judgments of today's world that ignores some inconvenient but prominent truths. The points above are among them. Another is that the centuries long conflict between Western Culture and Islam is not over.
