Studying (and gaming) History through the News

The events going on in the Middle East today are on par with the opening up on Eastern Europe in 1989.

As a gamer, I have always been interested in the conflicts in the desert going back to the first time I saw Lawrence of Arabia. Today my bookshelves are full of books on this part of the world. These include the Egyptians crossing the canal in 1973 to the Ottomans trying to cross into Egypt in 1915.

While I have no interest in gaming the event happening right now, this does not mean I will not look at events that happened in the past in these countries.

In 15mm (my prefered scale) we can easily do the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12. Any of the WWI rules will work nicely including TOOFATLardies “Through the Mud and the Blood” and “I Ain't Been Shot Mum”. Figures can be obtained through QRF, Miniature Figurines and Eureka.

Also in 15mm there is the possibility of gaming the (North) Yemen Civil War. This conflict can be gamed using most Cold War rules set. As the conflict occurred between 1962 and 70 figures and tanks are easy to come by.

I left out the more well know conflicts, World War I and II, 1948 Israeli War of Independence, 1956 Sinai, 1967 Six Day War, 1970 Black September, 1973 Yom Kippur War, and 1982 Peace in Galilee. It is a rough neighborhood.

I hope we are all following the news and reading about the history of this fascinating region.  I look forward to any thoughts you wish to share.

 I do love Zeppelins.

Getting Serious

I apologies to the readers of my blog as I am going to get serious on you all. This blog started as a gaming venue so I could work towards getting my ideas ready for publication. This area of the world always interested me. So much so that I am a recent (although very bad) student of Hebrew.

While I did not get over the eastern Mediterranean until after the USMC debacle, I understood the passions that are involved in this area of the world.

As a student in high school I wrote a journalism piece dealing with the assassination of President Sadat. I remember it well as I had a though time reading it aloud. I would never of guessed that his successor would be in power almost 30 years latter. It should give every American pause as not only is Egypt one of America’s largest benefactor of aid under the Camp David Accords, but we support its defense through offering our M1 Abrahams tanks. Egypt is second only to the US Army in the number of M1s in inventory.

These wars of my youth, Lebanon, Yemen, the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur War are all still with us. Some of the players have changed, but only the names. This year Lebanon’s government, never very stable falls and is held together by Hezbollah, Tunisia the home of the PLO after they left Beirut has overthrown their President of many years. Yemen is fractured with Saleh being President of one part of Yemen since 1978.

Remember back to the late 70s and think what you were up to. Did you think things would always stay the same? Try to watch the news coming out of the Middle East and ask can anyone make a difference?

 American made M60s and M113s in Egypt during the demonstrations.