What makes this crisis so tragic is that not very long ago Turkey was entering a new age of social harmony and economic development.

Today, both are up in smoke as this week's bloody bombing in Ankara that killed 99 people showed.  America's ham-handed policies in the Mideast have set the entire region ablaze from Syria to South Sudan and Libya.  Turkey sits right on top of the huge mess, licked by the flames of nationalist and political conflagrations and now beset by 2 million Syrian refugees.

As Saddam Hussein predicted, George W. Bush's invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq opened the gates of hell.  Attempts by Washington to overthrow Syria's Alawite regime – a natural US ally –  have destroyed large parts of that once lovely nation and produced the worst human disaster  since the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the late 1940's and 1967.