Killing “The Death of Sykes-Picot”

Happy New Year! Devoted readers of this blog will know that I generally loathe the annual end- and beginning-of-the-year roundups, lists, retrospectives, and prognostications. “Lame” is the only way to describe them, which is pretty lame when you think about it. There are a few exceptions to this, of course. I always look forward to my buddy Marc Lynch’s best political science books on the Middle East—though it is often a reminder of how far behind I am on my reading—and I enjoy David Brooks’s “Sidney Awards,” named after Sidney Hook. I also dislike New Year’s resolutions and almost never make them, this year being an exception: In 2015, I will refrain from trolling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It is not that he is not deserving of criticism, but he is such an easy target. It just does not seem fair. Truth be told, I do not think I can top likening him to the Turducken as I did on Thanksgiving in Politico.

This is all a long windup for what I am hoping 2015 will bring in the Middle East. It is probably too much to ask for peace and prosperity so I won’t. I am going to start out small and ask for better writing about the Middle East. Toward that end, I have begun a list of phrases and words that are often used in articles and books about the Middle East that chafe me like nothing else. Feel free to add to the list: