Why now?

Let’s be frank. War is not new to the Middle East, is it? There’s been war and conflict in the Middle East since Adam was a boy.

Before the current strife with the Islamic State and the Syrian Assad regime, there was the invasion of Iraq, the Gulf War, the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims for the last 1,400 years, and Israel has been at war with Palestinians and has been invaded several times by its neighbors over the last 70 years.

So why the mass movement of immigrants now? If war and conflict have been a usual part of Middle Eastern life, why are hundreds of thousands pouring into Europe this time? Why didn’t it happen before? What is different now?

Is the Assad regime and Islamic State quantitatively different from previous conflicts?

Or is there something else at play?