US meddling came into the discussion for two reasons: (a) current, active meddling: you can't make any policy ignoring it; (b) historical meddling in the context of Joschka Fischer's claims about 9/11 and al-Qaida. The long history of European meddling is not directly relevant in these contexts. On the other hand, I could add that French and British (and also Italian and Spanish) colonialism wasn't the best advertisement for Western modernism in the Middle East, nor was Soviet Cold War clientism serving the promotion of democracy. Then again, the West European colonial influence was over before all the Arab modernists among both the political leaders and the opinion leaders were out. What followed was some meddling as US vassals (arming Iraq) and reckless and/or corrupt business deals (German chemical weapons factory for Lybia), which at least developed into sizeable scandals at home.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}