FriendlyFire
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Of course a token US presence just like in Afghanistan where things were going swimmingly, With a surge every 10 years to spruce up the place.
And speaking about freedom fighters.
A solution for Iraq
- Thread starter JollyRoger
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Of course a token US presence just like in Afghanistan where things were going swimmingly, With a surge every 10 years to spruce up the place.
And speaking about freedom fighters.
This is a common meme, which, given its absurdity, strikes me as very strange. We can probably all agree that the war in Iraq was a terrible mistake. That is not to say that disposing a besital dictator, whose range of heinous crimes is hardly precedented, is not in general a noble thing to do. But the poor timing, the lack of international support, and the negligence of an afterward plan turned out to be of huge detriment to the region.
But claiming that ISIS is a direct result of the US invasion is simply grotesque.
What about the people who believe in a brutal seventh century ideology? Who follow the example of a war-mongering pedophile? Who consider killing unbelievers, including those of the same faith who differ ever so slightly from them, as the highest goal in their lives and would die to achieve it? Who pursue their aims with terror and violence? Whose open hatred of Jews outscales the antisemitism of Nazis by a far margin? Who deny half their population any rights at all? Who instantly kill homosexuals, blasphemers, or anyone else foolish enough to utter a dissenting opinion? Who conduct their executions with the highest possible degree of agony and excruciation, like sawing off their victim's heads or burning them alive?
And let's not forget that this whole ideology is based on the preposterous fantasy of a magical sky being who is thought to reward its followers for their terror and brutality with 72 virgins, rivers of honey and such complete nonsense.
Yes, it can be argued that by disposing Saddam Hussein's regime the lid was removed from the box and released this barbaric death cult from its chains. But the cult itself was not established by the USA. In fact, the tenets of Islam were written down 1,000 years before the US were even founded. We see this cult commiting horrendous acts of terror and violence around the globe, not just in Iraq ans Syria. Year for year it is responsible for over 90 percent of terrorist attacks worldwide, most of which are conducted against other Muslims, which just shows how insane these people are. If the best solution to keep these people in check is to allow a brutal dictator to freely lead his reign of terror, this says something terrible about the Muslim world.
The long-term solution to the problem can only be to combat the ideology at its core and expose the religion of Islam for what it is. Christianity has been beaten and battered by modernity over the centuries to the point that is has been mastered by science, reason and common sense. The same has to happen with Islam, and it has to happen fast. We cannot wait for weapon technology to become even more deadly and widelier available before we start noticing that a wide-spread belief in killing infidels for an imaginary god is a civilizational problem.
I havent studied Islam extensively but I think you are confusing things. No widely accepted ideology can mean a permanent terror becouse that would be contrary to what appeals to general human nature. Its really greed, lust for power or ideologic superiority which allowes any religious, political, social or economic system to be missused. In short its universal shortcomings of human nature which leads to all our problems. Our superior sense leads as to believe that on our side these problems are negligible if any as opposed to the oponents side and is even if we are blinded enough able to justify 3rd WW in order to promote peace...
Read the Koran. It is much shorter than the bible and can easily be read in one afternoon. The central theme, which spans across the book, is to spread Islam around the world and kill those who will not submit. ISIS are behaving exactly as the Koran and the Hadith lay out. Moreover, they are telling us ad nauseum why they are acting like this. They make no secret about the fact that they are doing it for Allah and to act in accordance with the Koran. It seems that when they blow themselves up in order to kill more infidels, this should be a rather convincing argument that they really believe in maryrdom and paradise.
There is no doubt left about their motives, we are far past that stage.
I will perhaps read the Koran eventually but I have heard too many times that Islam is religion of peace teaching universal love just like any of the other main religions allowing only defensive Jihad. Plus I can see on everyday basis that 99% of muslims are just an ordinary people who doesnt mean any treath. I would rather view the most radical islamist as a form of catalysator of suppressed ambitions (national, political, social) reacting often to global developments and forces but never as a proper representation of Islam as such.
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I'm sure he'll back up his point by showing some nice cherry-picked out-of-context quotes and interpretations. After all, there is only one way to read the Qu'ran, i.e. as a guidebook on how to terrorist.
Tahuti
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Islam is largely immune to it, simply because it is a vastly different religion than Christianity: Christianity's success was due to Christian institutions like the Roman Catholic Church and the support of European nation-states in the propagation in Christianity, whereas Islam is a decentralised affinity group, that unlike Christianity can thrive in the absence of institutional support - see Somalia, Lebanon, the Holy land and now Iraq and Syria.
Also in contrast to Christianity, is that most of its followers have a disposition towards submission, which is a matter of ethnicity and social class. Consider that in the USA, Christianity is more influential among marginalised minorities like African-Americans and Hispanics than Whites and Asians. Likewise, in Europe, India and the Holy Land, Islam is practised virtually only by people who lack the abilities necessary to fulfill obligations expected from commoners and cannot be anything else than pariahs. It's no surprise both Christianity and Islam are popular in the Third world and have virtually non-existent support in the Far-East and among indiginous Western Europeans.
Islam and Christianity are merely symptoms, the culture of its followers the source. There are undoubtedly smart Christians and Muslims, but they are naïve or afraid to embrace their exceptionality as individuals.
This isnt really much about religion or any other ideology but the way its understood and applied. If you use anything with extremely narrow perspective and loosing the essence and ideal in process you are on the track to something destructive. Anything can be turned into somethig unhealthy pathological. If you really try to love thy enemy how you going to end up with centuries of war? Maybe you can even try to spread democracy with it? And thats not a religious idea...
Timsup2nothin
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Here's the thing. We can all talk about the 'evil' method Saddam used to manage the disparate elements of Iraq. We can all say "so getting rid of him was a good thing." The problem was, and still is that no one has a better way to run Iraq.
The great neocon pipe dream, that in the absence of Saddam these disparate elements would embrace America and declare a democracy was so mind alteringly naive as to defy belief. The general sense of "there must be a better way" is all well and good, but no one can even suggest what it might be.
So, having eliminated Saddam, Iraq has predictably fallen apart. It will either be one nation wracked by perpetual civil war as the three factions battle for dominance, or it will be split into three nations which will fight with each other. Whether those are independent nations or attachments to neighboring nations remains to be seen, but I predict the latter. ISIS will encompass the former Syria and the like minded part of Iraq, and Iran will annex the part that is like minded with them. The Kurds will be their own state in the balance.
That's the predictable outcome today, and it was the predictable outcome the day the neocons started the war. The only thing that could stop it is if some really great orator emerges in Iraq who can kindle a fire of nationalism in all three groups and weld them back into a single nation...under what would undoubtedly be a heel even more brutal than Saddam's.
A sad truth, overlooked in the Second Iraq War.
How circular can an argument get? The Bush government made a mess of the Iraq government, so the Obama government needs to let US enterprise make a good government in Iraq. When did private enterprise ever build a state, one wonders.
Errr, no. The mess in Syria was not related to Iraq at all, but was aggravated by the ISIS insurgency - another direct result of the collapse of Iraq. Which, obviously, was a consequence of the Bush invasion of Iraq.
Oh yea of little faith in the power of private enterprise to succeed where government inefficiency failed.
Let's accept, for the sake of a fun argument, the premises you present here for a moment. But let it be noted that I object to them.
That heinous, "besital" [sic] dictator is what was keeping the lid on all that crap, which you fully acknowledge. That "death cult" [sic] is promulgated and funded by the Saudi monarchy, whom the US is allied with and has continued to support for decades even as they fund and commit terrorist acts against us. Our actions, including particularly the invasion of Iraq, do not combat or defeat that ideology but cause people to rally around it.
Basically, I want to ask people who make the argument you have made a question: if you believe a boulder trap is set up, should you trigger it to grab the golden idol? Do you blame the boulder for rolling down the slope? I'd say that's just gravity.
This also touches on something that has bugged me for years. Not only did the intelligence community know they were sitting on a pile of feces, but the administration was apparently blindsided by something eminently predictable.
He is being facetious.
There is already a government there. All that is needed is a bit of security and some work on infrastructure - items that private corporations have competence at. There are a lot of Americans that think that Bush was on the right track with Iraq - if he can do a successful IPO, he would have plenty of talent to choose from in the hiring process, for sure.
Unfortunately this is complete nonsense. By no stretch can Islam be considered a religion of peace. The content of the Koran is really no secret anymore. If you can't find the time to read it yourself, just check the numerous summaries available in the internet like this one. The fact that Islam is often refered to as a religion of peace by Muslim apologists or for sake of political correctness doesn't make it true.
I'm sorry, but again this is nonsense. Check out the opinion polls to get an idea of numbers we have to talk about. Granted, some people may not act the same way as they vote in the polls. But even so, the numbers of people willing to commit or support acts of violence in the name of their religion is shocking. Furthermore, just check out the list of terror attacks of 2014 and 2015. Virtually all of them are commited by Muslims, and in some of the months not a day goes by without a new incident of Islamic terror. Now, the actual Jihadists who blow themselves up are obviously in a minority. But outside of this group there are huge numbers of Muslims who support Jihad, as indicated by the polls. In some countries we are talking about the majority of people. It should be noted that the countries which are considered the most extreme didn't even allow the polling to take place. From all we know, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims whose beliefs are problematic, to say the least. Take a look at one of the many Palestinian kindergarten graduation videos to see how hate and Jihad are planted into young children's minds. This is not done by people who just want to live an ordinary life in peace.
And we mustn't forget that when talking about terror and Jihad, we are talking about the tip of the iceberg. We haven't even gone into the horrors of sharia as practised in many Islamic countries, including the suppression of women (to put it euphemistically), or the killing of homosexuals and blasphemers, just to name two of the most horrific concerns it entails.
Strangely, this mode of thinking is only entertained when it comes to religion. Again, these people are telling us why they are doing what they are doing. If they said they are doing it for political reasons, nobody would say "Oh, but it must really be about religion". If I kill my neighbour and say that I did it because I hated him and wanted his money, noone would say that that can't be true, in reality I must have had national, political or social reasons. That is not to say that other motives can't come into play. But religion really is the driving force behind the violence we witness day by day.
EDIT:
Antilogic, I don't exactly know why you feel you have to make that point, I already said that I believe the war against Iraq was a terrible mistake.
Timsup2nothin
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Appropriately enough, since if the US had not created a regional power vacuum there would in fact be no ISIS. They would be a minor faction in the Syrian civil war, with Saddam's republican guard glaring at them at the Iraqi border.
Again to my knowledge non of the IS leaders are religious man or care for the essence of Islam but are only using some twisted version of it to gain their non-religious means. Also this may be true for many other leaders in islamic world and we have to be able to discriminate this if we want to make correct judgments.
This gets to my (as yet unstated) objections above. I believe Funky made a bit of a naive atheist critique of Islam, but misses the bigger and far more substantial critique that could be made. Religion can be both a force of peace as well as absolutely tyrannical and everything between because it is what its followers make it to be; the term followers is ultimately misleading.
The big factors here are social, geopolitical, economic, etc. Attributing the situation to an ages-old religious conflict is obscuring the truth and making it artificially impossible to solve.
Timsup2nothin
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Is it making it artificially impossible to solve, or excusing the reality that it is too unpleasant to solve?
The economic reality is that the resources of the middle east need to be bled inexpensively into the west for western culture to continue in the comfort to which we are accustomed. If you explain to people in the west what is actually required of them in order to bring the middle east "into the fold of civilized nations" you are going to get a 90% or better response somewhere along the lines of "Less than 400 horsepower? Who the ^%$#$% wants to drive that?"
By portraying the problem as insoluble we save people from facing their own grim responsibility for refusing to solve it. That, my friend, is the road to popularity. "They hate us because the economic sanctions we insist be imposed on them are leading to widespread starvation," will not net you nearly as many smugly satisfied voters as "They hate us because their religion demands it" will.
