One of the big memes among opponents of the war is to keep hyping the parallels between Iraq and Viet Nam. It doesn’t matter how many times their arguments are refuted, Viet Nam is their model and they’re going to MAKE Iraq if that, regardless of how many Procrustean “adjustments” they have to make.
Actually, I find that there is something to be drawn from the parallel — but it’s not the one that they are. They just cut out a few steps.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is often referred to as “their Viet Nam.” It was the great cold war power fighting primitive natives — and being defeated so thoroughly that their very power around the world was challenged.
Dafydd Ab Hugh (an excellent author, by the way, as well as an excellent blogger) has taken a fresh look at just how the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan, and is applying the lessons of “the Soviet Viet Nam” to the current war in Iraq — and is finding that once again what he is dubbing “the Afghanistan Effect” is, once again, threatening to bring down a great empire.
It’s a hell of a piece. And like all the best pieces, he doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know — he just puts them together and in a context that makes a brilliant pont that should have been blindingly obvious. Go and give it a read.
Saf,
I wrote…
Then Saf wrote…
As I showed before, you used the terms “extreme Islamic parties” and “Islamic fundamentalist” interchangeably in the same paragraph and have never retracted that equivalence.
Saf wrote…
I wrote…
Being that you have used the terms “extreme Islamic parties” and “Islamic fundamentalist” interchangeably, what I wrote above is correct.
As you can see I’m using the term “Islamic fundamentalists” as those groups fighting against elections in Iraq.
I understand your point that there are more than one group of Islamic fundamentalists, and that they hate each other. Hate of other people seems to be something all Islamic fundamentalists have in common, but aside from that, you would think the Sunni and Shia could put aside their hate of each other long enough to have elections and vote the U.S. out of Iraq. Then they can blow each other up to their hearts content as long as they keep it within their boarders. I only feel bad for the good people in Iraq who what to live in peace and prosperity, but are surrounded by such hate. What’s the solution?
As you can see I’m using the term “Islamic fundamentalists” as those groups fighting against elections in Iraq.
That’s the point Islamic fundamentalist are not just those fighting the US, the ones fighting the US are the ones who know they cannot win an election, the ones waiting it out are the Shia fundamentalist because they know they can win the election.
As for the solution well I am beginning to think may be it will be best for the country to split after all it was an artificial entity created by the British empire, because if there is a civil war it will be real messy because although the Shia are a majority in Iraq the Sunni are the overwhelming majority in the Muslim world and the middle east and they by far will have the most financial backing so any civil war will be long and drawn out and will involve Iran and Saudi fighting each other through proxies.
Finally hate of other people is not simply restricted to Islamic extremist it also applies to Christian or Jewish extremist it’s simply a case of they are right and everyone else is wrong
Christians have had hateful relations with other Christians, mostly during the reformation in the 16th century, yet in all of Christendom there’s no equivalent for “infidel” the way it’s used in Islam. Nor is there an equivalent for a general “holy war” in Christendom. The violence and war documented in the Biblical old testament is for a specific time, place and reason; to establish the nation of Israel. There is a sense of a “just war” in western cultures, but it’s not necessarily related to religion and is usually seen as a war of self-defense or the defense of others rather than a war of aggression.
There would be no easy way to divide Iraq up among the various groups. The oil, water resources, and infrastructure are not distributed uniformly, so there is always going to be inequities. If what the U.S. is attempting to do in Iraq is rejected, then it seems the killing will go on until someone like Saddam arises and imposes order by means far worse in kind and scale than anything done by the U.S.
The real fun starts when Iran finally has an atomic bomb. Will they quickly mature like Pakistan and India did, or will they be irresponsible? You see how the U.S. reacted to less then 3000 dead civilians on 9/11, so can you imagine what our response would be to an atomic bomb attack? There’s just no place in the modern world for nations ruled by 12th century ideas. That’s what drives the U.S. to have influence in so many parts of the world, be it through economic or military power. There are those who say that the U.S. policy of engagement causes the problem, but as you have indicated, there are many groups who will fight each other for their own reasons. Many in the U.S. would just as soon let them fight, but with the global economy and 21st century weapons, that’s often not a viable option.
Well i aint no expert on religion but as far as i knew the term the term infidel is simply means a non believer or in arabic its known as kuffar which is simply means a non beliver. What on earth makes you think Iran will attack America with a nuclear bomb, even if they do get a nuclear bomb how many years will that be down the line and then how many years after that will they achieve a sucesful delivery method never mind one that reaches all the way to the United states.
And even having achieved the bomb and a delivery method do you really think they would be that crazy to attack another nuclear country knowing they would get nuked back. Only thing they will achieve is a detterent to stop an agressive invasion may be thats what worries the west.
Saf,
Yes, the dictionary definition of “infidel” is simply “non-believer”. Of course the dictionary definition of “cool” is much different than how it’s used. The way infidel it used in Islam nowadays is much more negative than the dictionary definition.
I’m not concerned about Iran firing a nuclear tipped missile at the U.S. They are not that stupid, but they do like to use terrorists to do their dirty work for them, and they may think they could get away with letting some terrorists explode such a weapon in the U.S. Then there’s Israel only a short distance away from Iran. Once again Iran wouldn’t use a nuclear weapon openly, but they might make such weapons available to terrorists. One of the problems with terrorists is that you can’t always control them. This is why the “west” doesn’t want Iran to develop nuclear weapons and this could be a bigger problem than Iraq. Nobody would come out ahead in the event of a nuclear exchange.
so an infidel means non believer if certain people take that to such an extreme extent then dont blame that on the religion, anyways with regards to Iran i think the type of bomb you are talking about is what is known as a dirty bomb, well i aint no expert on radioactivity but from what i have heard that this really is not as dangerous as some of the scare stories, in fact a recent documentary claimed that if such a device was set off more people would actually die from panic than the actual effects of the bomb or radioactivity.
Now i know that this sounds silly thats just what i heard on a documentary i dont know if its true or not if you want to find out research it, but it did sound like a serious documentary.
Saf,
You are right about a dirty bomb not being much more of a threat than the bomb part. However, that’s not what Iran is working on. If they were, then there is no need to pursue the difficult task of uranium enrichment. Lots of isotopes are radioactive by only a few are fissionable, and of the ones that are, only uranium 235 has a viable natural source. The difficulty is in separating it from uranium 238, which makes up 98+ percent of natural uranium ore. U235 and U238 have the exact same chemical characteristics, so they can only be separated based on their slightly different atomic weights. Once U235 has been separated from U238, the process of making an atomic bomb with it is quite simple. Even if Iran didn’t intend to use it themselves, a terrorist group that got its hands on less than 30 KG of U235 could construct an atomic bomb using readily available industrial components. It might have only a 5 kiloton yield, but terrorists could burn the center out of a major city with it.
On a side note, U238, the stuff that’s not fissionable, is called depleted uranium once the U235 has been removed, and it’s used as armor in U.S. tanks and also in armor piercing projectiles. That tells you something about how much U235 the U.S. has extracted over the years.
Well you obviously seem to know a lot more in the subject than I do so I cannot really comment, hopefully by that time the politcs would have changed so much in the area that it wont be as dangerous for example as has happened in Libya