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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (119332)	11/12/2003 8:28:41 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

There are at least two relevant lessons here: Rome did not manage keep Mesopotamia (Iraq) no matter how much force they threw at it because they could not remove Parthia's (Iran's) influence in the region. So the whole venture became a black hole of resources. Today we face a similar problem; we are sending forces to Iraq but we cannot oppose the main sources of the resistance, i.e. AQ and the rest of anti-American forces. The second similarity is in the eventual outcome. In destroying Parthia, Rome created Sassanids who proved to be a much more lethal opposition. Parthian's was an opposition content to be left alone if they had control of some border disputes. But Sassanids were set on world dominance. I could make a similar comparison between Saddam or the last generation of Islamist fundamentalists and the current threat from AQ. I admit this is still to be seen. But I don't see removal of Saddam at the expense of strengthening AQ as a good deal.