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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (140835)	7/22/2004 11:13:46 AM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>> One of the reasons that the Saudi royal family is required to cozy up to the Wahhabists is because 1/2 of their population is Shiite. You should check your facts before making such grand claims. Less than 1 in 7 people in Saudi are Shia. I think this pretty much puts to rest the rest of your argument, but I am going to add this to it. The reason the Saudi Shia are ready to revolt is that Saudis have continuously oppressed and murdered them. Their conditions are substantially worse than what blacks suffered in the South during the first half of the 20th century. There are plenty of articles to highlighting this fact if you are interested to do some research before forming an opinion. atlapedia.com RELIGIONS: The official religion is Islam with 85% of the population Sunni Muslims while 14% are Shiite Muslims. Christians account for less than 1% of the population and are the largest religious minority. >> Now if Iran's hardline clerics are removed from political and military leadership, they will no longer possess the major national means to forment Shia unrest in SA. You seem to forget a very important fact: nobody can make any population revolt against their will. You seem to be under the illusion that just being a Shia makes someone a minion of Iran as if when you take up a religion you pledge allegiance to the country as a rite of passage. (I suppose you think all Catholics are Italian spies too). I'd say if Saudi government members began to resemble human beings in their actions, that would go a much longer way towards quieting their Shia population. Here is a news flash for you: *Saudi Shiites See Hope In an Invasion of Iraq Marginalized Muslims Transfer Hopes Away From Iran, to U.S.* By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV -- Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL sullivan-county.com Which means despite what you'd like to think, they want their freedom and do not care whether the help comes from US or Iran. And if it came from neither, they would still find a way for their struggle. >> You can either accept my position or not... I do not. The "infiltration" that you talk about are Iraqis who left Saddam to take refuge in Iran (I guess the frying pan was better than fire) and now they are moving back to their homes. One of the things that makes your argument implausible, and I have gone over this before in good lengths, is that Iranians and Iraqis speak drastically different languages. An Iranian can "infiltrate" Iraq and give fiery speeches no more convincingly than a Frenchman could speak Chinese. Not to mention that you forget Iran and Iraq have been enemies for thousands of years. People from neither country would ever trust the other one. In fact, despite all the US SNAFUs, a survey found that more Iraqis trust America than Iran (which is not saying much, but gives you an idea of how much love there is between Iran and Iraq). >> Defeated? No.. merely repressed even further.. And that's not a defeat for the reformer, but for the hardliners who have to sacrifice even more of their limited popular legitimacy in order to quell dissent. Fine. Phrase it any way you want. The fact remains that Iran is less progressive now than it was before (however little you believe that to be). This is a change for the worse which is not as promised. >> Iran will have it's time... There people have known nothing but the oppression and intolerance of their own Islamic state. It's failure, and downfall, will hopefully break the back of the Shiite militant movement (or at least dry up much of its funding).. Yes, I would like to see a regime change in Iran too. But the moment there is a foreign invasion, you are going to see the Iranians put their hatred of their government aside and fight a foreign enemy. So no, I don't think a military strike will solve anything. ST