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

To: michael97123 who wrote (157013)	1/26/2005 10:06:07 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Your political analysis is wanting. My political analysis is "wanting"? lol, I'm not one of the people who ever supported this war. You think therefore I am "rigid" and knee jerk, but my opposition wasn't based on opposition to Bush, it was based on my study of history, not just Iraqi history (and how Iraqis feel about the US especially the way the US has treated them for the past 20 years or so, one betrayal after another), but of how successful past attempts by various countries to invade non-contiguous countries with vastly different customs, gods, languages have been--a miserable record of failure. This is especially true when you filter out those colonial exercises where the invading country didn't make much of a pretense about the fact that they weren't really interested in doing "good" for the invaded country, they were more interested in exploiting them for some resource or another or expanding their own sphere of influence. Both sides in the debate have become way to rigid and we now have a new reality on the ground that needs to be dealt with without the rancor of the past. You want to just "forget" the past couple of years. But the people who count the most in this--Sunni and Shia Iraqis--won't forget that. They won't even forget the past couple of centuries much less the past couple of years. Iraq is a tinderbox, awash in weapons, money floating in from all sorts of sources with conflicting agendas, ill feelings and bad memories. This is a combustible mix which won't go away by saying, let's forget the past, why can't we all just get along now, it's a new day. My "wanting" political analysis leads me to believe, as I have said on this thread more than once, that civil war in Iraq is inevitable. A kind of civil war is going on right now, but the presence of the US masks it in some ways. It may not become full blown immediately after the US withdraws, but, barring a miracle and a seriously brilliant political figure emerging (and that isn't Allawi, from what I can see), it can't be stopped at this point. But of course, I never claim to be omniscient, that is, as they say, what makes markets.