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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Constant Reader who wrote (2281)	7/25/2005 4:30:49 PM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 541091

Whatever they include or exclude in their wildest historical dreams, there is no chance of a fundamentalist government coming to power in any of those countries. Upstart movements aim to conquer the home turf that is most precious to them. Dreaming about defeating everyone outside their clique may be fun, but I don't see it playing any operational role. OTOH, proving that the upstarts can engage foreign forces on home (Muslim) soil and maintaining a protracted conflict helps them immensely with their most important aims. The attacks outside Muslim soil are just peripheral events aimed at strengthening that primary campaign, IMHO. The only people potentially sympathetic to AQ I ever heard of in Bosnia in three years of living there were some Iranian mujahadin that had come to fight the Serbs and stayed to settle down. I believe the western powers convinced Izetbegovic to get rid of most of them eventually.

To: Constant Reader who wrote (2281)	7/25/2005 8:51:28 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541091

Is it reasonable to expect that they exclude Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Bosnia, Greece, Sardinia, Sicily, Spain and Portugal from the Caliphate? As I understand it, Spain is counted as 'Islamic' territory by al-Qaeda. It was Muslim for 200-700 years, depending on which bit you mean. Of course, that was finished at least 520 years ago but I don't think we're dealing with the most modern of thinkers here. I don't think arguing that much of the Balkans were not Muslim until well after Spain was Catholic will really work :) Hence 'reasonable', as in 'persuaded by reason', not really a usable stance here. Correct, just not usable...