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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (172258)	10/10/2005 9:51:24 AM
From: Keith Feral	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Honestly, I don't see the views of the fundamentalists being that different from the moderates. Islam it committed to the unity of Church and State so that the religious leaders can practice their religious intolerance in all aspects of Muslim life. I think the Islamic world tries to confuse people with all of their different identities. Persians, Arabs, Sunnis, Shiites, Wahhabs, Salafis, Qutbs - they all want outsiders to recognize them as different peoples. I think they use these different layers of identity to shield themsleves from the brutality of their religious culture which is totally opposed to human rights. I agree with your timelines about our presence in Iraq. I really feel bad for the whole Islamic world for the suffering that is imposed upon them by their religious leaders. However, they are the only ones that can change their culture. The complete oppression of their culture will take generations to change, if ever. I only hope that in the next 10 years there will be enough alternative fuel strategies so that we don't have to depend upon gasoline for car engines in the US. I don't think any of us will give a damn about the internal struggle in Baghdad once we don't need their oil. It will be unfortunate when the Arabs or Muslims or whatever turns around to blame us for not helping them to change their culture. I think the women will really regret the missed opportunity for more equal right in Iraq. Once we move on, the people of Iraq will have not have any further opportunity for reform in their culture, period.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (172258)	10/12/2005 5:10:09 AM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "Do you have an estimate ..." Maybe it's time to revisit our exchange after terrorists blew up the UN headquarters in Iraq 2 years ago: Hawkmoon, August 19, 2003 In response to: "I am willing to offer advice -- the US should turn Iraq over to the UN." After today's bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad it will be interesting to see if the UN would be willing to accept it.. Personally, I think today's events will force Annan and other UNSC members to get off their @sses and provide Bush the kind of international support that is required to stem the ongoing insurgency. Of course, the French will claim the US was behind the bombing. Message 19224118 Bilow, in resonse You will be disappointed. More likely the UN and various other neutral aid providers will pull out as they are increasingly targeted. Message 19225431 Hawkmoon, in response Maybe so.. But what kind of signal will the UN be sending to terrorists around the world? Bomb us and we're "bye-bye"? It's one thing to attack UN workers, but quite another to attack their "elite" officials. I may be wrong, but I think the UN will step up support of the US, rather than continuing to advance their previous agenda of taking over complete control of the Iraqi situation. But I don't see Annan showing his "backside" in Iraq after such a major attack. It would suggest that no future UN "nation building" operation could possibly succeed. Message 19225554 Bilow, in response After months of hearing you bitch about how the UN was soft on Iraq, now I have to listen to you claim that the UN is suddenly going to get backbone??? You're in hope mode. The situation is hopeless. ... What's really bad about this is that our foreign policies have now created an Al Qaeda breeding ground where Saddam had once kept them thoroughly suppressed. I don't think you realize how bad this is. Back on September 11th, Al Qaeda attacked us with box cutters. The primitiveness of their weapons was an indication that they had no access to better stuff like surface to air missiles etc. But now, with the descent of Iraq into chaos, the deep pockets of the Iraqi military are now being opened up to Al Qaeda. The neocons trembled in fear that Saddam would give WMDs to Al Qaeda. The non existence of those weapons would make their cowardly stupidity hilarious if it did not involve the killing of thousands of innocent people and the creation of a California sized terrorism training camp. Message 19227651 Hawkmoon, in response And the only way in which to fight this war is to take it on where it lives.. To create some semblance of economic opportunity for the people who live there, to create a Mashall plan for the middle east.. And finally, to force Moderate muslims to take a position against the extremists and force the religious civil war that needs to be wages within Islam which will decide its future direction. All of this was coming Bilow... You've just chosen to ignore it.. or run from it. But you can't run.. 9/11 taught us that.. They will find you and hurt you just when you think you are safe... No Bilow, you have to face it, and confront it... Not cut and run, screaming your defeatist rhetoric, whenever the you can't stand the heat in the kitchen.. And while you might have been right that Bush might have had difficulties in "selling" a war against Iraq, I don't believe he'll have much difficulty in convincing the American people that fighting terrorism(ts) on their home soil is preferable to fighting them here. Message 19228472 Bilow, in response This is failing miserably. And it's not like it hasn't been tried before. The French tried it in Algeria. They failed. The Israelis tried it in Palestine. They failed too. The problem is that it's a hell of a lot easier to destroy than it is to create. Our problem is that too many Arabs want to remove our influence, and they are convinced, correctly, that they can do this by destruction. The whole concept of going into Iraq as a "magnet" for terrorists is contrary to the concept of making Iraq a beacon of Democracy, LOL. Go look at the numbers again. There are what, 100 million Arabs or so. They have about what, 4 million children per year, maybe 2 million boys? And 1% of them are subject to the Jihad call, which is about, 20,000 per year. That means that just to stay even, we have to kill about 20,000 people per year. But we're not even coming close to that. ... We've already been through this once. The oldcons tried to convince the "American people that fighting Communists on their home soil is preferable to fighting them here." This was the essence of the "domino theory", but it failed to convince the American public to stick it out. We eventually pulled out of 'Nam, and we will pull out of Iraq too. But faster, since the public was not united even going into Iraq, unlike Vietnam. Message 19229015 -- Carl P.S. Continuation: Message 19231169 Message 19231507 Message 19232249 Message 19236534 Message 19236737 Message 19236758 Message 19236770 Message 19236786 Message 19237106 Message 19237825

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (172258)	10/12/2005 5:12:02 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi all; Two years of war and even the morons want out. Conservatives and exiles desert war campaign Financial Times, October 11, 2005 Even among the strongest advocates in Washington of the war in Iraq there is a sense of alarm these days, with harsh criticism directed particularly at the draft constitution, which they see as a betrayal of principles and a recipe for disintegration of the Iraqi state. Expressions of concern among conservatives and former Iraqi exiles, seen also in the rising disillusionment of the American public, reflect a widening gap with the Bush administration and its claims of “incredible political progress” in Iraq. Over the past week, two of Washington's most influential conservative think-tanks, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Heritage Foundation, held conferences on Iraq where the mood among speakers, including Iraqi officials, was decidedly sombre. Kanan Makiya, an outspoken proponent of the war who is documenting the horrors of the Saddam regime in his Iraq Memory Foundation, opened the AEI meeting by admitting to many “dashed dreams”. He said he and other opposition figures had seriously underestimated the powers of ethnic and sectarian self-interest, as well as the survivability of the “constantly morphing and flexible” Ba'ath party. He also blamed the Bush administration for poor planning and committing too few troops. ... Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-war think-tank, said insurgents were mounting about 90 attacks a day, compared to 50 to 70 a year ago. He expressed concern that if the constitution is approved insurgents will be able to mobilise more support from Sunnis who feel the system is stacked against them. Speaking later to the FT, Mr Eisenstadt said it would take years to defeat such an insurgency but there were indications that the Bush administration would start to pull out troops in 2006 for its own political and electoral reasons. “I don't know if it is winnable, but we haven't lost it yet,” Mr Eisenstadt concluded. The original goals, he said, were out of reach but “something acceptable” was still possible. ... news.ft.com The fact is that the war is not winnable and never was. To believe in a fairyland hope that it was winnable was to consign several thousand US soldiers to an early grave in a doomed effort that resulted in a larger and healthier Al Qaeda than ever before. You can go on and on about how this war was moral based on UN resolutions, or necessity or whatever you want, but the fact is that we are two years on and we have so little control of the territory that we're blowing up bridges to keep the enemy from using them. Those are bridges that in the early part of the war we saw as assets. You can go on and on about how we need this war in order to save Iraq from whatever, but the fact is that the mess in the country is far worse now than it ever was before we got there. You can go on and on about how victory is right around the corner, (what's the latest, that the number 3 man in Al Qaeda has been taken?) but the fact is that similar things have been told essentially constantly for 2 years and it doesn't fool anyone. -- Carl

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (172258)	10/12/2005 11:47:48 AM
From: geode00	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

That's completely wrong. There's an insurgency, there are jihadists, there are criminals and there are just fed up people. A tiny minority of these may believe in the 72 virgins or what not but the others don't. It's long past the time when the notion of foreign fighters fueled by religion fanaticism were causing all the problems in Iraq. These are Iraqis fighting inside a power vacuum created by the dismantling of the Iraqi government 2 and a half years ago.