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

To: Ilaine who wrote (204939)	10/2/2006 10:18:59 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I think it's mostly chimp vs chimp, not tribe against tribe: <Anyway, if you think it all boils down to Al Qaeda, I think you're wrong. Some of it's Al Qaeda, some of it (most of it) is tribe against tribe, clan against clan, and Shi'a vs. Sunni.> Put a million or two young males in a cage together, with not much to do, and no authority to keep them in check, and they'll start playing rugby, or something a bit more vigorous such as pass the parcel using an IED as the parcel. When they see some bloke walking along who they don't know, they'll find a reason to attack him, such as that he's wearing shorts, or has hair gel, or is standing on the crack in the footpath; THEIR footpath. Or maybe he isn't wearing a gang patch, or the right facial tattoo. That has been my experience and I doubt that it's different in Baghdad. You are giving it a patina of intellectual activity with theological fine points as the point of difference, "No, no, you Shi'as have misinterpreted the teleological import of Mohammed's past participles in how to hack off a head." You won't get that discussion from them. They just want to kill somebody, or at least drill holes in their arms. Note, scroll down, average IQ in Iraq = 87, which is slightly above Iran's. lagriffedulion.f2s.com So, they are not far off chimp intelligence. Very closely related. Hence, they fight when the male density exceeds so many per square metre with number married being another variable. That algebra stuff you studied could help here. Here is some recent maths on the issue, which can't be directly transposed to Iraq, but the principles can: lagriffedulion.f2s.com Mqurice

To: Ilaine who wrote (204939)	10/3/2006 12:25:08 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Did you give any thought to my question at the end of the post? Namely, whether you were aware of any situation where a guerrilla war that had strong support among the people nevertheless failed? I'm not sure. The insurgencies against Saddam certainly failed, so maybe the answer is that sufficient brutality can put down even popular insurrections. But generally strong popular support, which Al Qaeda doesn't have and is not getting, is a good prognosis for any guerilla movement. From what I've been reading in blogs about Iraq, the population isn't keen on Al Qaeda, the violence is ethnic, tribal, and of long standing. From the latest poll, Al Qaeda is widely loathed even among the Sunnis, and 100% loathed by the Kurds and Shia. The rest of the sectarian violence seems more complicated. It's easy to say "tribal and longstanding" when what's really happening may be a certain political faction, such as al Sadr, deliberately using violence to whip up sectarian tensions that weren't there before in order to further his own factional cause. Anyway, if you think it all boils down to Al Qaeda, I think you're wrong. Some of it's Al Qaeda, some of it (most of it) is tribe against tribe, clan against clan, and Shi'a vs. Sunni. No I don't and I never said that. I was just talking about Al Qaeda because the author of the piece you posted was talking mainly about Al Qaeda attacks, and concluding in a silly way that because the attacks seemed random, the ends had to be apolitical.