Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: epicure who wrote (224650)	3/19/2007 2:13:32 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Yes, I also heard about a million refugees from Stalingrad on the Tigris. And the Arab Street would rise, you heard that everywhere. The UN built tent cities that were never used. This civil war wasn't even a direct prediction - and certainly NOT from one of your anti-war crowd - but was tossed out as a possibility. Had Al Qaeda not decided to foment civil war as a strategy, it was unlikely to happen. Iraqis made their choices too. I said the Arab Street wouldn't rise and there wouldn't be Stalingrad on the Tigris. I said the Iraqis would cheer the Americans, but briefly since they were Arabs, thus congenitally unable to stay grateful to infidels for long. It didn't, there wasn't, and they did.

To: epicure who wrote (224650)	3/19/2007 2:21:10 AM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

"We again insist on IRAQ's territorial integrity. IRAQ should not be divided and we are against any intervention or its break-up into statelets," he said. This is the thing that doesn't make sense. Who cares if it is not in Jordan's interest for Iraq to break up into a few different states? Perhaps that outcome is in the best interest of the people of Iraq. Is there anyone who thinks an independent Kurdistan would be bad for the Kurds? And if the result of Sunnis and Shias living together in the remainder or former Iraq is one side brutally oppressing the other, it seems obvious that their separation into Shiastan and Loserstan (Sunnistan) is an appropriate course of action. Iran and Turkey don't like that idea, because they have large Kurdish minorities that would like to be part of Kurdistan. OK. Let them. If Iran and Turkey were good to their Kurdish populations, then they would want to secede. Look at the Frenchies in Ontario - they vote every now and then on secession, and decide 'no'. If the Turkish and Iranian Kurds decide 'yes' they want to seced and join Kurdistan, it is because their current situation as minorites in their respective countries sucks, and therefore Turkey and Iran don't deserve to keep them. We should support the effort to redraw national maps that were screwed up when created ~100 years ago.

To: epicure who wrote (224650)	3/19/2007 9:44:18 AM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

One of the books I read before the war that influenced me a great deal was Mackey's THe Reckoning. In her conclusion she wrote, "If the United States, by circumstance or choice, does invade Iraq, policy makers have to understand the real Iraq, not an Iraq built on some exaggerated expectation that the removal of the despot of Baghdad will solve all of Iraq's problems and all the challenges to the United States in the Persian Gulf ... The United States is again in danger of stumbling into the internal conflicts of another people, only to become trapped in old feuds it never comprehended." She was just one of several who convinced me we were ignoring the realities in acting as we did. And she gave plenty of "whys".