Posted on 02/21/2006 12:22:16 PM PST by Dark Skies
As the situation in Iran grows more serious by the minute, American troops in Iraq now stand in the way of the only kind of advantage that can now be pulled from the tarbaby of Iraq. That advantage is the weakening of the global jihad through the exploitation of the sectarian (Sunni-Shi'a) and ethnic (Arab-Kurd) divisions that have existed since virtually the beginning of Islam, but have been exacerbated recently by the Sunni Arab rule of modern Iraq, and particularly the Sunni Arab murderous rule of Saddam Hussein.
Getting out of Iraq now is the very best thing the Administration can do in order to ensure political support for dealing with Iran. It is also the best thing to do so that attention and resources can be turned to another important matter, the islamization of Western Europe through Da'wa and demographic conquest.
It is madness for the American troops to remain in Iraq. There they are now hostage to possible Iranian retaliation for any attack on Iran's nuclear project. That retaliation could come from Iran itself, which shares a long and porous border with Iraq, or it could come from Iranian agents already in Iraq working with local Shi'a such as Moqtada al-Sadr -– who is so obviously malevolent, with his ansar al-mahdi or Mahdi's Army. Or alternatively, the retaliation could come from other Shi'a groups. The Shi’a in general have been perfectly content to watch the Americans inflict casualties on the Sunnis and suffer casualties in return, all the while attempting to extract the last bit of aid, training, and equipment that the long-suffering American military can be persuaded to offer. Those American generals are apparently unwilling or unable to push Bush to drop his messianic notions of Iraq the Model, Iraq the Light Unto the Muslim Nations. They have been relegated by Bush to letting him know only when "the Iraqis are ready for us to leave,” which is to say, when "the Iraqis can stand up so we can stand down." Oh my god.
Since when do foreigners tell us when they are "ready" to have us leave? We could be fighting the Sunnis on behalf of the Shi'a until the cows come home.
I have news for Bush, the news the generals apparently cannot bring themselves quite yet to deliver. There never will be a moment when a real army of "Iraq" which will contain, fighting side by side and loyal to each other, Sunni and Shi'a Arabs and Kurds. It just cannot be. Oh, here and there a special unit might exist, but even that unit's supposed "unity" and "loyalty to the idea of Iraq" could dissolve at the first real testing. But all this is brushed aside by the messianic impulse of Bush, and by his naivete about the virtues of "democracy" and even the ease with which this "democracy" can be transplanted in the stoniest and most unlikely soil. That stony soil for democracy’s growth is the soil of Islam, which teaches that legitimacy comes from Allah and the Shari'a, not from mere mortals casting their ballots.
Bush’s naivete is also on display in his laziness about the specific history of Iraq, and of Sunni-Shi'a hostility. It is not merely a product of the last few years or few decades. It goes back more than 1300 years, to the time of the four rightly-guided caliphs. Can no one -- no one? -- talk to Bush and explain this to him, and to Rice, and to the rest of them? Can they not be persuaded to put down their copies of John Esposito’s books even for a moment? Can't they understand the importance of the Sunni-Shi’a split? And can't they figure out why this split is not to be deplored, but rather to be exploited by Infidels?
The problem of Iran cannot be dealt with as long as the Americans are tied down -- tied down by their own inability to think through the whole menace of Islamic jihad, and to put aside memories of this or that charming and plausible Iraqi exile, or some touching individual they have run across in Iraq. Put that kind of thing out of your head. Think only about the welfare of Infidels. There are innocents in the Muslim world, but we are not in a position now to help them without further imperiling ourselves. Western civilization is menaced in a peculiarly complicated way, a way that involves the weakness of mind of Western man himself, who has forgotten what his own history and his own values are, or is willing, or many are wiling, to toss that legacy, those values, aside.
It has to happen soon. The misallocation of resources -- men, money materiel, attention -- is just too great.
Bush may not be up to it. He is obstinate, and apparently unable to recognize that all of his assumptions about Iraq were based on ignorance of Islam and ignorance of Iraq.
But let's hope.
I can't say that I agree with or disagree with this article, but, however provocative it may be, I thought it worth considering. If you disagree with my decision to post it, you may, of course, ask the admin mod to pull it.
We'll be out soon, everything's on schedule.
Hugh Fitzgerald = the most brilliant man who has ever lived and who will ever live
Oh, what a sad twist of fate that denied Hugh Fitzgerald his rightful Presidency, nay, his rightful place as king of the world!
Hugh knows all. He has spent thirty years in Iraq and not only knows everything that goes on there, he also knows whatever will happen there. If only the President had access to people who have actually served in combat in Iraq! Luckily, he has Hugh Fitzgerald to enlighten his darkness.
Thank you, thank you, Thank Hugh!
Let's keep it going folks. We're not defeated or done yet. If and when the time comes, we can leave and let them go back to their historic bloodbath. But we're not done trying yet.
This is what's happening right now in iraq. LOL! Our guys are not nor will they ever be held hostage to the retaliatory whims of the islamofacists. What they are is prepared.
This is just more hand wringing.
Also my impression of this thing.
Very good and true analysis.
We need to let them fight each other 'till eternity.
I hate it when people try to make themselves look bright by suggesting something that is already on the books.
The Dems are still trying to pull this one as well.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
DEMOCRACY! God grants liberty, not mortals. The ballot represents a peaceful transition into the future, nothing more - nothing less. The evolution of our intellect demands all mankind will eventually turn to the ballot or some version of it. Think about the social dynamics happening in front of us. Those of us with the right to bear arms will use them to protect and propagate methods that allow us and our children to peacefully transition into the future. We are duty bound to use them against persons who would strip us of our rights; freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and yes, including our right to bear arms.
While life has gotten easier for many in the West and arms have a different meaning to us than they did to the founders of our great nation, there is no guarantee that life will stay easy. In fact, withdrawal, disengagement, separatism, and isolationism are all behaviors that guarantee life will become untenable. There are those among us, and with family members, who have invented arms so powerful that these arms could erase the works of our preceding generations. We cannot let these tools slip into the hands of tyrants and therefore tyrant must go the way of the dinosaur. The Iranian government with its medieval intellect cannot come to possess the tools that could render them capable of destroying Washington. Iraq cannot slip into another brand of dictatorship! There will be no sequel to Saddam!
Accomplishing these goals will not be easy but they must be accomplished. I'm glad you posted this because it is a view, although terribly wrong, worth critical analysis.
The tenets of Islam do not state that all men are created equal. It does state that male Muslim believers are above all others, including their wives. All others are considered infidels or apostates.
Mr. Fitzgerald has it right when he says in this and other writings that the problem in the Middle East and elsewhere were mostly Muslims live is the religion of Islam itself. There are no states in the ME, including Iraq, with the exception of Israel and perhaps Turkey in some areas, where pluralism as we experience here in the USA is likely ever to take hold. The stigma and punishment experienced by non-Muslims, women and other minority sects in the ME can not be denied. Just ask the Kurds, Coptic Christians, Armenians, Maronites, African Christians and animists who have been shunned and slaughtered by the thousands by both secular and theocratic regimes in the ME. The best that can happened when we do withdraw from Iraq, after establishing a modicum of stability and security, is for the major sects to divide the country naturally into automonous regions. This will upset many Sunni Arabs in Iraq but they will not be able to do much about it without a viable army and oil resources in their sphere of influence. They will be overwhelmed by the power of the Kurds and Shiites. Whether a civil war will occur between Shiites and Sunnis is open to speculation, but if it does happen the Sunnis are in an untenable situation. The Sunnis only hope is if the "great satan," the USA, can prevent them from being slaughtered by revengeful Kurds and Shiites.
My thinking as well. In fact, if we want peace anywhere...
I understand your hesitation. I don't think Bush is naive, or at any rate any more naive than the rest of us; I, personally, have changed my opinions considerably in the last few years, partly because I have read more and partly because I have observed more. I am sure Bush and all his advisors have done likewise, and I really wonder if we knew then what we knew now if our objective wouldn't have been different. In other words, not nation building, but suppression of a threat, starting with Iraq and sweeping on to Iran and Syria. What would we have done then? I don't know, but perhaps it would have been easier if we had destroyed them first, and then rebuilt according to our plans, rather than holding back and then hoping that they would come and reason together.
I honestly don't think there is a way for an Islamic society to build a democracy; Bush keeps saying it won't be like our democracy, and that's not something that bothers me - but the problem is that it will probably end up, very soon, being simply another Islamic state where democracy simply means that people get to vote for one Islamic hothead or another, and the whole country is governed by sharia. Why should we be installing sharia anywhere? Maybe these people voted for it, but it's like voting for a dictator: your last free vote is the one that votes him in. Yet we're still going to support it?
Frankly, I don't know how it should end. I was very hopeful a couple of years ago, but the Muslims are only getting nuttier and revealing their hatred more clearly by the moment. Iran is more of a threat than it was a couple of years ago - and, incidentally, is tied to much of the guerrilla activity in Iraq - and the West is so disunited and demoralized by the left and by the actions of its own Muslim population that I feel we are actually weaker than we were at the beginning of the Iraq war.
I don't want to be as pessimistic as Fitzgerald, but things are certainly not looking positive now - and I am sure that Bush himself (judging by the fact that he actually mentioned Islamic extremism in the SOTU) is also rethinking things. That's all we can do, after all. Everybody has 20-20 hindsight.
I found the article, er...curious. But it did bring out an interesting point. This being a world war demands that we think of it as such. We have to be careful with our resources. Iran is next (in whatever form) and then...
The thing that struck me in the article was the reminder that our strategy must evolve as we move forward and as the enemy becomes clearer to us. Saddam was "an enemy", al qaida is "an enemy," but after Saddam and the insurgents, and after Al Qaida and Ahmadinejad, there will still remain "the real enemy" (as even the President has stated)...the fascist quality of islam.
A poster earlier (and on another thread) wondered aloud if this cartoon flap wasn't a diversion. The same question might apply to Ahmadinejad's outrageous statements.
It is a big mistake to arrogantly assume we know exactly what we are doing in this war and that it is exactly the right thing. It is a big mistake to underestimate the enemy.
This is a very important war...we cannot afford to lose.
BTW, not implying that you are the one being arrogant. Putting that forward as a caveat for all of us.
As always, an articulate and incisive analysis.
I think this writer is the lazy one. After substantial reading on the history of Iraq in the last few years, I have found the historians to agree on one thing-- that the Shia-Sunni rivalry was never much of a factor in Iraq, until exacerbated by Saddam, and played upon by the current foreign jihadi's. It has been rather bloody elsewhere, but to say it has been a serious conflict in Iraq for 1300 years is simply an error.
The students of this region, not to say the instant pundits turned out by the dozen lately, consider a sectarian "civil war" to be a fairly remote risk.
I don't think the Iraq war critics studied Clausewitz or Napoleon much. War is about GEOGRAPHY. We now surround Iran on 3 sides with substantial military capability in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. When it comes to blows, President Ahmaddeadjihadi will face the full fury of American airpower, seapower, and heavy armor. Yeah, they will get a few of our guys with suicide jockeys, but there won't be much left of their military or government centers.
I wonder what resources he thinks we can apply to the problem of western Europe. If they don't want to survive, there is nothing we can do to help them. If they decide to roll back this disease, they have the capacity to do it themselves.
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