Sectarian break-up of Iraq is now inevitable, admit officials

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
How do you take land with you?

I shall assume you're trying to make a lame joke, because even you can't be that stupid...

Arrian and Wycoff pointed out the blindingly obvious for you and snoopy. Please keep up.

[MOBIUS]

Now they're reporting 1000 deaths a week, mostly in Baghdad. Do we have a threshold for when things 'officially' become a civil war?

[SlowwHand]

Mobius, screw off. Wheel barrow had some humor to it, your diarrhea of the mouth doesn't.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Yea but it isn't like we decided to divide and then violence broke out later. Nor was the country divided in an attempt to avoid violence. I don't see how the situations are comparable.

There was quite a bit of violence out west. Kansas was a war zone long before South Carolina fired the first shot. Grief over proslavery raids in Kansas prompted John Brown to raid the Harper's Ferry arsenal.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by GePap


There were no national or secterian rifts.

There weren't? How about slavery? You were either for it or against it. People's opinions were pretty much polarized along regional lines with most in the free state north being against it and most in the slave state south being for it. As far as religion goes, in the USA of 1860, at a time when atheism was virtually unknown, you either believed that God ordained slavery or he didn't. There were universities in the South which had entire academic departments devoted to proving the scientific and the divine ordination of slavery. Most of the major protestant churches in the USA developed rifts around this time, some of them still exist. The Southern Baptist Convention is an example.

[SlowwHand]

With all due respect Doc;
Again, about 5% of the South had slaves. I get so tired of this misconception. Maybe to the North it was over slavery, not to the South.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


There was quite a bit of violence out west. Kansas was a war zone long before South Carolina fired the first shot. Grief over proslavery raids in Kansas prompted John Brown to raid the Harper's Ferry arsenal.

So Congress decided the best way to stop the violence was to divide the country?


Uh, no. So it doesn't fit.

[Elok]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
With all due respect Doc;
Again, about 5% of the South had slaves. I get so tired of this misconception. Maybe to the North it was over slavery, not to the South.

And how many slaves did that 5% own? Er, I assume slaves are not included in that 95%, of course. "Five percent owned slaves. Fifty-five percent were slaves. The rest had nothing to do with it."

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Elok
And how many slaves did that 5% own? Er, I assume slaves are not included in that 95%, of course. "Five percent owned slaves. Fifty-five percent were slaves. The rest had nothing to do with it."

Yes. Nothing to do with it. I'm sure they didn't buy products from slave owners. Sure they never sold anything to slave owners. Never voted to keep slave owning politicians in power. Completely innocent the rest were.

(I'm responding to Sloww. Just reinforcing your point, Elok.)

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
With all due respect Doc;
Again, about 5% of the South had slaves. I get so tired of this misconception. Maybe to the North it was over slavery, not to the South.

Actually it was closer to 20% of southern families owned slaves.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


There weren't? How about slavery? You were either for it or against it. People's opinions were pretty much polarized along regional lines with most in the free state north being against it and most in the slave state south being for it. As far as religion goes, in the USA of 1860, at a time when atheism was virtually unknown, you either believed that God ordained slavery or he didn't. There were universities in the South which had entire academic departments devoted to proving the scientific and the divine ordination of slavery. Most of the major protestant churches in the USA developed rifts around this time, some of them still exist. The Southern Baptist Convention is an example.

Disagreements about slavery do not in any way signify a secterian divide or a nationalist devide. That the same sect might disagree on policy does not make a battle a secterian rift. When Catholics had two popes, that wasn't a secterian rift. It was a political rift.

The US civil war, like the Spanish civil war, was caused by political disagreements, not secterian or nationalistic rifts (thought in Spain there were nationalistic tensions in the Basque region and Catalonia).

[MOBIUS]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
Now they're reporting 1000 deaths a week, mostly in Baghdad. Do we have a threshold for when things 'officially' become a civil war?

Or to put it into perspective, roughly about 4 times the death rate of the Lebanon conflict...

[MOBIUS]

And if you want to talk about slavery - **** off and open a thread about it!

[Kuciwalker]

Disagreements about slavery do not in any way signify a secterian divide or a nationalist devide.

Unless it causes a ****ing civil war. That might be a hint.

[MRT144]

question: more people dying per week under saddam or now?