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Originally posted by lord of the mark
Then that would mainly matter to people in Iraq. And to Sunni Arabs in Iraq, not to the Kurds and Shiites who have generally been the victims of AQ. If you want to focus specifically on the creation of support for AQ in Iraq you may, though youd be more persuasive if you were more specific and dealt with the details of whats currently going in Anbar and Diyala provinces.
I did not read the article as being mainly about Iraq.
Then that would mainly matter to people in Iraq. And to Sunni Arabs in Iraq, not to the Kurds and Shiites who have generally been the victims of AQ. If you want to focus specifically on the creation of support for AQ in Iraq you may, though youd be more persuasive if you were more specific and dealt with the details of whats currently going in Anbar and Diyala provinces.
I did not read the article as being mainly about Iraq.
But as the article asserts, the existence of Jews and Christians in non-dhimmi, status, or their existence at all. Its NOT the litany of political claims.
AQ is going to address Muslims differently than those of other faiths. They have a common ground (scripture) to base their arguments off of when dealing with Muslims. They would be idiots not to. Just as they would be idiots to try to rely on our faith in the Quran and Haddis to convince us.
What I am saying is that no matter how AQ (or anyone else) choses to address the general population, our actions are certainly not irrelevent to how those people view us. That was the entirety of my disagreement with the article, the dismissal of our own actions in regards to how AQ recruits.
When we commit crimes against a people, they don't need AQ or anyone else to tell us we're the bad guys. Because our actions are speaking for themselves. Alienating them increases the risk of the "enemy of my enemy is my friend", and certainly works to make us the enemy regardless.
Yes, if we withdraw precipatately from Iraq, the Kurds will hate us. But no one cares, cause the Kurds wont attack us.
Just because we're stuck in Iraq though doesn't mean we were right to go in in the first place, or that we can't learn from our mistakes and stop chasing boogey-men at the expense of our relationships (and in many cases the lives) of those who we could actually deal with.
One of my reasons for preempting. Folks go round and round on what we've already discussed ad nauseum. The ONLY reason for a new thread is cause Siro found a new article, with (allegedly) new data. If we're not going to focus on that, Im not going to play.
By the definitions of international law the US occupies no territory in the muslim world.
(By definition of our Constitution we aren't at war in Iraq...)
In Iraq and Afghanistan we are arming two states, each internationally recognized as the legitimate govt. In Iraq we have recently started to arm tribal groups that are willing to fight against Al Qaeeda. Is it your intent to discuss the morality of that program?
As for Iraq, we have a responsibility that we've taken on to try to stabilize the country. Ideally we wouldn't be arming anyone because we weren't there to begin with, but now we certainly have to help Iraq become capable of keeping the peace for itself before we can withdraw. We've gotten into trouble in the past by arming/training the wrong people, so it's something that should be handled with care. Arming/training the Iraqi military is important, but I'm much less sure about arming/training factions not directly under the supervision of the government though.
That we're fighting AQ in Iraq, when they weren't a presence there before our invasion, speaks volumes about the backward nature of our policy that has lead us to this point.
Before we do that, we have to be specific about what actions we are talking about.
But if you want to go into more depth, just off the top of my head I'd say:
- Colonial oppression/partition. (We weren't directly involved in this much, but supported Britain.)
- The formation of Israel to assauge our guilt.
- Consistantly using our Veto on the UN Security Council to protect Israel from any form of UN action.
- Training/arming terrorists to wage proxy war against our rival.
- Propping up/arming dictators to get cheap oil.
- Invading Iraq. (More specifically, without clear evidence that our reasoning was correct, without clear international support, without a clear exit strategy, without actually declaring war.)
- Imposing sanctions without international support. (This is not all sanctions, just those without international support.)
- Suspending HC, denying rights we (otherwise) claim for ourselves to those who may or may not be our enemy. (Regardless of what international law says we can do, I think this is wrong and will lead to more problems than it solves.)
- Our own intolerances held by our populace. The introduction/proliferation of "towelhead" and "sand******" into our nation's vocabulary, and the ignorance, hatred, and stereotyping that it represents, is as much a part of the problem as intolerance of our way of life held by some of those opposed to us.
That's not to say it's all our fault. But we've had a hand in forming the problems we face now, and those types of wrongs are the ones we need to address first (since we can address them), and avoid making in the future.
I guess if you wanted to distill my view in this regard down to it's very core, it would be summed up nicely as "the mote and the beam". (It's ironic that a non-Christian like me would hold such a stance, while a largely Christian nation like the US takes the inverse to the extreme...)
And most dont. Many in fact, are fighting beside us against Al Qaeeda.
I was referring to our overall interaction with the muslim world, and on a history that goes back well before 2001.
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