What Noble Cause Did Casey Sheehan Die For?

Heehee.....

Kind of reminds me of what Noel Coward said, upon witnessing the elephant in the opera Aida defecate in great quantities upon the stage during a key scene:

"Shocking manners, of course - but what a critic."

The woman that hugged the soldiers mom at the State of the Union speech in January has turned against Bush.

See Here

And

Here

From the article squinney brought, above:

"Souhail said the United States, a crucial backstage player keen for a deal that meets U.S.-backed deadlines, had let the Shi'ite Islamists and Kurds in government do as they wish.

"We have received news that we were not backed by our friends including the Americans. They left the Islamists to come to an agreement with the Kurds," she said."
_____________________________

Democrats complain: Iraq is a Bush puppet. He will be telling them what to do.

Democrats complain: Hey! Bush should have told them what to do.

At least PICK ONE!

They are their own country. They won't immediately become what they will be. This is a first step. They will shake off Islamic law in time. In THEIR time.

Weird argument, Lash.

I guess you could say, they would as well have shaken off Saddam in time. In THEIR time.

Yeah. We removed him.

Do you also suggest we tell them what their country will be now? Or do you agree with Bush that they should put it together themselves?

Oh Lash, maybe you could explain the concept of "nationbuilding" again...? Isn't the whole point to tell them what their country will be? No?

Are you trying to tell me the only purpose was to help them get rid of Saddam, so that they could install another islamic Sharia law Taliban state instead of the secular dictatorship they had before?

I probably didn't get the memo that said that Sharia law is en vogue at the moment....

EXACTLY!!!!!
The key word is THEY.
They can have whatever govt they want,but at least they get to choose it instead of a dictator telling them

Good for you, mysteryman. You speak up for the Iraqis who 'choose' to rely on Sharia law.

I just wonder if that is because the United States got rid of Saddam. And I'm trying to imagine if you would be as happy as you seem to be if the Iraqis themselves had gotten rid of Saddam, and installed an islamic country instead...

Would you?

What do you suggest be done at this point, OE?

Having served in Desert Storm and having seen first hand what Saddam and his thugs did,I would have been happy no matter WHO removed him.
They can install whatever govt THEY CHOOSE.
But the key words are THEY CHOOSE.

I see absolutely nothing here to object to.

I have. The Germans elected Hitler. They choose to have him.


Isn't saying "They are a souvereign nation (now, all of a sudden), they can have whatever form of government and constitution and law they want to have" just another form of, dareisayit, appeasement?

No

Why not?

Name the Hilter figure in Iraq to whom one abases oneself in appeasement.

By the way, the German people did not elect Hitler. In the 1932 elections, the NSDAP garnered 37% of the vote. Under the terms of the flaccid form of parliamentarianism common in Europe, they were therfore free to select their party leader to attempt to form a government. The weakness and indecision of the the other political parties made it impossible for them to set aside their sqabbling and form a government, so it was ridiculously easy for Hitler to sweep up disaffected members from the fringes of other parties and form a government, leaving no choice to Hindenburg but to appoint him Chancellor. The office of Chancellor as designed by Bismark gave him incredible power, and the Nazis did not stand upon the order of their going, they got busy and created the nightmare state of their dreams. It is more than a little naïve to baldly and simplistically state that "the Germans elected Hitler."

OE--

I don't think you have a grasp on the meaning of appeasement.

Somebody give me a nitro pill . . . i think this is the big one . . .


I completely agree with Lash.

Who could have imagined that of a guy named Old Europe?

(peed)

Interesting reaction.

Okay, to clarify: I think saying "the Germans elected Hitler" equals saying "the Iraqis want to have Sharia law in their constitution".

I don't think that that would be a valid statement. I cannot imagine why, for example, the women of a formerly secular state would want to have a legislation that would discriminate them. I can imagine why somebody would want to have it, though.

However, I cannot fail to notice, that while Iraq is propagated to be a souvereign nation when it comes to the constitution-drafting process, this seems to be somewhat different when it comes to American military presence.

Despite the eagerness of people on the right in the United States to claim that we were fighting "the war on terror" in Iraq, and constantly silly repetitions of "better to fight them there than here," the evidence points to a home-grown insurrection. Musab al Zarqawi had no affiliation with al Qaeda before the invasion, and the Iraqis claim his foreign fighters of "al Qaeda in Iraq" come largely from neighboring countries.

Without any credible evidence of a significant presence of "pre-existent" international terrorists, the inescapable conclusion is that the insurrection is largely, if not entirely, fomented by former Ba'atists and Sunnis whom they have not unreasonably convinced that "the worm is turning." After the overthrow of the monarchy, Iraq was ruled by a succession of leaders of minority Sunni "Arab" tribes, of whom Hussein was simply the most effective and successful. Sunnis have good reason to fear "pay back time." It is in the interest of Ba'atist to have a continually destabilized Iraq.

Given that there seems not to have been any plan for the "reconstruction" of Iraq in the original invasion plan, other than vague high-blown phrases, and a subtext of corporate croneyism, more than two years on, no effective Iraqi police force and national guard have been created who are capable, at present, of dealing with the insurrection. I have always held, since the invasion (the evidence is all over these fora), that on the principle of "you broke it, you fix it," we cannot in good faith abandon the country until such time as there is in place an effective government with the police, paramilitary and military resources necessary to assure their survival and prevent the nation disintegrating into civil war.

If you read current accounts of the constitution drafting process, it is plain that the current sticking point is federalism. There is no problem with the Kurds, as they've been granted a limited autonomy within a Federal system, and they've been sufficiently well organized and united for years. Sectarian conflict has never been very evident in Kurdistan. The problem is in how to deal with the Sunni "Arab" minority. Marginalizing them will assure the continuance of the insurrection, and might lead to full-blown civil war. Iraqi Shi'ites are the western fringe of Shi'ism in the Muslim world, and almost all of Iraq's neighbors are populated by Sunnis, any number of whom could be convinced to join a civil war. The one Shi'ite power in the world, Iran, is unlikely to want to become involved, although they likely would do all they could short of military involvement to prop up a Shi'ite state. The Persians ain't dumb, they know the roof would likely cave in on them if they actually attempted to intervene militarily in Iraq.

The biggest bright spot is that not only are the Sunni Iraqis a minority, the Ba'atists are representatives of tribal factions within that population, and there is not universal Sunni support for the insurrection. Some Sunni tribesmen work with American forces, usually sub rosa providing intelligence, but sometimes acting directly as guides and even fighting along side the Americans. The evidence is that it is possible that a comprehensive settlement acceptable to the majority of Sunni tribesmen could be accomplished. The possibility is not the problem, it's the probability.

I don't think the United States needs to or should pull out any time soon. I also think it unrealistic to expect that the Iraqis will solve a problem which no one has ever addressed in the slightly more than eighty year history of that nation. Former masters of "Mesopotamia," as in the Seljuk and Osmanli Turks, did not even attempt to make these people live together in peace. The last great hurdle for the Iraqis to surmount if an accomodation can be arrived at with the Sunni tribes will be to what extent the character of the new state will be secular. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, and Iraq has been, more or less, secular for the lifetimes of most of the population. If once an accord is cobbled together between Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurd, the final battle will be between hard-line fundamental Islam and secularism.

It is ominously noteworthy that the founder of Shi'ism, Ali, son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet, when he came back from "the mother of all battles" in Persia, immediately clashed with the Companions over the issue of "infidels"--Sunni comes form the term sunna, meaning the modus vivendi of the ancient desert nomads for moving among the people of the oases and cities without violence. The Prophet adopted the term to describe how a righteous man could live among infidels. The Companions saw this as authorization for the ulama, the righteous (an alim is a man recognized by the community as righteous), to live among infidels who were not actually pagan. (That means Christians and Jews--it is little known that among the three Abrahamic religions, the Jews were earliest as proselitizers, and quite successful--a great many, and perhaps a majority, of Arabs were confessional Jews before the coming of Islam.) Ali was opposed to the toleration of any pagans or infidels. He was the fourth of the orthodox caliphs, and there were serious rebellions against him in his lifetime. Whether the majority of Shi'ites and Sunnis can learn to live in peace is one problem. Whether Shi'ism can tolerate any degree of secularism is the other major problem.

As for the Kurds, the great hero of Islam in the Crusades was Yusuf, Salah'al-Din--the Saladin of the Christian history. He was a Kurd. The Kurds are a relatively stable population politically, and a mostly autonomous state in Kurdistan could be a magnet for the people in the portions of Kurdistan which lie in the territory of Iran and Turkey (which is incidentally why the Turks have been less than enthused about this process). The Kurds could function to seal the deal, or to break it. Whatever role they play, their history suggests that they will fight if necessary, and that they will survive.