The age of horrorism

[andyfox]

The Kurds already have their own de facto independence. One of the first acts the Kurdistan National Assembly adopted after convening in June 2005 was to bar the Iraqi military from entering Kudristan without the assembly's approval. The permanent Iraqi constitution adopted in October 2005 allows Kursdistan to have its own military. The Kurdistan constitution is superior to the federal constituion within Kurdistan and prevails when there is a conflict with federal law.

Kurdistan owns and manages it land and water. The Kurdistan Regional Government, not Baghdad, determines the legal regime for the development of new oil fields, decides where drilling takes place, and makes investment decisions. Baghdad has no power to impose taxes on Kurdistan unless Kurdistan agrees to be taxed.

In January 2004 a group of Kurds asked for signatures for a referendum on Kurdistan de jure independence. In three weeks, they collected 1,700,000 signatures; Kurdistan's adult population is about 2,300,000. When the January 2005 federal elections took place, there were referendum booths just outside, or actually inside, every polling place in Kurdistan. 2,000,000 Kurds voted in the referendum and 98 percent chose independence.

[BCPVP]

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So, the U.S. should have just let the South go? Are you suggesting that the path prewar to now would have been +EV over current baseline if the war never happened? Also, if Minnesota simply wanted to leave the U.S. we should let them to avoid violence?

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LOL! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[hmkpoker]

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So, the U.S. should have just let the South go? Are you suggesting that the path prewar to now would have been +EV over current baseline if the war never happened? Also, if Minnesota simply wanted to leave the U.S. we should let them to avoid violence?

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Of course. Why shouldn't we?

[Mickey Brausch]

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as the op said:

"hopelessly burdened down by the weight of their self-important prose"

[/ QUOTE ]That was for Martin Amis' novels. Not for his essays on Middle East reality.

I'm guessing you're not too familiar with either.

[NeBlis]

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aas the op said:

"hopelessly burdened down by the weight of their self-important prose"

[/ QUOTE ]That was for Martin Amis' novels. Not for reality in the Middle East.

I'm guessing you're not too familiar with either.

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Haven't you read " How my camel and I crossed the dessert and dicovered the joys of killing for god" by Sheik Ali Ali Oxenfree. Obviously you have no idea of the weight of the prose these guys are slinging at our troops.

[Mickey Brausch]

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The radical Islamists and their terrorist minions [blah blah blah]

[/ QUOTE ]Wow. I was kinda hopin' that you'd say you were joking or exaggerating about Manzikert to make some point. But you're serious!

Wow.

[Borodog]

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Precisely my point. One part of the country wanted to (peacefully) go their own way, the other launched a bloody military invasion and conquest, installed and ruled via muliple (highly corrupt) military dictatorships and puppet governments, with the result that one ethnic group bore the brunt of another's violent resentment for over a century.

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So, the U.S. should have just let the South go?

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Yes, of course. The U.S. had no legal or moral authority not to "let them go." The Union was voluntary, you know.

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Are you suggesting that the path prewar to now would have been +EV over current baseline if the war never happened?

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Far more so than I think you can imagine.

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Also, if Minnesota simply wanted to leave the U.S. we should let them to avoid violence?

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Yes, of course. Why not?

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No, it isn't. You've totally ignored the OP.

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No. I thought they were silly so I disregarded them. That is much different [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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What do you believe will be the result of installing democracy in such a country?

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Dont know. I am guessing if it was done right there would be a chance of success. Human behavior for all is driven by the same fundamental genetic laws. No one is destined to slaughter and be slaughtered. Cooperation is in our blood.

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I know this. That's not the point. Installing a democracy in a place where people hate democracy is a fool's errand (installing democracy anywhere is a fool's errand, but that's another thread).

[Borodog]

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The Kurds already have their own de facto independence. One of the first acts the Kurdistan National Assembly adopted after convening in June 2005 was to bar the Iraqi military from entering Kudristan without the assembly's approval. The permanent Iraqi constitution adopted in October 2005 allows Kursdistan to have its own military. The Kurdistan constitution is superior to the federal constituion within Kurdistan and prevails when there is a conflict with federal law.

Kurdistan owns and manages it land and water. The Kurdistan Regional Government, not Baghdad, determines the legal regime for the development of new oil fields, decides where drilling takes place, and makes investment decisions. Baghdad has no power to impose taxes on Kurdistan unless Kurdistan agrees to be taxed.

In January 2004 a group of Kurds asked for signatures for a referendum on Kurdistan de jure independence. In three weeks, they collected 1,700,000 signatures; Kurdistan's adult population is about 2,300,000. When the January 2005 federal elections took place, there were referendum booths just outside, or actually inside, every polling place in Kurdistan. 2,000,000 Kurds voted in the referendum and 98 percent chose independence.

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Why the hell haven't I heard of this? [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

[BluffTHIS!]

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[ QUOTE ]
The radical Islamists and their terrorist minions [blah blah blah]

[/ QUOTE ]Wow. I was kinda hopin' that you'd say you were joking or exaggerating about Manzikert to make some point. But you're serious!

Wow.

[/ QUOTE ]


I was being mildly flippant with my original remark, though not with my 3rd post in this thread in response to Boboman. My primary point is that from the beginning of the founding of Islam by the pedophile Mohammed who twisted some of Judeo-Christianity and added to it, that religion has been spread by the sword and continues to this day with a pattern of violent aggression against non-believers and their own believers who would convert to another religion. So you can't really point to a battle of the crusades, or to the crusades as a whole, and say that was a thousand years ago and it is time to forget it because the violent aggression of Islam is still ongoing and has never stopped. They will not be satisfied until they see Shari'a imposed on the entire world.

They don't want to live in peace, and only the violent suppression of Islamic radicals in countries like Egypt and Turkey that are ostensibly secular and peaceful in their outlook to non-Moslem countries keeps them from joining the ranks of radical Islamic states. They have sought war throughout the history of their religion and they have found it. Often they have been successful for centuries at a time. But in this nuclear age they may well find the last battle, and one that ends with Mecca being turned into an irradiated sea of glass for thousands of years.

[Myrtle]

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His novel Time's Arrow is utterly fantastic. Dynamite. Amazing. Awesome.

So, yeah, I liked it.

As for the OP, his first two points are what I have been saying for years. Aside from my personal feelings that democracy is an inherently bad thing, what kind of government do you think will be elected by a population that practice a religion base around religios law and government? And second, the only way to hold together 3 cultures who hate each other is either through armed and continuous millitary occuptation (like the British did it) or through iron-fisted totalitarianism, ala Saddam. Why SHOULD three cultures who hate each other be forced into the same state? It's like a recipe to ensure that the maximum possible number of people hate the situation.


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......dog,

Your feelings regarding democracy aside for a sec, the rest of your statement above may be the most lucid point that needs to be addressed by all of us when discussing the Iraq quagmire that we have gotten ourselves into.

Was Iraq a country that was created/formed by its' inhabitants in some sort of politically evolutionary process?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think so?

It seems to me that the land area that we today call Iraq simply was an area on a map that seemed to coincide with the geopolital purposes of a number of outside world forces at the time of its creation.

The fact that there were at least three distinctly different cultures present (tribal in nature, that did NOT get along with one another) reflects, IMO, the hubris of the powers that created it.

In the most basic terms......There existed in that area of the middle east a group of unfriendly cultures/tribes that had been at some stage of war with each other for many hundreds of years....(square pegs). There was a geographical area of land on a map that outside forces needed to define for geopolitical purposes...... (a round hole).

As the outside forces possessed the military power to dominate that area, in their wisdom they ‘created’ the ‘country’ of Iraq, thereby attempting to force distinctly disparate cultures to unite, against the will of any of them.

With this in mind, how can any reasonable person expect a conflict-free united ‘state’ to evolve from such a mixture?

So here we are, the USA, in another example of overt meddling in the affairs of what clearly seems to be a conflict of cultures in a foreign land.

Seems to me like we’ve been ‘here’ before?

Does anyone remember the “Domino Theory”? The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?

History is full of examples of the “Might makes Right” practice, which have been shown in hindsight to be incredibly arrogant, foolish and deadly to those who were not on side of military might.

Seems to me that we should be looking past all the stated reasons for our voluntary involvement in this mess, and we should be addressing some other potential causes for our involvement therein.