Surprisingly, this said religious conflict hasn't been ablaze for a long time, but somehow miraculously flamed up when US crushed Saddam and failed to provide necessary security. Miraculous, I know.
Miraculous, yes, because of the peace forced on Iraq (and the entire region, for that matter) for several hundred years by the Ottomans, the British, and Saddam.
And somehow the peace lasted. It couldn't be... security?
And yet Saudi-Arabia and Jemen are not ethnically cleansing each other. Are you seriously trying to blame Iraq on Europeans? Are you really attempting that?
Yes actually, I am. Thanks to the Mandate of Mesopotamia, Britain decided to make Iraq all one country, rather than divide into three as it should've for the Kurds, Shi'ites, and Sunnis. The only reason the Sunnis and Shi'ites have ever cooperated in Iraqi history is to oust the British from the country, and after that came years of Sunni oppression of the other two groups through one government.
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Well that's a big and stupid mistake, because it was US-lead coalition that steamrolled into Iraq in 2004 and caused the complete crash of security and infrastructure. It wasn't "Europe". You could as well be blaming mongols. But their tanks do not patrol the streets of Baghdad now.
Seriously: the entire situation in Iraq is what it is because of the war.
Sunnis and Shiites also cooperated against Iran (which is a Shia country), which makes your entire "religious civil war is inevitable" argument sound very hollow, but let's just conveniently forget that ok.
Look at Yugoslavia. Josef Tito barely held together a nation of ethnically- and religiously-divided groups until his death in 1980. None of his successors were anywhere near strong enough to hold the same peace. And that was without decades of one group repressing the others. IMO, Tito was one of the best rulers Europe had ever seen in terms of respecting human rights and unifying a country. Now look where the Balkans are.
Not enough? April 6, 1994, the plane carrying Juvénal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda is shot down. No succession leads to a power vacuum. In the chaos that follows, the extremist Hutus kill anywhere between 800,000 to 1,000,000 moderate Hutus and Tutsis.
So combine the two situations. Saddam couldn't have had a successor politician as strong as he was to keep the country unified, as per the Yugoslavia example. Ethnic tensions already existed between the Sunnis and Shi'ites due to their religious differences, and had a history of fighting. Once the one unifying force in the country was out of power or had died, each side, led by extremist demagogues, had at each other, as happened in both Rwanda and Yugoslavia.
Amazing how history repeats itself, eh?
Because the US military started something that Iraq was going to face one way or the other thanks to decades of Sunni oppression?
Yes it is amazing, because it does not, because the situations and consequences are completely different!
You are falling in a pit. Iraq situation is not analogous to Rwanda or Yugoslavia, because it's Iraq, not Rwanda or Yugoslavia. Civil wars have been prevented all the time, they have started and died, and they have rarely been huge ethnic cleansings. And they always start out for some reason. If something is a catalyte for reaction, if something starts because actor A makes a choice which then leads to bad consequences, even though actor A has been warned that it is a possibility and they should prevent it, then yes, bad consequences are actor A's fault!
Many middle eastern countries have fared quite well without civil war even if they had significant ethnic and religious divides. Iraq survived without civil war for several centuries, and flared up after a botched invasion which destroyed everything and gave nothing. And you are now claiming it was inevitable, that it would have happened?
Would it have killed you to figure out by looking at my signature that I'm actually a part of the US military, who these organizations are directly attacking? Or did you just up and assume that I live in a nice cushioned basement somewhere and have no idea what I'm dealing with?
Are you certain you're in a right profession? Seeing you flip out at imaginary boogiemen in internet - ones you made up yourself, as a matter of fact! - does not really make us trust you, and yet you carry a gun. Maybe you shouldn't be out there, risking your fellows and civilians.
Seriously, I don't care if you were an admiral in Congo navy, it doesn't make your arguments any more sensible. If anything, you react far too emotionally to this.
I'm actually referring more to the people that I see three or four times a year outside the gates at Presidio where I'm stationed. I have to deal with their nonsense on a regular basis, which is why I'm quite fed up with their ilk by now. When you have people constantly calling you and your friends agents of an "evil empire" and being repeatedly told that your work is only helping to expand "American aggression in the Middle East", then you start to not have the warmest feelings towards these groups.
So you think everyone's like that? Hey dude, I am not, and I doubt Rictor is either, so what exactly are you raging against?
You started this entire argument! That's a strawman - no one has argued anything like that! Goddamnit, learn your fallacies and don't use them.
I think I'm just going to paraphrase you:
[/i]I'm really tired of hearing the ****ing "enlightened" blame the US and the coalition for destroying Iraq. If they had their
heads out of their ****ing anti-imperialist, anti-American asses for two seconds they would realize that this war has little-to-nothing to do with the US being in Iraq, but 100% more over the Sunni/Shi'a division. Religious ****ing zealots are destroying that country, not George Bush, General Petraeus, or Tony Blair.[/i]
For all this time you have consistently argued that even though USA-led coalition attacked Iraq war without justification and under false pretenses and even though the failed in the occupation state and even though this failure directly gave way for different extreme groups to take arms and rise agains whatever they rise against and even though USA has just jumped from one failure to other and even though USA was warned that this was a possibility before the invasion even began and even though generals wanted ~300 000 troops to secure post-invasion security
it still is not USA's fault at the slightest!
That kind of cognitive dissonance really deserves some kind of metal.
And wonderful Miss Sheehan herself, IIRC, has more than once called for "moral and financial support" for US soldiers who may be court-martialed for desertion or otherwise opposing the war in uniform. That's supporting criminal behavior, as defined under the UCMJ. So really, when I say the anti-war movement is trying to destroy the military from within, I'm not joking or just being a raving-mad Bushfanatic.
who has supported that in this thread and what does it have to do with anything
edit: Now I know how all those German generals felt, facing a two-front war and all
I yell and call for help
