Posts by Neil Morrison
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Paul, bin Laden wants a fundamentalist pan-Islamic state - he's said over and over that "Western" liberals values are the enemy. Yes, he opposed US troops protecting Saudi Arabia from Saddam, but that was just a small part of his motivation and goals.
You think the Taliban regime liked liberal values?
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D'Souza is half right but, more significantly, half wrong.
It's true that bin Laden's motives are a reaction to his perceived threat of Western liberal values. So to that extent liberals are "to blame".
But of course D’Souza’s remedy of backtracking on liberal values is completely crazy, at least to any liberal.
It's true that there are other religious groups besides Islamic extremists that are violently opposed to modernism - Christian abortion clinic bombers for example - and to that extent they are in the same league.
The good news is that D'Souza is not representative of any influential part of the US government.
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It's a bit hard to see how Iran is being "helpful". They're determined to destroy Israel, fund Hezbollah and arm the very nastiest of the Shiite militias.
I'm not sure why disagreeing with the US should lead to romanticizing a government that hangs gays and women wh stand up against rapists.
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Well Maliki is first on my list of people I would not want to be right now. He has a pretty unenviable job. But I wouldn't right him off yet. He seems well meaning and with all the time he spent in opposition to Saddam he can't be stupid or lacking in courage.
He's has been backed by Sadr but that doesn't mean he's Sadr's man or wants to see the Shiite militia continue to run free. At least that's what I hope. His occasional disputes with the US can't help but do him good.
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I'm not sure what I think about what the US should be doing now but this Guardian article is another indication of how some Sunnis aren't that keen to see the US out too soon -
'The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans
These are stories from individuals so it's difficult to know how representative they are but what these Sunnis are saying is they made a big mistake aligning themselves with Al Qaeda, who were mostly intent on killing Shia, which in turn provoked a vicious backlash from Shia militias and now they see the US as possible protectors.
The extra US troops wil be used to try and deal with the Shia militias so if it works it could be a good thing.
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How many minds might have the trillion dollars Iraq will eventually cost have swayed if the money had gone into liberal education and local business development?
I don't know if things work like that. Clinton spent a lot of money protecting Bosnian Muslims from Christian extremists and meanwhile bin Laden was plotting 9/11. One would have thought that Clinton's actons should have swayed a lot of minds but he got called called an imperialist for his troubles.
There might have been missed opportunities because of the war but it wasn't like the US was getting any brownie points beforehand.
I don't know about womens' rights in Saddam's Iraq, it depended on whether or not you supported the regime or were Shia or Kurdish.
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James, I don't deny Iran is a major player I'm just suspicious of the Sunni narrative that if it wasn't for Iran everything would be happy families between Sunnis and Shiites.
But as RB points out its understandable that many Sunnis would be pretty scared by what the Shiites are up to. At present it is only US troops stopping the Shiite militias from ethnically cleansing all of Baghdad.
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I read the Raazzaq interview above. His denial that there was any sectarian conflict in Iraq prior to 2003 is hardly credible, from Ali Allawi above -
...the invasion of Iraq tipped the scales in favour of the Shia, who are now determined to emerge as the governing majority after decades, if not centuries, of perceived disempowerment and oppression.
Saddam's rule was indeed Stalinist - he oppressed anyone who opposed him but the Shia and Kurds came in for particular attention and it was the Sunnis who benefited the most from his rule. If you listen to them, they say they were oppressed which is an opinion worth considering as much as the opinion of Sunni's like Raazzaq who say they weren't.
I would also take Raazzaq's view that its mostly Iran's fault that the Shiites are acting as they are with a grain of salt as well. Making ones opponents all pawns of foreigners is the best way of avoiding dealing with the very real ethnic/religious tensions that have long standing causes.
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If it was such an obvious consequence Neil, why did you never think to mention it when we argued on the merits of an invasion in 2002 and 2003? Why didn't anyone think to mention it?
I'm not saying it was obvious, I'm just pointing out the dynamics behind the present conflict. The current violence has its origins in the 30 years of Saddam's rule.
I'm not trying to by a fight, I admit that the war has not been worth the cost, but that is no reason to consider what would have happened otherwise.
We simply don't know what might have happened if history had taken another course, because there were so many potential courses.
The last time the Shiites rose up against Saddam in 1991 they were decimated. Any challenge to Saddam's rule was ruthlessly suppressed. It's hard to imagine that his rule would have just faded away
Sure, we don't now for certain what might have happened but given what we now see - the intensity of the ethnic/religious conflict - it’s hard to see that the end of Saddam's regime was ever going to be peaceful.
That's not a justification for the invasion, but it's certainly a major consideration when thinking about what should have happened. And it's also recognition that what is happening in Iraq is a product of many local causes which need to be addressed for there to be any solution. Which is large part of what Allawi is saying. And which is where we are now.
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And I do not buy the line that it "would have happened anyway".
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that this level of ethnic/religious violence would not have happened had Saddam's regime ended in any other way?
It seems to me that this was brewing for 30 years - Saddam spent that much time fostering and exploiting pre-existing divisions with Iraq. It was really 30 years of civil war and what we have now is the losers - the Shiites - now able to fight back.
I'm not sure if having foreign troops there now makes things better or worse.