Wow, that's a nasty scene. Beating charred bodies with metal pipes, dragging them behind cars, hanging them from bridges. Not going so well in the sunni "hearts and minds" department...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/03/31/iraq.main/index.html

Horrible. Absolutely horrible.

It demonstrates a serious amount of hatred. In this case toward americans, but I can't imagine that it would end there. I file this incident as yet one more indicator of the high possibility of an eventual sunni-shiite civil war...

Is there a way to stop all these Americans from dying? Yes. LEAVE THE F*@#ING COUNTRY.

The blood of those killed is on the hands of the American military higher-ups. Especially George W. Bush.

I won't even comment on this, as all my colorful words would no doubt get me banned :mad:

I saw some terrible pictures. Sick, sad world.

Now wait just a damn minute, Jaguar. :toofar:

It's no big secret I'm as against the war as anyone. But these were civilians. Not soldiers, not diplomats, civilians. Unarmed and hired by the coalition to help rebuild the damn country. They were on route to do their honest, non-political, non-violent work when a group of masked cowards threw grenades into their car, watched it explode, and sprayed the bodies with machine gun fire. Then the gathering crowd of local men, women and even children ravaged the already-dead bodies like a bunch of f*cking animals. Hanging them from the bridge and dragging them through the street.

I don't care WHAT my military or government has done over there, nothing excuses what those people did. NOTHING. There needs to be some responsibility taken by the people who are giddy and overjoyed at the senseless death of innocent people.

Hey now, I didn't say that those masked loonies were innocent. They are just as guilty But you said it yourself:

Unarmed and hired by the coalition to help rebuild the damn country. Right there, hired by the coalition. Not by the people who actually live there. Yes, they were wrong in killing and brutalizing those unarmedpeople, but they still still shouldn't have been there.

They had no right, and it wouldn't have happened if they didn't go.

@jaguar- I think a certain distinction has to be made on the statement "they shouldn't have been there." Maybe in a global sense this is true; i.e. that the war shouldn't have happened at all. But the fact is, as much as we might regret it, and as much as we should hold the people who got us into the war responsible for that war, that it *did* happen. Given that the war did happen, and that the current alternative to the occupation of Iraq by the US or the UN is a nasty civil war that would have a really good chance of spreading to neighboring countries, those contractors *should* have been there, in that the occupation now has a responsibility to pave the way to as peaceful a transition as possible.

We just saw Bosnia flare up again. Memories run deep, and ethnic tensions probably can only be managed or diffused rather than done away with entirely. The Kurds and Shiites have been mostly restrained with regard to the Sunnis, but without some kind of stabilizing element, along with some kind of hopes for a democratic future, it's easy to imagine things getting very ugly, yes even uglier than now, in Iraq.

Yes it is time to leave Jaguar, or at least let the British soldiers leave the Americans to it. What bothers me is that soon income tax will go up in the UK because someone has to pay for it right and I don’t fancy paying half my wages in tax for this ****. Screw rebuilding Iraq, let them rebuild it themselves, maybe all of the asylum seekers in the UK living off the country can go back to Iraq where they came from and rebuild it.

Yeah it's sad allright, a few days ago two businessmen from Finland were coldbloodedly murdered in Iraq (it is suspected that they were mistaken for Americans). This once again proves that Iraq in it's current state isn't safe for anyone and won't be for a very long time either the way I see it. :(

@Bion

I agree with Sarevok. Everybody should just pull out and let them deal with it. After all, it is their country.

And who says that they should be forced to have a democratic system. What if they want to be a dictatorship? It is their country and their right to choose their fate.

A little thing called 'The Self-Determination Theory'.

War is hell.

But the war is over. Dubya said so himself.

At least Saddam had his country under control.

It wasn't all that long ago there was a thread on this site blasting the US under Bush 41 for just watching the rebellion that occurred after we pushed Iraq back out of Kuwait during Desert Storm. There was widespread sentiment that we should have helped the rebels out. However the UN decreed that we pull back out of Iraq, and our aircraft flew racetracks above the fighting in Basra, watching the rebellion rise and be crushed without firing a shot. Those rebels paid with not only their lives, but also the lives of their families.

Now we should just pull out and let the radical Islam take the country over, again making the peaceful people of the Middle East distrust us, see us as weak, and worst of all, as betraying them again?

Iraq presents an opportunity to establish a Middle Eastern nation based upon representation and freedom for its citizens. If we give in to the easy way out, either abandonment or setting up another brutal dictatorship as we did with the Shaw (sp?)in Iran (though we did that one covertly), we will only embolden the terrorists further, and lose more face with the moderates.

I have talked with soldiers coming back from Iraq, and most of them have stated that they believe most of the people in Iraq are happy we came in a pulled down Saddam. No doubt Iraqis want us gone, nobody wants an occupying military in their nation.

However, don't you thing that if we leave prior to getting a stable government in power we will just lose more trust from the moderates in the Middle East, and embolden the terrorists even further? :confused:

It is truly sick. Whatever their reason for being there, there is no justification for this.

Way to turn this thread into a game of "blame the victim". Or blame Bush. Or claim that Iraq was better off with Saddam.

Classy! Really classy!

Jack,

Was that aimed at me? :confused:

I guess it must have been because I don't see any other mention of Bush. :confused:

If so, that was not my intent. My intent was to state that we are commited, regardless of whether it was right/wrong or good/bad that we went. I don't think that pulling out of Iraq at this point will have favorable ramifications for anyone in the world. :o

I don't think that pulling out of Iraq at this point will have favorable ramifications for anyone in the world. Least of all the Iraqis. Regardless of whether you are pro-war or anti-war, unless you want to see additional suffering of the Iraqi people, there is no reason why you should want to see the U.S. pull out now. There was no middle ground here that was acceptable to anyone. You either didn't go in at all, or you went in and stayed until it was completely done.

Wow - I agree 100% with both Jack and Darkwolf.

In other news, the moon is blue...

After all, it is their country.Jaguar, so you mean that a nation have the right to bomb the other into stoneage and then just leave them to be saying: "After all, it is their country."? Am I the only one that sees the failed logic in this?

This is, unfortunately, another no-win situation for the US. Whatever anyone thinks of the war, its origins, its basis, etc., I don't see how anyone with any compassion for the run-of-the-mill Iraqi could demand that the US simply pull up and leave. That would be the one thing that would guaranty the worst possible outcome, as it would create a power vacuum that, as is human nature, would be filled with the most powerful group of people present. If the Iraqis want a theocracy, they can vote themselves one and then they have no one to blame but themselves. I don't think it should be imposed on them. We're in it for the long haul and my tax dollars will go to rebuild Iraq (which, I suppose, is not the worst thing in the world).

Darkwolf - I do not believe that Jack was in any way directing his comments at you.

A while ago I read an interesting book by a leftist economist named Michel Feher called something like "Powerless by Design." He criticized the left for it's reaction to Bosnia; before the intervention, it blamed the West for not doing anything, and after the intervention, it blamed the West for violating the "national sovereignty" of Serbia. Aside from the historical fact that much of the drive for internationalism came from the left (with the right holding onto nationalism), he saw this shift as an indication that the left had adopted a position where they could only criticize power but never adopt it, or never concieve of it being used for the betterment of a given situation. While one should always be suspicious of power, Feher points out that by always taking a negative critical stance, these elements of the left had effectively rendered themselves powerless, without a clear policy or position. While I agree that the US and the coalition have alot to answer for, I don't think this proves that coalition presence in Iraq is at this moment a bad thing...

I don't think this "situation" is about the US or Shrub. This issue is about a savage and barbaric Iraqi response. The people of Iraq have the opportunity to find a political solution to their problems - a post Saddam Iraq and US occupation - that some of them chose this as a response says more about them than it does about the US and Bush. I don't mean to lump all the Iraqi people into the bunch that behaved in this manner. But it seems to me that those who did this have a lot to answer for, and they will.

It is my understanding that many of the participants in this chanted religious slogans. What kind of "religious values or moral code" could anyone assign to this situatution? I have never supported this war in any way, but I will never support this kind of a response. Despite the US occupation, as DMC pointed out, the Iraqi people have a few opportunities sitting in front of them. The entire world is watching. What they decide to do here is as much up to them as it is to the US and Bush.

The scene in Falluja was sure nasty, and the killing of the contractors was just as nasty. It isn't a surprise. And don't let the term contractor fool you, "contractors" do some of the occupation jobs the US armed forces son't like to do because they fear casualties. The Fallujah people, 20 year US armed forces veterans, maybe with special forces background, don't quite fit the aid worker profile in my eyes.
What I say is that a "contractor" is a nice technical term for your good old mercenary. And mercenaries, the dogs of war, fight and die in war. Take Blackwater (http://www.iht.com/articles/513165.html), tasked in Falluja with securing and transporting food, they don't mind to evecuate woundeds, or resupply ammo to fighting units, sometimes they fire themselves too. So, for an Iraq, where's the difference? The Iraqis don't care if they fight outsourced US troops or real US tropps, that's a legal difference only.
Sad for the people and their families, but nothing new really.

It ain't all that easy. In Fallujah the US created a lot of bad blood, starting by scared troops firing into demonstrators killing a dozen or two, and it amplified till today through US missteps and iraqi violence. Hey, Fallufah isn't a silly village, it is a city of 500.000, about as large as, lemme guess, Boston? That means, many, many angry people.
Interesting article: The making of an enemy - how Falluja turned against the US (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/04/1081017033683.html).

And while the Iraqis indeed may have their chance to participate somehow, they rightly understand the US not as liberators but as occupiers. The US have no legitimacy to the Iraqis whatsoever, for the Iraqis the US came to install their pet Chalabi or for the oil, or both and something else too - there too the notorious uncertainty about the actual US motives for war plays into the hands of the resistance.

What I find bordering the absurd is that atm Bush, after ordering and subsequently mismanaging what lead to the break-up of Iraq, insolently accuses the Iraqis that it is their fault - because they didn't play his game. I mean, uh, who started this?

This is really a catch-22 situation now. I was totally against the war, but now it's gone ahead you have to stay until the jobs done. Here I'd like to see Blair and Bush answer for their errors, but the coallition in Iraq still have work to do.
The Iraqi people do have a unique opportunity to have a chance to direct the direction their country takes, yet they seem intent on pursuing anarchy, which is saddening. I will admit that the management of the war is partly to blame for this. If the coallition had bothered to prepare fully there wouldn't have been the total breakdown in law and order. Also if the troops, particularly the Americans(sorry, but its true), hadn't carried out a shoot first ask questions later poilcy, there wouldn't have been such a build up of resentment.
The scenes in Falluja are a reminder that radicals are using local tention over Anti-American hatred to inflame the people and destabilse the area making it easier for these people to operate and gain power.
So, good or bad, the troops need to stay to get a hold of this situation, and unfortunately, thats exactlythe thing that will make it worse.
Catch-22 :(

Catch 22 indeed. Now Bush has this mess on his hands - what now?

A US withdrawal and a civil war? Some say "Why not?". A less public neo-con, Edward Luttwak, has earlier, in an essay against peacekeeping - of course :shake: - propagandised a "Let war duke it out" approach, the free market capitalism version in conflict management. That might even work, but I doubt that the US, or Turkey and Iran for that instance, can resist the the temptation to meddle in their to promote their interests.

There is the point the US IMO never got, and likely never will: As I see it there is a US inability to understand that some missions, like peacekeeping, demand US neutrality. Originally on a peacekeeping mission, the US chose sides in Lebanon 1984 and Somalia - and, unsurprisingly, got targetet by the opposition of the side the US chose (Beirut barrack bombing & Black Hawk Down) - just that the US didn't understand why - wheren't they there to help?

The US can't get over their football mentality: Team vs. Team. Good vs. Evil. They are simply unable to be the referee. Remember? When you're not with us you're against us. Life ain't that easy.

And as for getting the job done ... ever considered that it might be an impossible job? That's what concerns me. Don't try to clean the Augean stables when you're not a demi-god and your name is not Hercules. The US may be well underway to lose control over Iraq, risking a civil war that might spread to the neighboring countries - basically exactly what the sissy euros have warned the US of when they wanted to go to Iraq so eagerly. Bleh.

Ragusa,

The US may be well underway to lose control over Iraq, risking a civil war that might spread to the neighboring countries - basically exactly what the sissy euros have warned the US of when they wanted to go to Iraq so eagerly. Bleh. Or this could just be the effort of a dying Baathist regime and a pipsqueak radical Islamic cleric making, both making a desperate bid for power. Maybe we should wait for a little concrete evidence before crying that the sky is falling.

I don't think that you should lump all the Europeans who were against the war as "sissy", or insinuate that America called them all sissies. Germany and Russia have rarely, if ever, been accused of being sissies. In my experience the only European nation that is labeled as wimpy (correctly or incorrectly) are the French (and occasionally the Italians, but that was mostly a generation ago).

That said, I don't think that most Americans believe that the European nations who are against the liberation of Iraq are too soft for war. I believe that most of us "war mongers" know that the volume at which the nation objected to the war was directly proportional to the economic cost of the contracts that would be lost with the fall of Saddam's regime.

In truth, the primary goals of all the governments involved (including the US) had little to do with what was best for the world or the Middle East, and more to do with what was best for their own interests (including the UN). The fact that the coalition went doesn't make them any better or worse than those who objected. For the governments involved, it all falls back to economics and power (world power and getting re-elected power). If I were on your side of the pond, I am sure I would be just as much against this war as you are. ;)

Fallufah isn't a silly village, it is a city of 500.000, about as large as, lemme guess, Boston? Hardly. Boston has to have way more than 1 million people - it's one of the biggest cities on the east coast. I know for a fact it's much bigger than Baltimore - which is where I live, and we have 700,000 people.

EDIT: Also keep in mind that the "official" population of Boston is a fraction of the total people actually living there, as most people who work in the city live in the suburbs. Baltimore City has about 700,000 people, but Baltimore County (the area surrounding the city) has 3.2 million people. It's the American way. Most people who work in a big city make enough money that they don't have to live in a big city.
END EDIT

To me, the main reason that we have to stay (and I mean this more if you are an American than if you are not) is if we pull out now, if Iraq degenerates into civil war that causes untold suffering among the Iraqi people, and if a radical government takes over that has just as bad political relations with the U.S. as Saddam's regime, then the 600+ American soldiers who died there died for nothing. And that to me, is TOTALLY UNACCEPATABLE.

[ April 07, 2004, 16:48: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

Well, I was being caustic, and admittedly no one here really deserved that :heh:

What I liked to point out was in a nutshell that IMO the US have to deal with much more than a mad cleric and his stirred up followers and that it is for quite a while no longer about a few desperate baathists who want the good old days back, much less about mysterious insurgents. If Fallujah is a glimpse on things to come, it could as well be the start of something bigger, that is, the mob joining the fray, like Intifada @ Iraq.

And considering that is outright scary. In WW-II the Germans were the first who encountered Russian human wave attacks, which had a highly demoralising effect on them. The US in Korea experienced the same with the Chinese and Koreans, to the same demoralising effect. The fighting around Black Hawk Down in Mogadischu was just that, only on an urban battlefield and 3rd world level.

Hell, I don't know what will happen, but playing it down is hardly the right thing to do. Let's be realistic. The US lost some 20 soldiers since the Fallujah killings, at least. That means that likely some 100++ were actually wounded. And that in less than a week.

The next logical step for the US will be to show strength in Fallujah. They have to take care by that not to alienate the passive majority which is either neutral or pro US. But it could well be that in Fallujah they managed to do that already.

…and if a radical government takes over that has just as bad political relations with the U.S. as Saddam's regime, then the 600+ American soldiers who died there died for nothing. And that to me, is TOTALLY UNACCEPATABLE.
While I agree that the U.S. has to stay, I disagree with the above for two reasons:

1. The risk of “bad political relations” is IMO irrelevant. In all likelihood, whoever eventually comes into power will ultimately not be a friend of the U.S. – this may not happen immediately, but it will happen.

2. I know this is going to get some people’s backs up, but to me the 600+ dead American soldiers is also irrelevant. In fact, some would say that they’ve already died for nothing, since the Administration shouldn’t have sent them there in the first place. Regardless, this should be about what is best for the people of Iraq, not about making a soldier’s death “meaningful”. Of course, it’s entirely possible for the two to go hand-in-hand.

The real verdict will come when a new government takes over and what it stands for. If its a radical islamic government, similar to what used to be in afganistan, or similar to the saddam regime, then it will all have been for nothing anyway. You get rid of one dictator (who IMO was only a true threat to his own people) only to replace him with another. Has anyone read animal farm? It satires the russian revolution perfectly, and it can be a good example of what is tragically close to occuring again. The problem is that the new government may be an even greater threat to the world than the last.

@ Splunge

I respect your opinion. The point I was trying to make is while nothing is going to bring those 600+ dead soldiers back, and nothing is going to repair the despair their deaths caused their families, the rest of the U.S. would like something positive to come out of all of this. I did touch upon the Iraqi people lives getting better in my previous post. If millions of Iraqis are better off after we're finished, then at least the 600+ American dead served some greater good, some greater plan. If things are just as bad as before, then they died for nothing. Someone, even if it isn't the U.S. has to gain some benefit from all of this.

Worst case scenario would be for them to elect a theocracy, which in turn would turn into a Taliban-esque government. That would potentially be worse than under Saddam. And if that happens, then we have failed on every level. There were no WMD - OK. So now the focus has to shift to doing something good after all of this. It's one thing to say we never should have gone in there, but we can't change the past. Now that we are there, we have to leave it a better place than before we went in.

Aldeth the Foppish Idiot
Worst case scenario would be for them to elect a theocracy, which in turn would turn into a Taliban-esque government.What tells you that? The senior Ayatollah in Iraq actually is explicitly *against* a theocracy but instead for a separation of church and state - to keep the church pure from the corrosive effects of politics. That is, he is exactly against the Iranian approach.

Don't be so afraid of a theocracy, it's a whole world better than the current anarchy and US imposed strongmen like that pompous fool Chalabi. If they can offer stability that is worth the limitations they'll impose on everyday life. And even then the conservatism will eventually be overcome, we see signs of that in Iran.

It isn't a surprise. And don't let the term contractor fool you, "contractors" do some of the occupation jobs the US armed forces son't like to do because they fear casualties. My first thought was, as the facts unfolded, that they were operatives. This seems to have CIA written all over it. There were no other forces in the area, and no one "seemed" to know why they were there. It was as if they needed time to manufacture a story to explain what happened. My guess is that they were led into an ambush with maybe bad info.

But all that is really secondary. The real issue is what the "average Joe Iraqi" did there. One can't describe the entire population of a large city as terrorists. But at the same time there is going to be little sympathy for civilian casualties if they are viewed as the same as the terrorists. While the neocons and Shrub's dreams of an American empire are proving harder to realize, both the average Iraqi and the average American are losing big time. What happened there is one example of how both sides are losing.

In the meantime, 12 marines were lost yesterday in very intense fighting. I have a friend who is in the Corp and just got his orders for Iraq. He leaves next month. Before it was all about fighting the bad guys. Now he will be faced with a confrontation with the civilians. Remember we are there for them - bringing "democracy" for the average Iraqi. At least that was the latest excuse. But now it might be over violation of UN resolutions, or saving them from Saddam, or finding nukes, or whatever else one cares to use in defense of Shrub's little war of empire building.

But I also know that my countrymen were burned and strung-up on a bridge like butchered cattle and put on display for the rest of the world. That kind of action demands a response also. And that there is a call for more young Americans to go and fight in Iraq proves that the response is on the way. We may have reached a point of no return. So for those who think this war is such a great idea, here's your big chance - you may want to pick up a rifle yourself, go to Iraq and help out. This may last a while.

[ April 07, 2004, 18:34: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

An Iraqi might telly you in reply that the US did kill Saddam's sons, only to put their bodies on display for worldwide tv ... and they might ask you why the US are allowed to do stuff like this unpunished while they aren't.

Not my point of view, but they will ask you that.

This may last a while.
That's another thing I wonder about - how long we are going to be over there. It is safe to assume that even if everything goes as planned, and nothing delays the June 30th date for the transfer of authority to the Iraqi government, that the U.S. troops are still going to be needed there for months to come. It is even possible that we keep a presence there for an indeterminate amount of time - kind of like South Korea.

@ragusa: better off under a theocracy? give me a break.

not so many people are happy with al-sadr. check the iraqi blogs (salam pax, etc, who think that muqti and his militia are just thugs), or even al jazeera (granted, though, that they tend to have a sunni bias). al jazeera even has a story about how happy and prosperous the kurds are. so yeah, things are ugly, but I'm still not convinced at all about the vietnam analogy.

not, of course, that bush shouldn't be sent on an express train back to texas this november.

Ragusa - Hmmm, good point. My answer would be a matter of degree. The bodies were not hung from a bridge and burned. And it was my impression that the two sons had done similiar things to the Iraqi people during their regime. There had been much torture and that people were brutalized by the Saddam family. I did not agree with what the US did by putting them on TV, since it may have been political, but there are other valid reasons; such as proving to critics (like me) that they really did get the "bad guys."

One only has to think of what happened to Mussolini after WWII ended in Italy. The Saddams may have gotten off easy. It is really too bad that they could not have been turned over to the Iraqi people for proper punishment, since at least some of them seem to enjoy this type of bucthery. But, like you, I don't agree with this type of behavior, since we have laws, courts and a civilized process for dealing with these kinds of people as human beings.

[ April 07, 2004, 23:43: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

@Bion

Thanks for reminding me about Salam Pax! I haden't been there in awhile. Could you post links to some more blog sites like that one?

Well, I have a friend who got hired by Blackwater a few months back, and he is in Iraq right now providing security. I was worried that that might have been him the other day, thankfully it wasn't.

I'm awaiting an email from him about what's going on over there and what his feelings are. He was a local(county) police officer before he left. And was not a member of the armed forces. I'll let you know what he has to say.

salam pax is at dear_raed.blogspot.com

there other links to bloggers in iraq on that page. it all makes rather depressing reading tho.

Is it me? Or are all muslim "freedom fighters" cowards? They talk a big game, but when push comes to shove, the best they can do is blow up buses full of civilians, crash planes into buildings full of civilians, and fire rockets from the safety of mosques because they know we'll show respect enough not to blow it to bits.

It takes more courage to come out from the shadows and stand up for what you believe in, than to strap explosives on your body and decimate a cafe in the name of political activism.

They're lucky I'm not running the show over there...Those pansy little cowards would have been playing with their 72 virgins already as their precious mosque/shield came crashing down around them. What the hell, the Mexicans did it to a little church in Texas 168 years ago...We should too!

Screw Iraq. Screw the Middle East. Let's develop an alternative energy source so those jackasses can go back to living in the 8th century like they want.

Whew! That felt good!

They're lucky I'm not running the show over there...Something tells me we're all lucky you're not running the show over there.

Aldeth, I beleive the plan is to build or occupy thirteen or fourteen military bases in Iraq.

I don't think we ever realy plan to pull out of there.

Is it me? Or are all muslim "freedom fighters" cowards? It's you.

I agree with Bill Mahr. It takes a lot of courage to give up your life for a cause you believe in. Whether that cause is justified (in this case, of course, it's not), or whether you think that their fanaticism borders on insanity, is irrelevant. It's still brave. And there's nothing more dangerous than a courageous psychopath.

@Aldeth:
@ Splunge
I respect your opinion. This is the Alley! There's no place for respect here! :p :D But I agree with with everything else you said in that paragraph.

What is the one in severly outnumbered and outgunned do? Even if their cause may not be admirable in our eyes I wouldnt call them cowards. They attack whatever they can attack and do whatever they can do. Their cause wouldnt gain much if they nicely gathered in one spot with all their arms to be quickly wiped out in one airstrike. If anything I think they are too "brave". If I was an Iraqi resistor I would deploy a sneak, strike and run tactic. Snipe from the shadows at soldiers and run. Look at the terror two men in Virginia managed to cause with just a rifle. Imagine a few thousand people doing stuff like that in Iraq. Lots of small pinpricks and never a target for the US soldiers to attack. Gathering in a mosque seems foolhardily brave to me.

Gathering in a mosque seems foolhardily brave to me Yes, especially since no women are allowed. That would mean spending the afternoon with a bunch of guys who smelled like goats.

My joking aside, it can be said that some of these guys have more guts than brains. The opportunity is there for a political solution, but instead they are giving the Bushies an excuse to linger and to build-up even larger forces in their country.

But I think that the real fear for the terrorist/fundamentalists is the fear of reform. That is what is hidden in my bad joke at the top of my post. Sometimes it's easy to forget that women only got the vote within the last hundred years. And that even in the US there are fundamentalists who think that America went to hell once women and people of color got the right to vote. And as Sir Bel points out, there are those who would like to keep Isalm in the 8th Century.

The need for reform is great in some parts of the Middle East. But even in the US it did not happen all at once. While Jefferson and Washington maintained their plantations with slave labor, while debating the "rights of men," others, such as Ben Franklin and John Adams, were denoucing slavery and debating the need for reform only as far as the politics of the day could take them. It took over another hundred years before reform settled into our own politcal solutions. One can't force this type of reform at the point of a rifle, nor can one stop the progression of reform by blowing himself up. It may be brave but it's not very smart.

But I think that the real fear for the terrorist/fundamentalists is the fear of reform. That is what is hidden in my bad joke at the top of my post. I think I disagree there. They do not fear reform, they want reform. There is nothing more anti-conservative then fundamentalism of whatever religion. Getting back to the fundamentals requires the abolishment of the existing wrong. Fundamentalism wants to destroy the existing order, not preserve it. And that's what makes them so appealling, the promise of complete reformation and getting rid of the cleptocracies and establish a completly new utopia. Fundamentalism is very modern, even it is claiming to find an ideal world in the past. An ideal world in the past can't be really traced nor re-created, it is pure "science" fiction.

Chandos,

I may be misunderstanding your point in your statement of:
The need for reform is great in some parts of the Middle East. But even in the US it did not happen all at once. While Jefferson and Washington maintained their plantations with slave labor, while debating the "rights of men," others, such as Ben Franklin and John Adams, were denoucing slavery and debating the need for reform only as far as the politics of the day could take them. It took over another hundred years before reform settled into our own politcal solutions. One can't force this type of reform at the point of a rifle...I don't really consider the Civil War a "political solution". I realize that the Civil War was in reality about many things, including slavery, but it seems that these issues were in fact settled at the end of a gun, in a war that cost more American lives than the rest of the wars we have fought in combined IIRC. :confused:

[ April 09, 2004, 14:21: Message edited by: Taluntain ]

Iago - But the reality of the Taliban, and the like, was not a reforming of rights for women. It was just the opposite. And they were allies of Bin Laden. If you believe that the fundamentalist/terrorists who hold themselves up in Mosques are reformists, then we will continue to disagree, because we are viewing reform in two different ways. You are saying that women already have rights in these places, such as the right to vote and be treated as equal citizens, and that fundamentalists are attempting to roll-back such rights, while I am arguing that they don't have such rights to begin with. If I am understanding you properly.

Darkwolf - No need to be confused, because while the larger issue of slavery was settled during the Civil War, the issue of reform was not. That is why blacks had separate water fountains, rest rooms, could hardly vote in most instances, and had the doorways to schools blocked by the likes of George Wallace, in the deep South long after the war ended. The fundamentalists here ran around at night with sheets over their heads and burning crosses.

When I said in my earlier post that Adams and Franklin argued for an end to slavery "as far as the politics of the day" would let them, that is what I was referring to: The presevation of the Union. To have pressed the debate beyond a certain point with the slave states would have meant an end to the union barely before the new nation was established. That was the political fear of the day and why the issue was left unsettled.

Now, the Declaration of Independence declared the "rights of men" with no distinction to race. In fact that all men were equal. Slavery was an obstacle to that reform. The War removed the obstacle as well as establishing the sovereignty of the National government over that of the states, which allowed a political solution to eventually take shape in the way of the Woman's right to vote and the Civil Rights Acts of the 60s. But this could never have occured until the "state's rights" issue could be settled first.

Edit: I did want to add that the confusion was my fault because I "shorthanded" my post. Sorry for that.

[ April 09, 2004, 00:43: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

Iago - But the reality of the Taliban, and the like, was not a reforming of rights for women. It was just the opposite. And they were allies of Bin Laden. If you believe that the fundamentalist/terrorists who hold themselves up in Mosques are reformists, then we will continue to disagree, because we are defining reform in two different ways. You are saying that women already have rights in these places, such as the right to vote and be treated as equal citizens, and that fundamentalists are attempting to roll-back such rights, while I am arguing that they don't have such rights to begin with. If I am understanding you properly.
Well, no, or yes. I haven't had women rights particularly in my mind. But I think we could agree that reform is changing the way things are to the better, in the case of religious fundamentalism, putting things back in the way they were meant to be according to their interpration. Which in fact, and that's the irony of it, the world never has been as some people make it out to have been.

Which makes fundamentalism anti-conservative in its very nature. Any kind of fundamentalism, christian fundamentalism of course too. They attempt to change the world according to their interpretation of their "fundamental reading sources". Interpretation is always arbitrary. So they want to change the world according to an arbitrary image of the world, a fiction. Only they base their fiction not in the future, they base it on a fictionalised past.

Or one could call it anti-reformation, as at the beginning of the 20th. century, a wave of "Pro-Western" reformation swept of the ME, which its peak and greatest success in Atatürk's Turkey. At the same time, fundamentalism was born and gained pace.

As for women rights and Afghanistan. Indeed, as far as I know, in the early 90ies, women where walking in mini-skirts through Kabul. And Iraq was singled out, as it is one of the most modern countries in the region with a highly trained work-force and a quiet a lot of women with PHD's and in higher positions at work. A result of another failed reformation, as most ME countries have successfully leveled their education systems up on a similar level as Western Countries have in the 60ies. Hoping that would solve their internal problems. Which it didn't. It failed and spawend fundamentalists with brilliant education as surgeons, architects and business adminstrators. Adhering to a very revolutonary and progressive ideology of complete change. In Iran, the didn't re-install something old, they installed something unprecidented and completly new. A modern theocracy. They didn't bring back the tradition, that is the Persian Empire. When they speak about tradition, they speak about their science fiction, but not tradition.

Another problem is, to judge the role of women in other societies. As it's not so simple for our own middle-ages. Women were less, but an aristocratic woman could wield much power in the tribal system called federalism. It's India and the Middle-East that spawned the most powerful women in politics in the last century, only the UK can keep up with Maggie Thatcher.

How many of those fundamental leaders have a first-class education at a British, American or French university. An awful lot. I think the Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who indeed supported the build up of the Taliban as a political tool to gain influence on Afghanistan and settle some border disputes favourably, graduated at Harvard and Oxford. Isn't it ironic.

But tradition doesn't matter, as they are aiming to change the goverments of Algeria, Iraq (succeded), Saudi-Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and others (remembering that one of the mainheads of Al-Queda now was involved in the assination of Anwar al-Sadat). And then they will try to install their utopic idea of society and goverment. No tradition would then not be questioned and changed if necessary. In Iraq, their racing now for influence.

But on the upside. Those fundamental fictions are complete rubbish and like any other totalitarian regime bound to fail. It's a lesson, in my view, that has to be learned by the folks there. It doesn't work, but it has to be tried out and proven. Then they will go on and try something else, hopefully better. And that's why my bets still are on Iran becoming the first working democracy, yet still not Arab, but at least...

[ April 09, 2004, 01:06: Message edited by: Iago ]

Ah, I see your point. The problem here is that it is the religion that is important and not the politics. The politics may allow women to go to college and wear mini-skirts. But the religion forbids such behavior. So, while the countries you cite in the past have been moving forward politically for some time, the religion has been moving in a different direction. In Iran and Pakistan where the religion is more important than the politics, fundamentalism is an anomaly, because they are seeking a religious solution to a political problem. In the West, politics and religion are separate, with their own spheres of influence. But here it is not so hap-hazard, but crafted in the contruction of the systems.

So while in the West we have a system of reform that is liberal in a political sense, it is really conservative in a political sense in the ME. At least I think that is what you are saying.