Of course not. Only an idiot would support it.
The strategy I would have supported (shutting the f*ck up) would have resulted in the same basic thing as now, except for the damage to the US prestige and the boost to Putin’s.
Diplomacy and foreign relations is all form.
Of course. It’s like US exists in a vacuum. Who cares what kinds of relations other countries have with US. Relations that are based on opinions of US reliability, for example.
You don’t have a pattern of facts or sound reasoning to convince anyone of anything. You can’t explain the arguments you make. If you could you would not write what you must think is clever. You don’t need to convince me, just explain how Obama folded when there’s no record of taking military limited punitive strikes off of his options as Commander in chief if Assad fails to dismantle his CW arsenal.
When there are no CW attacks between now and completion of the dismantling and destruction process will you admit that Obama has not pissed on me or you or anybody?
Assad isn’t Shia. Also, even if he was Sunni they’d hate him because he’s a Baathist.
You’ll notice they hated Saddam Hussein who was a Sunni Basthist.
Iran.
The inevitable Wiki
Well, aside from that you have stated on numerous occasions that al Qaeda hates Shiites as much as they hate us. Can you be so kind as to provide us a cite to support that?
Ah yes, because when it comes to the Middle East and Islam wikipedia is never wrong.
The Alawites are not Shia. They may at times claim they are and suck up to various Shia clerics to get them to recognize them as Muslims, but they’re not.
BTW, I nearly pissed myself laughing at the moron who claimed they were twelvers.
Where do you find such ignorant twits that can make such a stupid statement and how can you know so little about a region that you feel so strongly that you can take such a jaw-droppingly ignorant statement at face value?
Do you know what a twelver is?
For your sake I hope you’d never laugh at someone who claimed that the Greek Orthodox Church was part of the Roman Catholic Church.
Now, perhaps you can enlighten us as to how you can make such stupid pronouncements which would cause most Middle Easterners to roll on the floor laughing at you.
How many times have you visited the Middle East, how many Syrians have you ever spoken with and how many books on the subject have you ever read.
We exist as something other than a club to use to bash conservatives.
Please don’t ever disrespect us like that again.
Beyond that, I can’t help but notice you failed to explain why Al Quaeda had such equally vehement hatred for the Sunni Saddam Hussein.
Why is that?
Did you know so little about the subject you didn’t know how to respond or did you realize that if you admitted that Al Quaeda hated Hussein as much as he hated Assad you’d be conceding the reason for their hatred wasn’t his tribal identification but because he’s a Baathist.
Yes, AQ hates the Shia and they also hate the Alawites, but they hate Sunnis who who don’t subscribe to their particular twisted version of Salafism that they do just as much.
You may take that as figurative speech, as no quantitative measure of hate is currently available. Smart guy like you, pretty sure you already know that. Just as I’m sure you know that AlQ derives from a foundation in wahhabi Islam, which is intensely anti-Shia.
However, if it will put your mind at ease…
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=754
The inevitable Wiki
Will this do for a down payment?
Ibn, can you instruct us as to what justifies your sweeping and insulting statements of certainty and authority, deriding as idiots and ignoramuses without so much as a hint of citation? If you are going to declare yourself the Boards authority on everything Islamist, would a cite or two be too much to ask?
Al Qaeda does hate the Shiites as much as they hate Americans because they’re Salafists who hate all sects(for lack of a better word) of Islam that have developed after the death of Muhammad, but they also hate Sunni monarchs and Muslim Baathists(whom they see as trying to turn Arab Muslims against non-Arab Muslims in favor of Arab Christians) as much as they hate Americans because they seem them as an obstacle in their goal of a united Muslim community.
The Baathists, like Nasser, are, at least in theory, fervent Arab nationalists* who seek to unite Arab Muslims and Arab Christians(again in theory) which angers Al Quaeda, which is a cosmopolitan organization which unites Afghans, Arabs, Pakistanis, North Africans, and countless other against non-Muslims and non-Salafist Muslims.
For that reason, just as the Muslim Brotherhood hated Nasser(a Sunni), Al Quaida** hates Baathists whether they’re Sunni or Alawi.
*. Obviously the alliance between Syria and Iran looks weird based on this. Politics makes strange bedfellows and that’s especially true in the Middle East.
**. Yes, I’m bored and feel like spelling Al Quaeda in various different ways. I was tempted to write “The Fountainhead” but didn’t feel like dealing with angry Ayn Rand fans.
I didn’t insult you and I’ve never suggested I was the board’s authority on everything Islam, much less “Islamist”.
I merely corrected you when you claimed that Assad was a Shia(a claim that had you made in either Iraq, Lebanon or Iran would have been seen as a huge insult).
You then in a rather insulting manner decided to hurl wiki quotes as well as some blog post from the LA Times(what an authoritative source on Islam) at me.
I responded, perhaps more strongly than I’d intended, but just as black people don’t like getting told about their history and community, we don’t like getting lectured by westerners.
Now, if you’d like a cite or two. I’ll recommend a few that you might like.
Emmanuel Sivan’s Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics, Gilles Keppel The Prophet and the Pharaoh, and, for all his faults, The Arab Predicament by Fouad Ajami which is a very readable book about the evolution and collapse of Arab nationalism.
Finally, you made a reference to “Wahabbi Islam” as if they were a separate Islamic sect rather than a school of though amongst the Sunnis.
They don’t call themselves or consider themselves “Wahabbis”. That is a term invented by their Islamic enemies and is intended as an insult because they implication is they view them as having replaced the Prophet Muhammad with Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, one of the intellectual founders of the movement.*
They refer to themselves as “Salafists” which comes from the Arab term for “ancestors”. They believe that for the first two or three(I forget the exact number) of generations since Muhammad heard the call, that Islam was perfect and view all other innovations since then and all Islamic groups formed since then as evil.
Of course, like the Puritans, Hasidic Jews and other comparable movements they seek and try to emulate a past that never existed.
Using such a term and thinking of them as such will help you understand them vastly more than referring to them as Wahhabis.
*. Of course this should give you an idea why most Muslims have issues with the Alawis and why most Shia try to distance themselves from them except for when politically necessary to support them.
And again, you give us authoritative pronouncements without a hint of citation. You may be just as knowledgeable as you claim to be, but understand: I have no way of knowing that, and I respond negatively to being sneered upon. Think of it as a personality quirk that I share with just about everybody.
I was not “sneering” at you hearing you complain about anyone sneering at you considering your own posting style is quite amusing.
You demanded cites and I provided them from respected scholars who’ve taught at prominent universities.
You provided claims from an encyclopedia anyone can edit and a blog post.
You can continue to insist that the Alawites are Shia despite the claims of the Shia, but you’re not going to accomplish anything other than looking foolish.
No, you didn’t, you mentioned prominent scholars who you claim to have read, and suggested I derive my citation from them. Effectively, all you did was claim their authority as your own, and offered me a homework assignment.
Be that as it may, I only said that AlQ harbors an intense dislike of Shia, which you subsequently confirmed. Since that was my only point, and you agree, why are we off on a hijack about your bona fides?
That is demonstrably false.
Had you forgotten what you actually claimed or were you gambling that people wouldn’t notice what you actually wrote?
People will of course note I never disputed the idea that AQ hated the Shia or even the fact that they hated Alawites. I merely disputed the idea that Alawites are Shia.
Presumably Elucidator believes that the Jews for Jesus are actually “Jews” and that American Jews who dispute this are small-minded bigots.
Yes, of course, I do know that. However, you have from time to time used that “fact” to support arguments that al Qaeda would not align with Shi’a, since they hate the Shi’a as much as they hate us. But I’m not sure that really is a valid argument.
Let’s just say that al Qaeda is no friend of the Shi’a, and we would certainly hope that an unholy alliance between, say, al Qaeda and the Iranian Quds Force wouldn’t happen, but I would not rule it out as a logical impossibility.
Ibn: Can you educate us on the Alawite religion and how it fits into Islam? To be fair to elucidator, they are commonly referred to as “a branch of Shi’a Isalm” in the US.
Are the Alawites sort of the Mormons of Islam? Mormons are neither Catholic nor Protestant (nor Orthodox), and many Christians don’t consider them to be Christians at all.
The Alawites claim to be Shia, but until rather recently weren’t even regarded as Muslims by most Shia.
I won’t pretend to be an expert on the Alawites but the reason they’re hated by so many is because they’re said to deify Ali, a charge which for obvious reasons the Shia would be nervous about.
And yes, I think the Mormons and the Millenial Jews(AKA the Jews for Jesus) are viewed much the same way.
You’ll notice that even most Jews on SDMB object to the idea of Millenial Jews being Jews.
Christians and Jews generally feel that the theology of the Millenial Jews and Mormons is incompatible with Christian and Jewish thinking. The same is true regarding the Alawites.
More to the point, AQ would hate them as much even if they didn’t claim to be Shia.
And Shiaare considered non-Muslims by many Muslims, quite possibly a majority. And so it goes. Even though the founder of Pakistan was himself a Shia, the practice of Shia Islam has been effectively outlawed there, and a steady genocide is occurring.
Update: Putin caves on Chapter 7; UNSC deal reached: