I dont understand why the Iraqi people would protest vehemently about US presence in Iraq just days after they liberated them from the oppressive regime of Saddam. Sure I can see the cultural distrust of the “old US” but cmon now we just got rid of one bad guy, do they really want us to leave so they can set up another bad guy to take his place?
Just what is an islamic state and how does that work?
Iran and Taliban Afghanistan, if you want examples of recent Islamic states. Maybe the Ottoman empire as well.
Sharia, or Islamic law is fairly well codified in the Koran. But of course, the devil is in the details as the 2 modern Islamic states can attest to.
Perhaps the best parallel is communism. How many times did that have to get tried (with disasterous results) before most people realized the fundamental system is flawed.
Also, we should be careful about drawing conclusions from the recent protests. While it may reflect the views of the majority, it might also just be the views of a vocal minority. Gallup hasn’t set up polling in Iraq yet.
At any rate, the US has it’s work cut out.
We’re seeing a lot of pent up rage and frustration on the part of the Shia. As mentioned, there is substantial foreign influence, and radical Islamic fundamentalism. Don’t underestimate simple hostility toward a conquering force. I don’t think we could reasonably expect everyone to throw garlands at our troops. Finally, it would be nice to have Saddam’s body or some part therefrom. Many Iraqis that are saying they want Saddam back don’t believe he is dead, IMO.
Just before the war kicked off I joked on another thread about how our “exit strategy” might be running away from a popular rebellion against US occupation after the war. I was partly joking.
The Ba’ath party imposed a secular society on Iraq, meaning that the people who actively (if furtively) opposed Hussein and company found a natural rallying point among the religious leadership. (Vaguely analogous to the situation in Iran in the 1970s.) Meanwhile, as militant Islam has increased throughout the region, Hussein began including religious exhortations in his own speeches in order to co-opt the religious movement against him and turn it to a defense against the threats of the U.S.
So you have a situation where a more or less secular society (with its own strongly religious minority) has spen the last 12 years, or more, with both the proponents and opponents of the government using increasingly religious terms to define their positions. As a result, most of the factions that are left (along with the great masses of people who simply want to get on with their lives) are all defining themselves in religious terms.
X~Slayer. I started a thread today entitled “Religious Freedom = An Oxymoron?”
Reading your post makes me think perhaps I should have been talking about “Freedom from Religion” rather than “Religious Freedom”.
You talk about the “Iraqi people” and their vehemence about the US presence. I believe that majority of the “Iraqi People”, being Islamic and religious, believe that the Americans are a bunch of Infidels that should not be present in the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala . Just as Osama Bin Laden does not want to see the Infidel Americans anywhere near the holy land of Mecca and Medina. Just as the Islamic Fundamentalists in Iran do not want to see any Infidels near the holy cities of Qom or Mashad.
To you (hopefully free of religion), it does not make any sense to replace the Shah with a worse regime: The Islamic Republic of Iran. It does not make any sense to replace the house of Saud with Bin Laden and his cohorts. And it does not make sense to replace Saddam Hossein with something worse: A fundamentalist Shiite Ayatollah. But you see, those people are not free of religion.
They do not know the meaning of the separation of church and state. Majority of them are poor, uneducated, and have no other social outlet except gathering in a mosque and listening to a Mullah’s propaganda. They see the guy in the Mosque better than the bad guy we just removed from power.
I hope that explains what is going on. I am afraid, the ultimate solution may be to free these people from religion. But that is going to take decades, if not centuries, of sustained education in such abstract issues as freedom, responsibility, the meaning of democracy, the affairs of the state, the role of faith, and the separation of the two.
Meanwhile, we as Americans are damned if we interfere, and damned if we did not. I believe we should not have gotten involved in this mess at the first place. The big question now is: How do we get ourself out of this mess?
There is no one answer for what exactly an Islamic State is, there is however a range that such a state would entail. With the end of the Caliphate a whole long time ago, gone was the only real example of a perfectly unified religious-political leadership that rested in the body of one person - which would be the “perfect” Islamic state.
The Quran is open to interpretation vis-a-vis politics, and just as anything else there are extreme and moderate takes on what it demands of a state. For a long while Christianity propped up monarchs (estentially dictators), and for a long time Islam has. There is hope for reform.
Historical examples abound of Islamic states that were liberal and prosperous, Spain was ruled peacefully and fairly by Arabs (Cordoba boasted Europe’s first street lights and thousands of public baths, and was a center of learning, all while being an Islamic state but not repressive), under the Ottoman rule the millet system let locals rule themselves and each religion could function on its own peacefully.
The present interpretation of Islam by the majority of the Arab world isn’t very condusive to democracy, and although Iraq does have religious undertones it is one of if not the most secular Arab state, probably due to Saddam’s rule. What exactly the Iraqi people want isn’t entirely clear, Iran as an Islamic state is on a totally different end of the spectrum as Cordoba.
Iraq could end up lots of ways, there are several of scenarios but I hope the above gives some hope and optimism to the future of Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.
Every other Western interloper in the region intervened merely to exploit the people and their riches; in the eyes of the Iraqis, what makes the United States any different?
What’s so hard to understand? We do the same thing.
Consider an analogy. The Soviet Union used to help out poor old Cuba with food and money. They even made sure the old corrupt regime didn’t get back in.
The USA has been throwing a temper tantrum ever since. In the same way, the Shiites don’t like the USA in their own backyard.
I am not in favor of giving the rebuilding of Iraq over to the UN, based on that body not having a good track record in that dept. The US has had some failures, but we’ve had some successes as well.
However, I wonder how much different the Iraqi protetest would be if we pretty much turned things over to the UN right now. Would the UN been seen as an invading presence?
This thing is going to be messy, but clearly we can’t just leave, no matter how big the protest are. The result would most likely be civil war, with someone as bad as Saddam back in power. We need to hunker down, do as good and quick a job as possible of getting an interim gov’t in place, and GET IRAQIS RUNNING THINGS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
I don’t think anyone in the Bush administration thought the activities after the war was over would be EASIER than the war itself. So, now the real work begins.
The problem is, if we leave too soon, we’ll probably see open warfare, or something like it, between the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Kurds (dunno about the Turkomans). We’ll get blamed for it, too. This was the rationale for not taking Baghdad in Gulf War I, remember?
I think we need to stay for a couple of years, long enough to create a sufficiently stable government that we can leave without a civil war breaking out immediately. If we’re not careful, a civil war may break out while we’re still there.
Smartest thing to do is get the infrastructure back jup, get Iraqis living at a much higher level of comfort and affluence as fast as humanly possible, and get them oriented toward leading the good life instead of killing somebody. It’s funny how much less appealing murder is if you have something to live for.
Setting up an Islamic state along the lines of medieval Spain would not be a bad idea at all. It would provide for a certain amout of freedom and toleration for people living under it.
The one thing we gotta do is make sure the Iraqis understand that they can’t do that ignorant-ass stoning and so forth of women that they like to do in places like Iran and Saudi Arabia. A good, thorough shaming along those lines would do the whole Arab world good.
Every day we stay is another day we are identified with the British colonialists who used gas attacks upon them decades ago.
help me out and mention a few of the successes, I’m drawing a blank
China Guy: I’m guessing John Mace was referring to West Germany and Japan.
Maybe it would be picking nits, but the United Nations Organisation was established on 24th October, 1945, but I guess Germany and Japan would fall under a UN success. Marshall Plan was also a mojor factor. Actually, though, I’m thinking something more recent in the past few decades would be more appropriate and I am drawing a blank for a success.
There is no “Iraq”. Never was. Iraq is a geo-political phantasm, dreamed up by British and French colonialists. Only the brute force of the Saddamites kept it together. The Kurds of the north have no common interests whatsoever with the Sh’ia of the south, save for a desire to avoid domination by the Sunni of the center. Iraq will continue to exist for precisely one minute after the US troops depart.
We have bought ourselves a basket of scorpions, and we’re gonna regret it. Big time.
Sorry, luc, but can you perhaps explain who the “we” is in your post?
And how did the “we” buy it?
Who was it was that sold it to the said “we”?
Are the sellers really gonna regret it?
OK I intellectually reeled back at *FranticMad’s analogy. He is perfectly right about not wanting communists at our own backyard. The thing is that Cuda is in our backyard but not really at our home. If the communists came into our home and saved the people from a very repressive american regime, we could have a 3 party system running for office today with the communist in control of congress.
The funny irony is that the loud protests for an islamic state are being held in northern iraq, a typically sunni and arab populated area. I pretty much know that the protests have no real intention of forming any religious state but it formed a deep question in my mind. An islamic state is based on one person ruling. A monarchy based on religion to govern the ignorant populace.
Heres the kicker. All iraqis want iragi riches to go only to iraqis. Fair enuf, its their riches. However, for now they are poor thru no fault of the US (other than the fact we supported the guy in the beginning :smack: ) Heres life lesson. Would you take advise for how to be rich from a poor guy? If his advise really works, why is he still poor? Wouldnt you rather learn how to be rich from someone who is rich? At the very least a rich person knows how to keep his money or he wouldnt still be rich. Sooooo, how many modern Islamic states are rich? check out the internet. The list of nations who are verified to be rich arent islamic no matter how much oil they have in their lands.
…but then it would be hard to explain that to an uneducated, overly religious, very emotional and previously very repressed people. The only solution I can think of is to set up secular schools to teach all iraqi children modern education. I wonder what kind of flames I can get for [ithat*?
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Sometimes I really wonder why it is so bloody rare, just for the novelty of it, investigate and think before posting so as to perhaps get a few items right:
(a) Iraq has been a secular state since the 1960s. Quite clearly the schools were, … get this, secular. The calls for Islamization are coming from the failure of the secular experiment (which isn’t really new in the region in a short term) and rejection of the past regime. ‘Lack of education’ is not the bloody problem.
(b) Demos calling for an Islamic state have largely been held in Shiite areas, not Sunni areas, although Sunni and Shiite Imams did get together on this in Baghdad.
© The condescending notion if they just copy us rather fails on the merits, insofar as the just copy thing was tried already. The result was largely Egypt, Iraq, Syria… all rather unfortunate states at best.
(d) Questioning the sincerity of the calls of a religious state I rather suppose arises from navel gazing, efforts throughout the region for a religious state have been quite sincere, and equally sincerely repressed.
Life lessons are best proferred by those with experience. Until one has some experience in the region, it’s best not to proffer them as lessons.
I’m not sure how many people calling for an Islamic state to be set up in Iraq really want an Islamic state set up, and to what extent the calls for one are a reaction against the old Baathite government on one hand and American occupation on the other.