Did you really expect them to fight the only superpower, neigh, hyper power on this planet for man to man convential warfare tactics, anyone who thought so is delusional. This is classic guerilla warfare albeit with suicide attacks.
Here's the facts
~these fanatics love death and want war
~the US has give them it a plenty
I think personally the fanatics love the US being in the ME, easy target, easier to get into "paradise"
Absolutely. This post may be of some interest....
http://www.debatepolitics.com/474222-post188.html
As for a successful Iraq being a boost I cannot see it. Even if Iraq was successful, it would still be behind Turkey in terms of liberalism by decades. Turkey has not inspired the Muslim ME into... anything ( I mean Turkey is about to cut capital punishment - a long revered Muslim tradition). Like I have said the ME needs reform but (unfortunately) we can't make them do it, they need to do it themselves, like we did it ourselves.
We just have to sit back, defend Israel if it gets invaded by other soverign nations, promote a two state solution and make sure no ME states get hold of nukes. Forget building a democratic centre in the ME.
Why do you insist that the success of one nation must be equal to another in order to equal success? We cannot have an impractical expectation that we will ever see Vermont in the Middle East. Even a marginal success (which Iraq will be) is a success for Arab society. Turkey is not Sunni. And Turkey is not the problem. The problem is the heartland of Islam and the Sunni. They need a success story that does not involve the massacre of the other tribes or a "martyr's" sacrifice upon the west.
We do this constantly. We are adhering to intellectual habit and not questioning our past. Our media seems to be inventing impossible missions for our militaries and our politicians are lacking the vision needed. There is a grave difference between freedom and democracy and there are many definitions to democracy. Each culture will have to define it on their own. We've got Liberals screaming that the Middle East will never succeed because it doesn't fit the model we live in and we have the NeoCon screaming that it can. Both are wrong. 14 centuries cannot be undone with a single democratic vote.
It is absolute truth that the only thing that will fix the Islamic world are Muslims. All we have done is given them opportunity. The Iraqi democracy will not reflect what we would like to see and their definitions of freedom will never satisfy an American or a Brit. But it will be freedom and an opportunity. Free will is the prescription for success. In the mean time, we have to put up with some fanatical populations who may (and will) initially choose the zealot as a leader. They will choose the comforts and securities of tradition to the unknown. This is human nature. Where we fail to recognize is that a fundamental Islamists will never be our friend, but he need not be our enemy.
If Iraq fails, I believe it will be the Arab Middle East's last chance to lift itself above the countless failures of their past. Perhaps the smartest thing in Islam was the Shia succession from the Sunni tribe after Muhammed's death. Aside from Isreal, where are the legitimate striving democracies in the Middle East? - Lebanon, Iran, Iraq. All dominantly Shi'ite. Yet who do we choose as "friends?" The Sunni Arab society (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan) that breeds the vast majority of religious terror upon us and certainly the only representation of the apocalyptic terrorist. We all know that this is true because of oil needs and other factors, but at the root of this is simple intellectual habit. We do this, simply because that's the way we have always done it.
Iraq matters. I would much rather set up a beacon of democracy in the Middle East in a country that sufferred from a dictator (while we allowed his "soveriegnty" and outright supported him briefly, though largely exxagerated when considering the long term support given to him by France, Russia, and China) that can give us what the Sauds currently are. But without the comfortable scapegoating and black eye.
But ultimately, no matter what occurs, what makes our civilizations irreconcilable is the treatment of the women. This key factor is precisely why our civilizations flourish and prosper and theirs stagnates in misery and damaging tradition. The subjugation of women drains the life blood from a society. We have seen it countless times in history. Wherever we find this, we see the religious harshness that results in fueding and blood shed and the heightened "superior" mind of the religious male ego. But with Islam, it is a prescription held dear since the violent rampagings of Muhammed.
By the way, I enjoy discussing things with you Garza. Somewhere along the way, we have started to find even ground on some things. Sort of like Kandahar. He too disagrees with our "experiment" in Iraq, but he sees the wider problem and thinks from all angles.
