The bloody struggle continues for democracy, peace, liberty, and….oh, sorry, this is Syria:
Foreign Islamists intent on turning Syria into an autocratic theocracy have swollen the ranks of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad and think they are waging a “holy war”, a French surgeon who treated fighters in Aleppo has said.
Dr. Jacques Beres said that half the rebels he treated were non-Syrian.
“It’s really something strange to see. They are directly saying that they aren’t interested in Bashar al-Assad’s fall, but are thinking about how to take power afterwards and set up an Islamic state with sharia law to become part of the world Emirate.”
Knight 99 – yes, I fully agree. We must get out of Afghanistan and leave them on their own.
I don’t know if we can fully get out of the ME, for two reasons. One, Israel can’t be and shouldn’t be expected to exist on its own, and certainly, without any western support, and I don’t mean money, nations like Iran would move in immediately.
The second reason, although I agree with your sentiment of ‘leave the Islamists fight out their problems on their own’…I fully agree with this, but the problem is that Russia is sitting there, ready to move into any power vacuum in the region.
I don’t think we can ban Muslims from immigration but I do think we should ban the veil, we should ban any and all prayers etc in our public schools, and we should punish any hate preaching in their mosques.
Well we are closer to full agreement anyway.
Still a ways to go yet, but closer.
Knight99 “Status and slavery are very much alive and well in Arabic culture today. There’s nothing more to it than that.”
There is more to it. Those Islamists cultures would have died out and imploded under their own impossible governance in a heavily populated area connected to a global economy had we in the West not discovered their oil, pumped it and paid them for it and de facto propped up ancient cultures that would have otherwise died out in a Darwinian way. In short, it is indeed all about oil and its funding power.
ME counties will gradually have to adapt to hybrids of capitalism and democracy, just as the Chinese are adapting to capitalism and will ultimately adapt to democracy in order to keep their economy growing and feeding billions of people and keeping them content.
But none of this is a straight line, the Arab Spring may turn into the Arab winter and things get much worse, just as things got nasty during Charles Dickens’ industrial revolution novels that took place around the time of the US Civil War that ended slavery etc. It’s messy and takes time but the end goal for large populations has to be some form of capitalism and democracy.
Nomdeblog >
Yea ok, a millennium of Roman Empire say’s you’re not exactly accurate with all your facts.
Your more than welcome to your opinions, even to go buy some land and a house in Tripoli while you wait it out.
You simply will not have my willing money and vote to go bomb 5000 years of culture out of them on your fantastical economic and social theories.
I do agree wholeheartedly with you that these crapholes would not be a threat today without our initial interference and aid. But that is the whole point at the end of the day isn’t it.
“Yea ok, a millennium of Roman Empire say’s you’re not exactly accurate with all your facts.”
Funny you should say that. The Romans, esp.Constantine, actually figured out that the Christians were highly tolerant and good for trade, not caring who they traded with, just wanting to be early Adam Smiths. But then Mohammed came along and tried to reverse all that because he couldn’t get past goat herding. The whole area did nothing with that culture freeze framing them in 700 AD.
But now the ME can thrive just as Roman Empire learned to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s etc. Islam hasn’t figured that out yet and probably never will. But the people in the ME will have to figure it out or shrink into oblivion. Quebec has the same tribal problem with its language of 2% in North America which we prop up or it would disappear like unreformed Islam will.
Nomdeblog >
Sure, I can follow that.
At the end of the day my position is that Islam itself along with the Arabic nations offers us nothing of worth, outside of some oil trade. On the other hand we have the goods, the technology, food, medicine, education, and Rolex Watches they desire.
“They” in turn only truly offer us misery with their domestic issues, and heighten our own domestic problems via mass immigration (see terrorist bombings, French car-B-ques, and Swedish Gang Rapes).
We don’t need more illiterate cab drivers with a cultural hate for us from the Middle East, especially when we can load up with fairly benign illiterate cab drivers from the 3.5 billion persons Chinese/ Indian/ Mexican labor pools, no?
There is absolutely no sound reasoning to continue coddling the infantile Arab/ Islamic culture, in fact it’s potentially suicidal. This is the reason that every other culture on the planet fights to keep Islam out of its society as much as they can, and most are at war with Islam to one degree or another on or within their borders.
Everyone except us, a declining, decadent, spoilt, masochistic society of losers that seems to like getting beat up by the little bully on the block. Thanks, but No thanks.
What will the mid-east look like by the end of 2013?
I think we closer to the answer now that we saw what happened in Cairo and Benghazi on 9/11/2012. Some barbaric people want to hate the outside world, and make it knuckle under to their despotic rule based on their 8th century nomadic tribal culture. And too many in the civilized world want to appease these savages.
This will not end well. And the final cost will only go up as we keep appeasing them.
@ Knight 99 at September 11, 2012 9:29 PM
Well said….nothing to add. The only thing I can admire about Islam is their successful rejection of political correctness. Our achilles heel.