Bye, bye Blair!

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by Serrart

I liked Blair... till Iraq. He definitely did many good things but then he supported a war, bypassing Onu role, backing false informations and lying to all the world. The results have been a a huge humanitarian tragedy and a rise of terrorism acts (as UK tragically experienced). Now we're seeing a Country where every week hudreds, thousands, of people die and two of the most powerful Countries in the world stuck there without any perspective to create a more stable future. If he had said no to Bush all this wouldn't have happened (I really doubt GWB would have gone there alone) and the solution would have been diplomatic, as obviously has to be now. Luckily there are still politicians like Zapatero who are able to act accordingly with their principles.

I'd say there's enough material to judge Blair not too kindly.

Romy

I think the US and the UK should never have interferred, but with all due respect, I think Iraq would have been a powderkeg anyway, given the political and ethnic dividing lines that exist there. You will never (NEVER) get a coalition govt with Sunnis and Shi'ites....they have fundamental differences that prevent them from cooperating for any length of time.

[irishgrl]

one author's take on the Sunni/Shia divide:

The biggest obstacle to establishing the Caliphate is that Shi'a "Islam" never bought into the Caliphate at all. At bottom, it's a different religion from Sunni Islam. They're not just different branches of a faith, as with Protestantism and Catholicism, but separate faiths whose core differences are more-pronounced than those between Christians and Jews.

Technically, Sunni militants are correct when they label the Shi'a "heretics." Persians and their closest neighbors, with long memories of great civilizations, were never comfortable with the crudeness of Arabian Islam--which the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss aptly called "a barracks religion."

The struggle has never ended between the ascetic, intolerant Bedouin faith of Arabia, with its fascist obsession on behavior, and the profound theologies of Persian civilization that absorbed and transformed Islam. While Shi'ism only prevailed in Persia within the last millennium (nudging out Sunni Islam at last), "Aryan" Islam had long been shaped by Zoroastrianism and other ineradicable pre-Islamic legacies.

Persians made the new faith their own, incorporating cherished traditions--just as northern Europeans made Christianity their own through Protestantism. It's illuminating to hear Iran's president rumor the return of the Twelfth Imam, since the coming of that messiah figure is pure Zoroastrianism, with no connection to the Koran or the Hadiths.

Even the rhetoric of Iran's Islamic Revolution, condemning the U.S. as the "Great Satan" divided the world into forces of light and darkness--Zoroaster again, as well as Mani, the dualist whose followers we know as "Manicheans." Iranians excitedly deny such pre-Islamic influences--then worship at the ancient shrines of re-invented saints, celebrate the Zoroastrian New Year, and incorporate fire rites into social events.

The Prophet's attempt to discipline Arabian hillbillies produced a faith ill-fitted to Persia's complex civilization--or to Mesopotamian Arabs, who despised the illiterate desert nomads. Islam was bound to change as it occupied this haunted real estate.

What we've gotten ourselves involved in today is an old and endless struggle between the desert and the city, between civilization and barbarism. Long oppression may have made Shi'ism appear backward, but it's inherently a richer faith than Sunni Islam. With its End-of-Times vision, founding martyrs and radiant angels, its mysticism and wariness of the flesh, Shi'ism is closer to Christianity than check-list Sunni Islam ever could be.

Further confounding the strategic situation, there are other, parallel struggles within Shi'ism and Sunni Islam. Over the centuries, both faiths developed sophisticated urban classes that are now under assault, as they periodically have been, by intolerant simplifiers preaching the reform-school Islam of seventh-century Arabia.

Simultaneously, there's been some bizarre cross-fertilization: Osama bin Laden, a Sunni who hates the Shi'a more fiercely than he does Americans, has grafted a Shi'a End-Of-Days vision onto Sunni Islam. Meanwhile, the mullahs who locked down Iran obsess about behavior--a Sunni approach to faith--at the expense of Shi'ism's tradition of inner luminosity (in the Sunni world, the persecuted Sufis were the mystics).

We're a fringe player in multiple zero-sum struggles: Persian Zoroastrianism in Muslim garb vs. Bedouin fascism; multiple insurgencies within the Sunni global campaign to re-establish the Caliphate; an interfaith competition to jump-start an apocalypse; an old ethnic struggle between Persians and Arabs; and a distinctly Zoroastrian struggle between good and evil (alert the White House).

Many will reflexively reject this interpretation of Shi'ism and Sunni Islam as two separate faiths with profoundly different inheritances. Blog Bedouins and "scholars" alike will feel threatened. That's part of our problem: We're often as close-minded as our enemies. The greatest power in history thinks small.

As I remarked to an Arab-American friend last week, faiths are like bad neighbors--they borrow a great deal, then deny it. There is no such thing as a pure faith today. All have been influenced by their predecessors and peers, by internal evolutions and their historical environments. But even individuals who reject such a view when it comes to their own faith do themselves no favors by refusing to contemplate Islam's complexity.

What does all this mean to us? First, wherever there are irreconcilable differences, there are strategic opportunities. Second, our insistence on seeing the Middle East through the eyes of yesteryear's failed statesmen has been disastrous--we need to reinterpret the Muslim world.

Third, we've entered a new age when all the great faiths are struggling over their identities. As the religions most-immediately besieged, Shi'ism and Sunni Islam are the noisiest and, for now, the most-violent. But all faiths are in crisis--even as every major faith undergoes a powerful renewal.

In my years as an intelligence analyst, I consistently made my best calls when I trusted my instincts, and I was less likely to get it right when I heeded the arguments around me. Today, those surrounding arguments damn Iran.

My instincts tell me our long-term problem is with Arab Sunnis, whose global aspirations have veered into madness. We have a problem with the junta currently ruling Iran, but not with Persian civilization. Meanwhile, the Bedouin fanaticism gripping so much of the Middle East has no civilization.
By Ralph Peters

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art..._all_isla.html

[Serrart]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

I think the US and the UK should never have interferred, but with all due respect, I think Iraq would have been a powderkeg anyway, given the political and ethnic dividing lines that exist there. You will never (NEVER) get a coalition govt with Sunnis and Shi'ites....they have fundamental differences that prevent them from cooperating for any length of time.

I don't agree, it will be a long road but the Democratic system that obviously now has to be granted by Onu could work but needs a whole set of changes in the way, for instance, their legislation works right now. The first, as some commentators said, coul be to help to enforce a national identity giving more chances to have less one way oriented laws. A way to achieve it could be not have policies voted by the majority of the parliament as a whole (that means basically to pass laws that Shiites want) but on the basis of a majority vote within political parties. That could help to open more constant negotiations and give more voice to very small parties.

Obviously it would take years to have a stable government, but nothing can't even start till Iraq feels as an occupied Country and can't make elections that don't seem guided by US interests.

Romy

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by Serrart

I don't agree, it will be a long road but the Democratic system that obviously now has to be granted by Onu could work but needs a whole set of changes in the way, for instance, their legislation works right now. The first, as some commentators said, coul be to help to enforce a national identity giving more chances to have less one way oriented laws. A way to achieve it could be not have policies voted by the majority of the parliament as a whole (that means basically to pass laws that Shiites want) but on the basis of a majority vote within political parties. That could help to open more constant negotiations and give more voice to very small parties.

Obviously it would take years to have a stable government, but nothing can't even start till Iraq feels as an occupied Country and can't make elections that don't seem guided by US interests.

Romy

When you have two competing ideologies, you are not going to have one National Identity, sorry. I dont see how you are going to get a "majority" consensus between two conflicting ideologies I think Democracy is a wonderful thing (obviously), but it only works when all concerned WANT it to work. At this point, I think it is wishful thinking to think that the Arab world is ready for a Democratic form of Govt....

[irishgrl]

Totally bears repeating:

My instincts tell me our long-term problem is with Arab Sunnis, whose global aspirations have veered into madness. We have a problem with the junta currently ruling Iran, but not with Persian civilization. Meanwhile, the Bedouin fanaticism gripping so much of the Middle East has no civilization.

totally totally true. totally. true. again: totally true. what does it take folks? TRUE TRUE TRUE

also true:

What we've gotten ourselves involved in today is an old and endless struggle between the desert and the city, between civilization and barbarism

[Serrart]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

When you have two competing ideologies, you are not going to have one National Identity, sorry. I dont see how you are going to get a "majority" consensus between two conflicting ideologies I think Democracy is a wonderful thing (obviously), but it only works when all concerned WANT it to work. At this point, I think it is wishful thinking to think that the Arab world is ready for a Democratic form of Govt....

I think that's quite offensive to say about Arab world in general. There are many different realities as in the West after all. Other countries in that area (for instance Iran) had found at least balances between the different tribes and aren't plagued by civil war.

Romy

[irishgrl]

Originally Posted by irishgrl

Totally bears repeating:



totally totally true. totally. true. again: totally true. what does it take folks? TRUE TRUE TRUE

also true:

I wonder, if the Arab world had experienced industrial progress the way the West had, would they have been so vicious? Im thinking NOT.

and, for your entertainment: an article:

ISLAM'S SCHISM BEGAN IN A.D. 632, immediately after the Prophet Muhammad died without naming a successor as leader of the new Muslim flock. Some of his followers believed the role of Caliph, or viceroy of God, should be passed down Muhammad's bloodline, starting with his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib. But the majority backed the Prophet's friend Abu Bakr, who duly became Caliph. Ali would eventually become the fourth Caliph before being murdered in A.D. 661 by a heretic near Kufa, now in Iraq. The succession was once again disputed, and this time it led to a formal split. The majority backed the claim of Mu'awiyah, Governor of Syria, and his son Yazid. Ali's supporters, who would eventually be known collectively as Shi'at Ali, or partisans of Ali, agitated for his son Hussein. When the two sides met on a battlefield near modern Karbala on Oct. 10, 680, Hussein was killed and decapitated. But rather than nipping the Shi'ite movement in the bud, his death gave it a martyr. In Shi'ite eyes, Hussein is a just and humane figure who stood up to a mighty oppressor. The annual mourning of Hussein's death, known as Ashura, is the most poignant and spectacular of Shi'ite ceremonies: the faithful march in the streets, beating their chests and crying in sorrow. The extremely devout flagellate themselves with swords and whips.

Those loyal to Mu'awiyah and his successors as Caliph would eventually be known as Sunnis, meaning followers of the Sunnah, or Way, of the Prophet. Since the Caliph was often the political head of the Islamic empire as well as its religious leader, imperial patronage helped make Sunni Islam the dominant sect. Today about 90% of Muslims worldwide are Sunnis. But Shi'ism would always attract some of those who felt oppressed by the empire. Shi'ites continued to venerate the Imams, or the descendants of the Prophet, until the 12th Imam, Mohammed al-Mahdi (the Guided One), who disappeared in the 9th century at the location of the Samarra shrine in Iraq. Mainstream Shi'ites believe that al-Mahdi is mystically hidden and will emerge on an unspecified date to usher in a reign of justice.

Shi'ites soon formed the majority in the areas that would become the modern states of Iraq, Iran, Bahrain and Azerbaijan. There are also significant Shi'ite minorities in other Muslim states, including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan. Crucially, Shi'ites outnumber Sunnis in the Middle East's major oil-producing regions--not only Iran and Iraq but also eastern Saudi Arabia. But outside Iran, Sunnis have historically had a lock on political power, even where Shi'ites have the numerical advantage. (The one place where the opposite holds true is modern Syria, which is mostly Sunni but since 1970 has been ruled by a small Shi'ite subsect known as the Alawites.) Sunni rulers maintained their monopoly on power by excluding Shi'ites from the military and bureaucracy; for much of Islamic history, a ruling Sunni élite treated Shi'ites as an underclass, limited to manual labor and denied a fair share of state resources.

The rulers used religious arguments to justify oppression. Shi'ites, they said, were not genuine Muslims but heretics. Devised for political convenience, this view of Shi'ites solidified into institutionalized prejudice. Sunnis likened reverence for the Prophet's bloodline and the Shi'ites' fondness for portraits of some of the Imams to the sin of idolatry. Shi'ite rituals, especially the self-flagellation during Ashura, were derided as pagan. Many rulers forbade such ceremonies, fearing that large gatherings would quickly turn into political uprisings. (Ashura was banned during most of Saddam Hussein's rule and resumed only after his downfall in 2003.) "For Shi'ites, Sunni rule has been like living under apartheid," says Vali Nasr, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.

But religious repression was uneven. Sunni Caliphs in Baghdad tolerated and sometimes contributed to the development of Najaf and Karbala as the most important centers of Shi'ite learning. Shi'ite ayatullahs, as long as they refrained from open defiance of the ruling élite, could run seminaries and collect tithes from their followers. The shrines of Shi'ite Imams in Najaf, Karbala, Samarra and Khadamiya were allowed to become magnets for pilgrimage.

Sectarian relations worsened in the 16th century. By then the seat of Sunni power had moved to Istanbul. When the Turkish Sunni Ottomans fought a series of wars with the Shi'ite Safavids of Persia, the Arabs caught in between were sometimes obliged to take sides. Sectarian suspicions planted then have never fully subsided, and Sunni Arabs still pejoratively label Shi'ites as "Persians" or "Safavis." The Ottomans eventually won control of the Arab territories and cemented Sunni dominance. The British, the next power in the Middle East, did nothing to change the equation. In the settlement after World War I, they handed the newly created states of Iraq and Bahrain, both with Shi'ite majorities, to Sunni monarchs.

II. SADDAM'S LEGACY

WHEN SADDAM HUSSEIN ASSUMED POWER in Baghdad in 1979, Iraq's Shi'ites had enjoyed a couple of decades of respite under leaders who allowed them some measure of equality with the Sunnis. Then came Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. Fearing a similar uprising in Iraq, Saddam revived some old repressions and ordered the murder of Iraq's most popular ayatullah, Mohammed Bakr al-Sadr, uncle of Muqtada. Shi'ites made up a majority of those killed in Iraq's war with Iran, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, but after it ended they were once again shut out of most senior government and military positions. With the defeat of Saddam's army in the 1991 Gulf War, Shi'ites saw a chance to rise against the dictator. But they received no protection from the allied forces, and Saddam was able to smash the revolt. By some estimates, more than 300,000 Shi'ites were killed; many were buried in mass graves. For the rest of his reign, Saddam kept the Shi'ites firmly under his thumb. Several popular clerics were killed, including Muqtada's father. Saddam ordered the murder of Sunnis too, but there was a crucial difference. "When Saddam killed a Sunni, it was personal--because of something that person had done," says author Nasr. "But when it came to killing Shi'ites, he was indiscriminate. He didn't need a specific reason. Their being Shi'ite was enough."

[strandinthewind]

This goes back to my comment that after 9/11 if not the invasion of Kuwaitt, something had to be done about SH and the situation in Iraq. Was that something the invasion of Iraq to topple SH? I think that the invasion was not a wholly bad idea. I support this statement by noting that if the US had had a coherent plan and/or Iraq was peaceful soon thereafter, we would not be having this debate. The vast majority of the naysayers of the invasion and the Iraqis themselves would be saying "well, the invasion was likely wrong, but look at the good that came out of it - so bad west for invading, but we really owe ya one" Sadly, W screwed it up like he screws everything else up (the man has not one victory in any area under his belt save)

As for Iraq now - it should be three countries. If the US had given the oilless part of Iraq a trillion dollars to start their own country, we'd have gotten off cheaper Sadly, that is not the situation.

[Gailh]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

This goes back to my comment that after 9/11 if not the invasion of Kuwaitt, something had to be done about SH and the situation in Iraq. Was that something the invasion of Iraq to topple SH? I think that the invasion was not a wholly bad idea. I support this statement by noting that if the US had had a coherent plan and/or Iraq was peaceful soon thereafter, we would not be having this debate. The vast majority of the naysayers of the invasion and the Iraqis themselves would be saying "well, the invasion was likely wrong, but look at the good that came out of it - so bad west for invading, but we really owe ya one" Sadly, W screwed it up like he screws everything else up (the man has not one victory in any area under his belt save)

As for Iraq now - it should be three countries. If the US had given the oilless part of Iraq a trillion dollars to start their own country, we'd have gotten off cheaper Sadly, that is not the situation.

I don't think that toppling SH was a bad idea but there are many others we could or should "topple" as well but it wont happen because either they have no oil, or have nuclear weapons so they could fight back or have uttered the magic words "we support the war on terror"

In the UK we weren't told that we got rid of Saddam because he was a digusting tyrant who tortured and gassed his own people (we already knew that). We were told that he had WMD which could be readied in 45 minutes that could threaten British interests. The famous "dodgy" dossier which a lot of politicians believed because they wanted to.

I personally can't see how the lives of the average Iraqui is better now and after 4 years it certainly should be.

Gail

[strandinthewind]

^^^

I submit SH was about as bad as it gets as far as homocidial tyrants. But, I agree, there are others who need to go too. That argument to me though is somewhat irrelevant to Iraq because Iraq's position in the Middle East makes it unique. The Middle East is the breeding ground of most of the world's major terrorist organizations, despite and because the oil. I get that Iraq was not part of Al-Q, but SH was still a terrorist to his own people and to other countries, one or two of which (did he actually invade Iran?) he invaded and many of which he just bombed (Israel, Iran, etc. ) . Moreover, SH consistently defied the world via the unanimous UN resolutions. So, he was IMO worse than say the Pres. of North Korea, who no doubt is very bad.

As for the immediacy of the threats, we and the world were told more than the nuclear stuff and the 45 minute threat. But, even without that, IMO we would have been justified in toppling his regime, though perhaps not in an all out invasion - maybe an assasination would have been better. But, yes, W lied to world and for that he will burn in hell even if the invasion a good, but poorly executed idea.

Is Iraq a better pace now - I submit it is becase SH, the man who killed hundreds of thousands on a whim, is gone and the fighting now seemingly is the birth of nation as opposed to SH's genocides. I think in time, Iraq may see peace. That, however, is up to them, not us, now.

[Villavic]

Originally Posted by Tee Dee

This news saddens me. I just rented the DVD "The Queen" and was quite impressed at how Tony Blair was portrayed (as opposed to Her Majesty.)

I liked how he was showed in The Queen, didn't know those details about his relationship with the Queen during the Diana sad days. If the movie is according to the truth, he did it very very good.
I liked the guy, I was in London the day he was elected and saw the popularity he got. I thought the guy could do a good and cool work for english people.

Then it came the Iraq issue. I know US and UK have been partners for long time, but this was too much in my opinion. I think they made terrible mistakes (and they are still doing)

Don't know much about internal work, I don't live in the UK, but I read there are very good achievements. If the Iraq problem had been managed different, I guess he could have been remembered far better