Is bad foreign policy responsible for hate/revenge? - Part 2

[yisha_ou]

Interesting article regarding the inexplicable killing of civilians that’s going on in Iraq, possible motivations of the various terror factions, etc:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/weekinreview/24burns.html

Get it while it’s hot, folks; NYT links expire in a couple days.

Tidbits:

Now, events are pointing more than ever to the possibility that the nightmare [of civil war in Iraq] could come true. Recent weeks have seen the insurgency reach new heights of sustained brutality. The violence is ever more centered on sectarian killings, with Sunni insurgents targeting hundreds of Shiite and Kurdish civilians in suicide bombings. There are reports of Shiite death squads, some with links to the interior ministry, retaliating by abducting and killing Sunni clerics and community leaders.

@Zalmay Khalilzad

“The foreign terrorists and hardline Baathist insurgents want Iraq to fall into a civil war.”

The war’s wider pattern has always held the seeds of an all-out sectarian conflict, of the kind that largely destroyed Lebanon. The insurgency has been rooted in the Sunni Arab minority dispossessed by the toppling of Mr. Hussein, and most of its victims have been Shiites, the majority community who have been the main political beneficiaries of Mr. Hussein’s demise. Shiites have died in countless hundreds at their mosques and their marketplaces, victims of insurgent ambushes and bombs, their deaths celebrated on Islamic Web sites by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, who has called Shiites “monkeys” and their religion an affront to God.

Meanwhile, on that “radicalization of Sistani” thing – you know, the Shi’ite theologian whose say-so is largely responsible for what success we’ve had in democratic measures in Iraq:

[quote][T]he ayatollah, his patience spent, demanded that the transitional government, which is led by Shiites, “defend the country against mass annihilation.”

If that was a call for tougher military action against the insurgents, it played into a situation made all the more volatile in recent months by signs that hard-line Shiites have begun to strike back. There have been persistent reports, mostly in Baghdad, of Shiite death squads in police uniforms abducting, torturing and killing Sunni Arab clerics, community leaders and others. In Baghdad, a police commando unit composed mainly of Shiites raided a hospital two weekends ago and abducted 13 Sunni men accused of being insurgents. Sixteen hours later, the bodies of 10 were delivered to a morgue, the victims of suffocation in a locked metal-topped police van in a temperature nearing 120 degrees.[/quote]

One possibility. Would certainly explain a lot of otherwise-inexplicable recent events.

[fred_smith]

[quote]You forgot to quote this part of that article, Fred:
fox news wrote:
The officer said the numbers [of Algerian suicide bombers in Iraq] had increased, but gave no specific figures. He said increasing efforts on the part of Algerian, Moroccan and Libyan security services to combat local terror cells have resulted in extremists joining international operations. But he warned they would later return home. [/quote]

Did not forget to quote, did not find it particularly relevant. So they are still going and leaving Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. My point is that if they were not in Iraq, we would be fighting them somewhere else. They would not be sitting at home watching Desperate Housewives… or maybe they would… haha

Actually, that wasn’t your assertion. What you said here, in the post quoted above, was “the good guys are winning in Algeria, so those folks are going to Iraq.”

No what I said or meant to say which I think in fact that I did say was that because insurgents were being drawn off to Iraq, Algeria and other similar nations were getting a respite that is allowing them to win the war at home. I am directly linking the fact that the insurgents who could and would be fighting in Algeria are going to Iraq thus taking pressure off the government of Algeria.

[quote]Your original assertion was that the war in Iraq was a success, because it was serving as a distraction and a new focus of effort for the Algerian terrorists, and therefore taking pressure off the Algerian government so that they could win the war in Algeria:

fred smith wrote:
It is precisely because we are fighting in Iraq that Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon among others have been given breathing space. [/quote]

YES.

You’ve got your causes and effects mixed up somewhere in there.

Please explain to me again because I do not see that. I will repeat. I see the fact that tough insurgents are going to fight and die in Iraq as positive (not nice) but positive in the sense that they are taking the pressure off other regimes. Is that clear? That is why I agree with Bush that Iraq is the central front against terrorism. We can fight them there like the analogy Rumsfeld used. The conflict is like hanging flypaper.

Anyway, this: “growing cooperation between Islamic extremists” – in Fox News, no less – is not something I take as a positive sign for how things are going in Iraq.

I see your point but wish to point out that we would be fighting them somewhere. It might just as well be in Iraq where we have lots of military forces. Unlucky for the Iraqis but there you are. Life isn’t fair and they are still much better off than under Saddam.