Al Qaeda on the ropes?

[Rod Steel]

If you read the latest news reports Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death has put al Queaida on the ropes. But why, why, why, are dozens of people still being killed daily in Iraq?

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2630&ncid=2630&e=118&u=/csm/20060616/wl_csm/oqaeda_1

 

[MKSTEEL]

Nah, they got underground cells everywhere!

I don't think so with so many sleepers around the world they'll just promote some junior terrorists to leadership positions and rebuild the terror network's personnel lists. Besides the American gov't still has no proof that Osama's gone and he is the brain of the central nervous system that is Al-Queaida.

 

[JustAGuy]

Al-Qaeda has never been behind the majority of the killings in Iraq. It is a nation filled with people who hate one another. Sunni Muslims hate Shi'a Muslims and vice-versa. The Kurds are an ethnic minority that has been oppressed for decades (their country, Kurdistan, ceased to exist when the Allied Powers carved up the Middle East after the First World War). Saddam Hussein kept the tensions between these groups from reaching the boiling point through systematic suppression and an iron fist. Once he was thrown out of power by the American invaders (ooops ... I mean liberators ) all bets were off. Today Iraq is on the verge of full scale civil war as the sectarian violence escalates on a daily basis. The recent killing of Jordanian born al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, will have no impact whatsoever in reducing the violence in that country.

 

[georgebushmoron]

America intervened in Iraq to liberate the people and make it free. True freedom means sovereignty and being able to do as you wish. If Sadaam was suppressing them from truly exercising their hatred for one another, now they are free to do so. See how wonderful freedom is? It's America's gift to Iraqis.

 

[georgebushmoron]

They wanted in there so bad, they dissregarded their own Intelligence and went ahead anyway. I doubt it had anything to do with liberation as much as controlling would be terrorists, and Israeli security, controlling that oil asset was just a bonus! Oh yeah look at the money, the military industrial complex is making, the private security armies, there are 25,000 of them in Iraq alone and the oil prices are fabulous for those companies! It's just buisiness!

Freedom = Money

 

[MKSTEEL]

A book you guys might wanna look up?

I have a book in my shelf COLOSSUS:The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, that embraces all you guys have discussed and more, seems to this AMERICAN writer/educator Niall Ferguson (A Professor of History at Harvard actually!) that America is a imperial power in denial and talks about how the growth of The Republic of China and The European Union will challenge American Political/Economic domination of world affairs. It's pretty deep shit , but very much in line with your thread guys so that's my two-bits to say.

 

[Fudd]

I don't think Al-Queaida will every be destroyed. There are too many Islamic extremists. When one is killed he becomes a matire to the cause and more will be inspired to join up.

I think it was a serious mistake for the US to out right kill al-Zarqawi with out giving him a chance to surrender because he now becomes a matire, or hero and a symbol to the extremists. They should have went in with stun guns and captured him instead and turned him over to the UN or world court for a fair and impartial trial with out any involvement by the US.

 

[rollerboy]

I have a book in my shelf COLOSSUS:The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, that embraces all you guys have discussed and more, seems to this AMERICAN writer/educator Niall Ferguson (A Professor of History at Harvard actually!) that America is a imperial power in denial and talks about how the growth of The Republic of China and The European Union will challenge American Political/Economic domination of world affairs. It's pretty deep shit , but very much in line with your thread guys so that's my two-bits to say.

Certainly, America is a cultural and economic imperial power. In and of itself, that's morally neutral. The existence of America, even the conflict in the Middle East, is a consequence of centuries of European Imperialism and Colonialism. American power is merely a continuation of European power.

It's chic to bash America, but America invested heavily in the post-war reconstruction of Europe, and our establishment of close economic ties with China since the 70's fueled the re-emergence of China. Our influence in the world will inevitably change, because so much of the world has already gone, for better or worse, where we've led. I've been all over the world, and most of the developed world looks like home.

 

[rollerboy]

Al-Qaeda has never been behind the majority of the killings in Iraq. It is a nation filled with people who hate one another. Sunni Muslims hate Shi'a Muslims and vice-versa. The Kurds are an ethnic minority that has been oppressed for decades (their country, Kurdistan, ceased to exist when the Allied Powers carved up the Middle East after the First World War). Saddam Hussein kept the tensions between these groups from reaching the boiling point through systematic suppression and an iron fist. Once he was thrown out of power by the American invaders (ooops ... I mean liberators ) all bets were off. Today Iraq is on the verge of full scale civil war as the sectarian violence escalates on a daily basis. The recent killing of Jordanian born al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, will have no impact whatsoever in reducing the violence in that country.

The borders drawn by the European Powers in the aftermath of WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire is the root of the conflicts in both Africa and the Middle East. These borders are unsustainable given the regional ethnic and religious composition.

About 30 million Khurds, an ethically distinct people with their own culture and language, divided amongst Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and a few other countries. More than the population of either Syria or Iraq, and five times the number of Palestinians. The separation of the Khurds by the Allied partitioning leaves them a large, problematic minority in several countries. The Rwandan Civil War, a million slaughtered during government led ethnic cleansing, provides another example of the effects of artificial borders imposed externally. Hutus and Tutsis vie for control of this and other artificial countries created by the West.

Yugoslavia was another such ill-conceived invention. When Tito died, and the Soviets fell, it became a time bomb. The answer wasn't to mint a new iron fisted dictator to hold the pieces together. Countries should not be held together by abject fear, secret police, and mass graves.

Saddam's war with Iran resulted in over a million deaths. His regime tortured and executed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, gassed tens of thousands of innocent women, children and elderly, suppressed the Shiite majority, embarked on campaigns of Arabization in the Khurdish and Turkmen North, and the annihilation of the Marsh Arabs in the South. The nostalgia for murderous dictators is misplaced.

 

[westwoody]

The way the Middle East was carved up after WWI was a recipe for disaster. Iraq and Yugoslavia were both disasters waiting to happen.
Niall Ferguson is pretty good, but nobody seems to have the attention span to absorb his books. They would rather read hateful drivel by Anne Coulter. That is so sad. I looked through her new one about godless liberals and it made me think of Mein Kampf.
Americans do not understand the concept of Al-Queda-a decentralised mass movement with no clear leader. Killing one member doesn't really make a big difference.

 

[chilli]

"Americans do not understand the concept of Al-Queda-a decentralised mass movement with no clear leader. Killing one member doesn't really make a big difference."

Sorry I think you are wrong.

Individuals do have a HUGE impact on movements no matter their make up. History has proved this time after time.

Most people are sheep and will go where they are lead. Case in point the IRA is a cell based system - which now does not have the activity level or impact it once had.

Their leaders were systematically exposed, imprisoned and killed.

Am I saying that the IRA did not have a good cause? Who knows after all the years of fighting back and forth - I really think it gets lost who's right and who's "wrong".

The fact is there is always something wrong with government. There is so much corruption in men "in general" BUT and this is the HUGE but - at least in a democracy we have the chance to expose it and try to fix it. And not by violence, but by reasoned exchange in a house of democracy.

No other system gives you that kind of accountability.

For all the bad things the Americans have done (god they can be so stupid) - no country has done more good for the world than America in the past 50 years. None.

I guess you take the good with bad, be happy that the US is a democracy (still no better system of gov't than democracy imo) and vote. We got George W Bush cause that's who the American people voted in, now who is really stupid?

George Bush or the American people?????

 

[David in Van]

Only mistake in Iraq

"Americans do not understand the concept of Al-Queda-a decentralised mass movement with no clear leader. Killing one member doesn't really make a big difference."

Sorry I think you are wrong.

Individuals do have a HUGE impact on movements no matter their make up. History has proved this time after time.

Most people are sheep and will go where they are lead. Case in point the IRA is a cell based system - which now does not have the activity level or impact it once had.

Their leaders were systematically exposed, imprisoned and killed.

Am I saying that the IRA did not have a good cause? Who knows after all the years of fighting back and forth - I really think it gets lost who's right and who's "wrong".

The fact is there is always something wrong with government. There is so much corruption in men "in general" BUT and this is the HUGE but - at least in a democracy we have the chance to expose it and try to fix it. And not by violence, but by reasoned exchange in a house of democracy.

No other system gives you that kind of accountability.

For all the bad things the Americans have done (god they can be so stupid) - no country has done more good for the world than America in the past 50 years. None.

I guess you take the good with bad, be happy that the US is a democracy (still no better system of gov't than democracy imo) and vote. We got George W Bush cause that's who the American people voted in, now who is really stupid?

George Bush or the American people?????

The only mistake the Americans made in Iraq was not partitioning it along Sunni, Shia and Kurdish lines. Bagdad would be a problem as it is multi-cultural in an Iraqi sense.

Then the reason for the violence would be a lot less and there would be three stable governments now (though some pissed off neighbours, particularly the Turks).

Then Al Qaeda would be on the ropes in Iraq.