Last Gasp of the Imperial Misadventure

#140 by freethinker

“I never thought when I wrote the article that I would enter into such a discussion as is occurring between us.”

The Shia Sunni issue is an important part of your article; you should have anticipated that some one would bring this up for discussion.

“I had stated simply that the stronger faction always dominated the weaker one. By domination, I was implying the kind of violent strife that emerges in Pakistan almost unfailingly every year. Although such outbursts are no comparison to the life and death struggle which is going on in Iraq, it demonstrates that the co-existence between Shias and Sunnis is not always peaceful.”

Gill sahib, the kind of strife that emerges in Pakistan occasionally is entirely different than what we have in Iraq. The roots of both issues are different and as both nasah and Parthaab have pointed out, they should be treated differently.

The ethnic, sectarian or communal violence at a large scale emerges when both warring parties sidestep the law and the state apparatus to resolve their differences violently and this violence can go on until 1. both parties are exhausted, 2.one group is completely taken out or 3.the government is able to re-establish its preeminence to stop the violence. Minor scuffles that you mentioned in Pakistan may cause loss of life, nevertheless, is not the result of a complete breakdown of law and order but is a result of emotional issues between the communities.

To illustrate this I would mention that there is a rift between the Hindu and Muslim communities in India. The disputes go on until they reach a point where both parties sidestep the law, which results in incidents like Gujarat. Similarly, when groups of people in 1947 decided to take their differences outside the limits of law, a massacre took place on both sides of Punjab. The massacre did not stop until the warring groups were completely ejected from each others areas of influence or majority.

The two examples that you quoted are actually very illustrative of what I have been implying in my posts. You seem to believe that the sectarian violence and the state persecution are one and the same thing. What you are quoting are mostly instances of state persecution against one group which could be a political or may even be a different religious group.

As I had shown you in my previous posts, Saddam on many occasions persecuted both Shias and Kurds as they were his political opponent. He did not persecute them for their ethnicity or the religious beliefs on behalf of his Sunni brethren or his own Sunni faith. That is why despite Saddam’s brutalities, Shia and Sunni still lived side by side in Baghdad. Saddam also maintained a strict state structure that had the ability to control any sectarian violence before it could spread in Iraq.

Once the US took over, they destroyed the state structure in Iraq by removing the army, police, and the Bureaucracy thus leaving a vacuum that they were never able to fill with the US army. Obviously, the US army lacked skills to mediate or forestall the spread of violence between the two communities. With complete control of media in Iraq and by managing the information the US was able to create a situation where both communities decided to operate outside the limits of the law and the eruption of sectarian violence that spread quickly and still goes on unabated.

If the US had maintained the structure, both groups could possibly have had recourse to the government officials, police, the court system and even the Iraqi army to address the grievances. In the absence of such a structure, and by constant attempts by the US controlled media in Iraq to magnify the differences to divert attention from insurgency, it was not difficult to escalate the problems between the communities into a full fledged sectarian war.

This is my last post on this subject. However, I would like you to read this article to see the impact of the sectarian violence in Baghdad, probably something the US encouraged from the get go.

Read it here

``free``thinker writes <<< I had asked you to inform the readers with which system you want to replace the western democracy if it is so bad. You evaded that question. Do you want to adopt a Pakistani, an Egyptian, a Syrian, an Iranian, a Saudi Arabian (so on and so forth) system, or what? You did not answer specifically but went on tangentially accusing the western system >>>

You had asked me a question that shows your ignorance of the issues, a question that I have answered multiple time on here. The system(s) you see projected across the globe are a product of a world system, which is dominated by....yes you guessed it right. Now if we replace the global politico economic relationships with any different system, the results, holding other factors constant are bound to benefit humanity. And to add to Zeemax, the US does not only have one system for the domestics and one for the foreigners, it has multiple systems of oppression inside based on a pharoahic hierarchy it has created in a class based system, and when it comes to dark skinned people abroad, they don`t even bother with the count of those killed by their policies according to their official admission, we are like cockroaches that you kill and forget... Even the explicitly coersive system of medieval times was not so impersonal reagarding human suffereing.

Masadi: 146

You are again indulging in general accusations. You evaded to answer my question.

Do you have a system (not theory or an ideology) which is better than the western democracy and is functional (that is, it is working in other parts of the world)?

The western democracy allows changes to its Constitution and if they found better alternatives (not necessarily that you propose) they would incorporate them in the Constitution. You also ignored my point that I made in my earlier post that conditions in the US have improved considerably compared with those which prevailed a century ago. This is because of the continuity of its system which is not toppled over by the army generals (not because there are no army generals in the US but because the system keeps them in their place).

Think over these points; maybe your frustration will be somewhat relieved. I know it is your anti-western posture which doesn’t leave you in peace.

I don’t suggest that the west is free from flaws. President Bush is imperialistic in his foreign policy but thank God he will be gone in 2 years. The danger is that he might not embark on any other misadventure in his remaining time. That is where the Senate and the Congress are going to play their roles to restrain him.

You should consider the system which I believe the Muslim world can use (with some appropriate modifications) for its benefit. We need the system and don’t have to import Bush because we already have the likes of him in our country in the uniforms.

Mohammad Gill

Masadi,

Dimwits.

Tahmed, feroz, Freethinker etc are all dimwits.

Don`t you find it frustrating that most of the ``rest of the world`` refuses to see things your way?

After all your posts are based on your ``research`` in your ``institute`` and feedback from your ``students``. Maybe after you get the ``Nobel`` prize, you will be taken more seriously.

Regards to your fellow authors & intellectuals at lulu.com.

``Free``thinker writes <<< You also ignored my point that I made in my earlier post that conditions in the US have improved considerably compared with those which prevailed a century ago. This is because of the continuity of its system which is not toppled over by the army generals (not because there are no army generals in the US but because the system keeps them in their place). >>>

Another aspect of your near illiteracy is revealed by the fact that even after questions have been answered you keep repeating them, and that there is nothing deep in your analysis except banal points like ``America is better than it was a hundered years ago``. Of course it is ``better`` (for whom is also worthy of consideration) after raping the world and destroying the indigeneous population and looting the wealth of its people and achieveing cultural hegemony, past which dimwits like your goodself cannot look. Look at all the wars this misearble country`s elite have conducted, look at the people and the ecologies they have destroyed and are destroying and look at how they drain the poor countries of resoures and wealth, and then look at the slogans they use which are fictions even at the home front. Look at how they are dominating trade and finance and restricting development while promoting militarism and a militaristic worldview. Come on, are you blind?

okhla writes <<< Don`t you find it frustrating that most of the ``rest of the world`` refuses to see things your way? >>>

Most of the rest of the world, suffering under US domination, lives as fact the things I talk about, unfortunately they don`t have the luxury to merely ``see``, they live them as social fact day in and day out....

``Free``thinker writes <<< President Bush is imperialistic in his foreign policy but thank God he will be gone in 2 years >>>

American foreign policy, and neo-colonization of the world did not start with Bush, and it will not end with Bush, Bush is the product of a political economy deeply and structurally related with its military and a militaristic world view- that system works with automatic precision using various legitimations, regardless of the face of the president.

Will some one tell me how you `convert` from Shia to Sunni -- and from Sunni to Shia...?

nasah: #152

Great Question. But I think it`s a one way street. It`s much easier to leave both of them. I am reminded of a song of an Indian film:

Mein Hindu banoo`n ga nah Musalmaan banoo`n ga
Insaan ki aulad hoon` insaan banoo`n ga

Mohammad Gill

Will some one tell me how you `convert` from Shia to Sunni -- and from Sunni to Shia...?

Re: # 153
``It`s much easier to leave both of them. I am reminded of a song of an Indian film:

Mein Hindu banoo`n ga nah Musalmaan banoo`n ga
Insaan ki aulad hoon` insaan banoo`n ga........``(freethinker)

Freethinker -- I agree with your sentiments wholeheartedly -- as far I am concerned plague be on both houses....for what they are doing to each other in Iraq.

Re: # 153

Wah!

Mein Hindu banoo`n ga nah Musalmaan banoo`n ga
Insaan ki aulad hoon` insaan banoo`n ga

I could frame that on my wall. How I wish more people could read that.

good man Parathab -- here is another one that you would like to hang on the wall:
``Hindu hai ek ankh mussalman doosree`` -- we need stereoscopic vision for prespective -- to prevent us from falling on our face...!

another one that you may not like to hang is this one :

dair ko Hindu kee masjid ko mussalmaaN ki talash
kho gaiee iss khoj meiN insaaN ko insaaN ki talash

dair means Mandir -- the last one is mine.

now you can teach your kids:

Hindu nu banega nu mussalmaan bunay ga
insaan ki aulad hai insaan bunay ga

just tell them to be careful who they marry -- only insaan ki aulad!



Insaan ki aulad hai insaan bunay ga

Re: # 154
[....how you `convert` from Shia to Sunni -- and from Sunni to Shia...?...]

Ask YLH, he has converted from ahmedi to sunni to shia to ismaili... he has done all combinations possible...:)

Hinduan, SikhaN, MusalmanaN di bheeRh choN,
Rabb dhoon`Da phirda mera banda kidhar giya?

ikk shakhash si iss shehar wich sacha kidhar giya?
paTharaN de shehar choN sheesha kidhar giya?

``Hinduan, SikhaN, MusalmanaN di bheeRh choN,
Rabb dhoon`Da phirda mera banda kidhar giya?``

Dulla -- who wrote that beautiful couplet -- Guru Nanak sahib?