“OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat”
-Rudyard Kipling-
For most of my life, the world has been littered with the divided refuse of colonial powers: East Germany and West Germany, North Vietnam and South Vietnam, North and South Korea, Pakistan and India, Jordan and Israel and more. Some of it has gone away, but each to me marks a failure.
The latest failure of our Colonial Republic’s ambition is the civil war in Iraq. There is no reason to call it anything else and there is little reason to assert that it can be resolved without the Shia and the Sunni retiring to their own corners in a divided Baghdad or perhaps a divided Iraq. Whether the division includes an independent Kurdistan, I certainly don’t know, but the notion of a Western liberal Republic, free of corruption, free of intimidation by religious groups and able to be seen as legitimate by a large majority seems increasingly fatuous.
The choices left open are continued and increasingly bloody occupation by foreign troops in the face of animosities that will never wane, an apocalyptic civil war that will end in partition and disputed boundaries, or a partition by the occupying power – with disputed boundaries that will be fought over forever.
If people are relocated, they will try to reclaim lost property for generations or forever and the partition, even if self-caused will be blamed more on the US than on any native inability to make peace. Each side may ally itself with other countries that will use their cause to further their own interests and prolong conflict indefinitely despite any effort by even a majority of Iraqis to seek peace.
Of course you can see the parallel with another raging conflict, the resolution of which seems hopeless. Welcome to the future.
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4 comments:
Have you read the articles about Turkey amassing troops on the border to possibility put the Kurds in line? One disaster after another.
Looks ominous, although you can't be 100% sure about Turkey's motives. Looking at their history though, it's something to worry about.
No doubt. I don't like to endorse anything that comes out of the mouths of armageddon gangsters, but the Semitic World looks like it is about to blow and, if it does, WWIII really will be on the way.
Good post Capt...
I see the same future -- as do most rationalists: A Iraq rife with civil war or divided and bickering over land for decades to come.
This is what happens when your leaders act out of conviction instead of pragmatism.
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