Bhutto Assasinated by Suicide Attack

[Prime Junta]

I have to disagree a bit here, they migth have this code, and they are very well organized in cells.

Not anymore. That was Al Qaeda 1.0, which was as good as wiped out following the US offensive in Afghanistan. The current Al Qaeda isn't really an organization in any meaningful sense of the word; it's a shared ideology and a mutual-help network of like-minded individuals. This makes it much more difficult to defeat or destroy, but also greatly limits its operational capabilities.

But we also have several Al Qaida funded suicide bombings were a poor man or woman's family is offered money to become a suicide bomber, get training and pick a target. He does a "good" dead and his family and children gets a lot of money to survive. There are more willing people than they can train. Possibly because of poority and lack of knowledge in many countries they recruit from. US has realised this and started to pay $ to families who turn sides, it worked very well and reduced violence in for example Iraq by 60% when they started with this tactics.

I think you may be mixing a few different things here.

(1) Hamas and Hezbollah, for example, do financially support families of "martyrs" regardless of how they died (in battle, by suicide bombing, or as bystanders), and I'm sure this makes it easier for them to find recruits (suicide bomber and other), as it removes "how will my family survive when I'm gone" from the equation. The motivation is still first and foremost ideological (although in many cases not religious -- both Hamas and Hezbollah are national resistance movements with a religious basis, not international revolutionary movements like AQ). I haven't heard of Al Qaeda operating this way (although it's certainly possible).

(2) Your view of US tactics in Iraq is pretty garbled. I take it you're referring to the successes in Al-Anbar province, where the local tribal chieftains turned against "Al Qaeda in Iraq," with American support. This didn't happen by giving money to poor people so they wouldn't become suicide bombers; it happened by giving the local shaykhs security guarantees and money. AQ in Iraq never was very popular with the locals -- Sunni integrism was never very strong there to start with, and they behaved like the fanatical idiots that they are.

 

[Prime Junta]

So does that throw the legitimacy of the whole thing into question? I scrolled down to Lebanon looking for Hezbollah just for fun, but came up dry. Of course, I barely know what I'm looking at- unless someone put "Terrorists R Us" in their title, I'm probably not going to have a clue.

Which whole thing?

If you're interested in Hezbollah, here's their website: [ http://english.hizbollah.org/index.php ]. Their satellite TV's English website is here: [ http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/News.aspx ]. The former is just about pure propaganda, though, and the latter mostly just selected news reports from a bunch of media, so they're not that enlightening IMO.

You might also want to read Hala Jaber's "Hezbollah: Born With A Vengeance."

Going thru a few of your links so far, I'm clearly swimming in water far too deep. There's a debate on quantum mechanics going on, but I'm still learning to count my fingers. The vast majority of my "knowledge" of Islam is what you've taught me (scary, eh?) and I'd only pick the Quran out of my lineup by process of elimination. I need to sit down with a BMwB for a couple hours and learn the basics.

You could start with a WWwnB: I'd recommend Karen Armstrong's "Islam: A Short History." Her biography of Mohammed is pretty good too.

I'm still amazed the Amman Message didn't get more coverage. I'll go along with the government not having a desire to spread the word, but it would seem the US media would be all over an opportunity to throw another dart at Dubya's policies by reminding folks that all BMwB's aren't mad bombers.

The average hack working for ABC or Fox or CNN doesn't know any more about Islam than you do -- and none of them have been fired yet for being overly critical of Islam. OTOH if someone isn't, the right-wing blogosphere will drop on them like sixteen tons of bricks. Being labeled an unpatriotic left-wing fifth-columnist by a significant chunk of your public isn't going to advance your career much.

I think the major problem, though, is what we already touched on in this thread: that the media provides, and the public demands, stuff in pre-chewed sound-bite-size morsels. You can't explain what the Amman message says in a 30-second spot on TV unless your public already knows stuff like shi'ite, sunni, takfir, mufti, ayatollah, and so on.

Which, incidentally, is why I believe that a solid set of non-denominational comparative religion courses should be mandatory in primary education. If Christians get their picture of Islam from Jack Chick tracts and Muslims get told that Jews put Muslim blood in their purim biscuits, there really isn't much hope for interfaith understanding.

 

[dteowner]

I don't think too many people would dispute that Ahmad-whatever has his fingers into some shady groups (he probably doesn't "attend the meetings", but I bet he has a few phone numbers in his Rolodex that Homeland Security would love to trace), so the fact that he's endorsed the Amman Message sort of undermines the point of the thing, yes? Hezbollah was just the first group that popped in my head of folks that would be a similar situation. As you say, they're nationalists with religious underpinning so it's not really a perfect fit (the best example would be some nutjob Ayatollah), but it's the best I could do on short notice.

 

[Prime Junta]

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't, eh? If he doesn't endorse it, he obviously supports Al Qaeda, if he does, he undermines it. There's no pleasing some people...

(Incidentally, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fadlallah was also among the endorsers. He's the spiritual head of Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman and de facto boss, though, wasn't.)

 

[Prime Junta]

As you say, they're nationalists with religious underpinning so it's not really a perfect fit (the best example would be some nutjob Ayatollah), but it's the best I could do on short notice.

To pick a nit, your main problem isn't with nutjob Ayatollahs; there is no Shi'ite international revolutionary/terroristic group that I'm aware of. Hezbollah, the Mahdi army, etc. are strictly local in their reach.

The people you're fighting are Sunni; they follow an doctrine originated by an Egyptian fellow called Sayyid Qutb.

And you most certainly will not find any of these guys endorsing the Amman declaration, since takfir is so central that some of them even call themselves "takfiri," or include it in the name of their group -- Takfir wal Hijra for example.

(One of the most annoying things about this stuff is to figure out what the words mean, 'cuz it varies a great deal depending on who's talking. For example, the people often called "wahhabis" actually call themselves "salafis;" they call the people who follow the Al Qaeda ideology "takfiris" or "neo-Kharijites," who also call themselves "salafis," explaining that the *other* salafis are actually "kafirs" and should all be killed.)

 

[dteowner]

**Hmmm, look at this. Big steel jaws with sharp teeth. Connected to a big spring. Wow, pizza! Who'd leave pizza on this big steel plate here? Gonna steal me a slice of that!**

So, if Ahmad-whatever supports the Shiites and there aren't any Shiite terrorist groups, how is he supporting terrorist groups?

*that's commonly known as "slow pitch"*

It would seem the "normal" Muslims of all sects would be interested in giving Islam 101 lectures. They're getting painted with a very broad brush, and the pattern looks quite a bit like a bullseye. I know--different way of asking the same question you've already been unable to really answer. A handful of posts on a CRPG forum, and I'm already seeing the society is far more complex than we're led to believe. Seems it would be pretty easy to tailor that sort of thing to Joe Redneck (use lots of pictures...). That's not to say I'm ready to forgive and forget, but this clearly deserves a little thought.

 

[Prime Junta]

**Hmmm, look at this. Big steel jaws with sharp teeth. Connected to a big spring. Wow, pizza! Who'd leave pizza on this big steel plate here? Gonna steal me a slice of that!**

So, if Ahmad-whatever supports the Shiites and there aren't any Shiite terrorist groups, how is he supporting terrorist groups?

Of course there are Shi'ite terrorist groups. Just not any with global ambitions that I'm aware of. And Ahmadinejad certainly supports some of them.

But they're not the ones at war with America, except where America has taken the war to them (e.g. the Mahdi army in Iraq). Their ambitions, reach, and scope are limited, and they're qualitatively different from Al Qaeda or the "takfiris" in general: resistance movements with an Islamic form, rather than a utopian, universalist screed at war with the world. Not that different, really, from the Catholic IRA back when the Troubles were in full swing.

*that's commonly known as "slow pitch"*

Whap.

It would seem the "normal" Muslims of all sects would be interested in giving Islam 101 lectures. They're getting painted with a very broad brush, and the pattern looks quite a bit like a bullseye. I know--different way of asking the same question you've already been unable to really answer. A handful of posts on a CRPG forum, and I'm already seeing the society is far more complex than we're led to believe. Seems it would be pretty easy to tailor that sort of thing to Joe Redneck (use lots of pictures...). That's not to say I'm ready to forgive and forget, but this clearly deserves a little thought.

Muslims certainly do less in the way of proselytism than most Christian sects. I think that I have only ever met one that tried to convert me -- a Syrian guy on a train in France. I guess they consider it... impolite.

Also, consider this: how do you expect most people would react if a pair of smiling young BMwB's showed up behind their door, going "Salaamu aleikum! Would you like to hear about Allah and His prophet Mohammed (sallallahu 'alayhi wassalaam?)" I bet that the most common reaction would be something along the lines of

(SLAM!) "Maaarge! Call Homeland Security! NOW!!!!"

(...if, that is, they were lucky.)

However, there's a lot of solid information about Islam, Muslims, and Islamic societies out there; you just have to go look for it. Including lectures, I'm sure.

But they can't make you go to the lectures, read the books, or even check out the websites. (This is one topic that you really need to read a book or two to build an understanding about; Wikipedia alone won't cut it.)

Also, and this has to do with the cultural gap as well, in my experience most Muslims have a hard time explaining Islam in a way that a non-Muslim can easily understand. That's why IMO you're better off reading, say, the book by Karen Armstrong that I recommended than, say, "Islam" by Younis Tawfik (which isn't bad either). Armstrong anchors her text to concepts and events that we're more likely to be familiar with; even though Tawfik has lived much of his life in Italy, his book casually refers to places, people, or events that would really need a more in-depth explanation.

 

[Prime Junta]

That's not to say I'm ready to forgive and forget, but this clearly deserves a little thought.

You would be a better man than most if you could forgive and forget. A bit too much to expect, really, although wonderful if it could happen. (I think. Sometimes I get the suspicion that forgiveness is overrated, though, but I usually get over it.)

However, what you could do is sort out who, exactly, you're supposed to not forgive and forget.

There's no rational reason for you to be mad at Islam or Muslims in general. In fact, your being mad at them is exactly what the people you should be mad at want! The foundation stone of their strategy is to provoke a religious war between Islam and the West, thereby radicalizing Muslims, overthrowing their corrupt and secularized governments, and restoring the division of the world into the House of Islam and the House of War, like the good old days of the Caliphate.

The vast majority of Muslims are exactly as outraged about the takfiris/neo-Khawarij/Al Qaeda/whatever as you are; hell, probably more; after all they've been killing far more Muslims than non-Muslims lately as well as painting that big bulls-eye on them. The only way we can beat those bastards is by working together to defuse the irrational hatred they're trying to stoke -- and "we" means anyone who doesn't want that clash of civilizations they're so desperately trying to provoke, regardless of race, color, creed, or lack thereof. Until the moderate majorities in Islamic and Western countries find each other, the loonies are going to keep on winning.

(Hey, what's this thing I'm standing on, and why's it say dVOS on it?)

 

[chamr]

A few quick thoughts:

Muslims have tried to get the word out in this country. I've seen them on several TV shows, read about them in the paper and on-line, heard them on the radio. The information is out there if we can tear ourselves away from our TiVo and cell phones for a few minutes to put the effort in. No, they haven't launched some in-you-face PR campaign, and why should they? Why is the onus on them to prove to Americans that they're not all nut jobs? Maybe Americans should be a little more curious about the world around them and find out a thing or two about one of the biggest religions and what it really stands for? When Waco happened, did US Christians band together and launch a world-wide media blitz to convince everyone that they really aren't as crazy as all that? Or how about the Catholic priest sex scandals? I don't recall getting any literature from "US Christians For Truth" telling me how not all Christians prey on young boys for sex.

This attitude is one of the biggest problems I believe faces us in this country: we're lazy when it comes to acquiring knowledge of the world, we're self-absorbed and think everyone else owes us an explanation, and we have short attention spans. That this country, media included, is going to give a free pass to perhaps the most incompetent, dishonest, dangerous and down-right criminal administrations in the history of the US, with the exception of Scooter Libby, is testament to our serious flaws as a citizenry.

We do ourselves no favors in abdicating our responsibility as Americans to be well-informed, engaged and skeptical. If we’re willing to just swallow whatever the government and the media want us to swallow, then we have no right to join any meaningful debate on the state of the world and which direction we should take. By buying into the grossly over-simplified “Us versus Them” model, we actually make ourselves more vulnerable and less safe. To paraphrase the Art of War, if we are to defeat our enemies, we must endeavor to know them best. Sticking our heads in the sand and declaring them crazy barbarians whose motivations and methods are beyond rational comprehension is to create a power vacuum that others will gladly fill for us with results that probably won’t be to our advantage.

 

[dteowner]

That this country, media included, is going to give a free pass to perhaps the most incompetent, dishonest, dangerous and down-right criminal administrations in the history of the US, with the exception of Scooter Libby, is testament to our serious flaws as a citizenry.

Yeah, I don't know how the Clintons pulled it off, either...

 

[dteowner]

Also, consider this: how do you expect most people would react if a pair of smiling young BMwB's showed up behind their door, going "Salaamu aleikum! Would you like to hear about Allah and His prophet Mohammed (sallallahu 'alayhi wassalaam?)" I bet that the most common reaction would be something along the lines of

(SLAM!) "Maaarge! Call Homeland Security! NOW!!!!"

(...if, that is, they were lucky.)

I agree that "Allah's Witnesses" wouldn't be terribly successful. I'm thinking more of a 2-pronged approach.
1) I don't know that a PR campaign would be overly nuts. There's huge Muslim centers in Indianapolis (Plainfield) and Toledo (Perrysburg). I'm assuming there's more, but I've seen those from the highway. I'd think you could invite the local "human interest" reporters in for a visit. Even if you don't nail down a 30-60 minute special report, you could probably wrangle a handful of 5 minute "bulletins" where you could say "See, we're actually pretty normal, and we think the nutjobs are nutjobs just like you do."
2) It would seem to me that "normal" Muslims in Iraq (and elsewhere) would be falling all over each other turning in militants. Perhaps that's too much cooperation for the various sects to handle, but self interest would seem to encourage a united front. You can sell out Habib the Bombmaker or you can deal with nasty visits from GI Joe and his B-2 bombers...

Related aside to chamr- sure, it's wrong and lazy, but you know as well as I that we operate on a "guilty until proven innocent" approach in our media. If my brother gets caught pulling a Dahmer (I'm an only child, so I'm safe with this hypothetical), I'm going to expect having to explain that I don't have a taste for well-cooked calves to most of the people I know.

 

[Corwin]

I didn't realise your brother was an only child!!

 

[Prime Junta]

2) It would seem to me that "normal" Muslims in Iraq (and elsewhere) would be falling all over each other turning in militants. Perhaps that's too much cooperation for the various sects to handle, but self interest would seem to encourage a united front. You can sell out Habib the Bombmaker or you can deal with nasty visits from GI Joe and his B-2 bombers...

Actually, that's more or less what's been happening in Al-Anbar lately.

The thing about Iraq is that Al Qaeda is a latecomer there; they only showed up well after Saddam was out of the way. They also never had much local support. Meaning, unless you do something astronomically stupid, they should be comparatively easy to root out. We're not talking a Taliban situation here, where Taliban are basically pushtunz with attitoodz -- something emerging from the biggest and baddest ethnic group already there. All you have to do is make Habib's buddies less scary than GI Joe.

But that's a sideshow to the real conflict, really -- despite the horrific bloodshed AQ in Iraq has managed to perpetrate.

Most of the people causing the mayhem are motivated by the usual things that go on in a very messy civil war/occupation type of situation: that is, various groups and militias fighting each other (and you) for a large number of reasons, most of them tribal, economic, political, and territorial rather than religious or ideological. These groups operate with the active and passive support of their communities. But there's nothing inherently Islamic about this, any more than there was anything inherently Christian about the Phalangist militia that slaughtered all those people in Sabra and Shatila, or the IRA for that matter. It's just war, in all of its g(l)ory.

And, despite the surprising success of the "surge," (nope, I didn't think it would work), that's why I think the Iraq civil war is a long way from over. For one thing, the government in Baghdad is extremely pissed off over those militias that you've helped get rid of Al Qaeda in Al-Anbar -- they're not under government control, and in fact they don't like the (Shi'ite dominated) government the least bit. IOW, you've solved one problem by creating another; whether the new problem is less or more manageable than the old one is too early to tell. (FWIW, I think it was a good move.)

(About that "surge" -- I'd really like to know more about what's really going on. Simply throwing 30,000 new GI's into the theater cannot have resulted in the improvements we've been seeing lately. There must have been something bigger -- a shift in tactics, a power shift in the invisible tectonic plates that drive the conflict, secret political deals...? Who knows. However, after my prediction about the surge's effect failed, I'll make a new one: withdrawing the 30,000 GI's from the field later this year will not cause the gains made to be lost.)

 

[Prime Junta]

1) I don't know that a PR campaign would be overly nuts. There's huge Muslim centers in Indianapolis (Plainfield) and Toledo (Perrysburg). I'm assuming there's more, but I've seen those from the highway. I'd think you could invite the local "human interest" reporters in for a visit. Even if you don't nail down a 30-60 minute special report, you could probably wrangle a handful of 5 minute "bulletins" where you could say "See, we're actually pretty normal, and we think the nutjobs are nutjobs just like you do."

Yup, obviously their PR strategy isn't working. Is it because of incompetence or lack of effort on their part, or unwillingness on the news media's part? Perhaps both? I don't know. Have you considered phoning in on a TV channel and asking them why they haven't done bulletins like that?

 

[chamr]

(About that "surge" -- I'd really like to know more about what's really going on. Simply throwing 30,000 new GI's into the theater cannot have resulted in the improvements we've been seeing lately. There must have been something bigger -- a shift in tactics, a power shift in the invisible tectonic plates that drive the conflict, secret political deals...? Who knows. However, after my prediction about the surge's effect failed, I'll make a new one: withdrawing the 30,000 GI's from the field later this year will not cause the gains made to be lost.)

This one's easy. The 30K troops have predominantly helped secure Baghdad in the hopes that this would give the government room to get it's sh*t together. So, in a way, it's failed so far.

The success that's being attributed to the surge, namely the decrease in violence, has little or nothing to do with the surge and more to do with a shift in strategy. As you alluded to, we've become very aggressive in recruiting the local militias and sheiks/warlords/bandits/whatever by waving lots of money and jobs in front of them. We're making effective use of them as a proxy force to keep their local communities under control while also eliminating them as threats to us.

As you've said, since these have been predominantly Sunni, it's pissing the majority Shiite government off. I'll make the opposite prediction to you: I think this is a band aid that can't possibly last. I think the divisions are so deep between the Sunni’s and the Shiite's that they can't possible reconcile for the long term and the Kurds are pretty happy with their setup up North and would rather stay out of that mess. IOW, splitting Iraq into 3 seems to be the only long term solution that will work. Iraq as a country is only yet another semi-arbitrary distinction made by imperial powers (the old League of Nations and Britain, in this case) that can't stand in the face of pre-existing factional differences unless there is a strong (read: dictatorial) power in place to make everyone play nice. If we truly want democracy in Iraq, we'd be better served in helping them form 3 new countries where they could get off each others' backs. Not that that would be an easy task, mind you.

 

[Prime Junta]

As you've said, since these have been predominantly Sunni, it's pissing the majority Shiite government off. I'll make the opposite prediction to you: I think this is a band aid that can't possibly last. I think the divisions are so deep between the Sunni’s and the Shiite's that they can't possible reconcile for the long term and the Kurds are pretty happy with their setup up North and would rather stay out of that mess.

You misunderstood me slightly: what I'm positing is that there's at best a limited causal connection between the extra 30,000 troops and the drop in violence, which means that withdrawing those 30,000 troops would not cause a corresponding increase in violence, if the other causes for the improvements we've been seeing are left in place. I wasn't speculating on the long-term viability of the current situation, which, as you say, remains unbelievably messy. As I said above, the Iraq civil war is a long way from over.

IOW, splitting Iraq into 3 seems to be the only long term solution that will work. Iraq as a country is only yet another semi-arbitrary distinction made by imperial powers (the old League of Nations and Britain, in this case) that can't stand in the face of pre-existing factional differences unless there is a strong (read: dictatorial) power in place to make everyone play nice. If we truly want democracy in Iraq, we'd be better served in helping them form 3 new countries where they could get off each others' backs. Not that that would be an easy task, mind you.

Mainly because the territorial division isn't anywhere near as neat as it looks from this far off. In order to work in the first place, you would have to have some pretty severe ethnic cleansing, and Baghdad would become a new Berlin or Jerusalem.

However, IMO the biggest obstacle to that would be that it would seriously piss off Iraq's neighbors. The Sunnis would be stuck with essentially desert and no resources, with the Shi'ites and Kurds getting the oil. Saudi Arabia has said outright that it will intervene in Iraq if it sees the Sunnis "dispossessed," and the Turks won't stand for an independent Kurdistan on their borders -- they're already de facto at war with the semi-state that's there. IOW, that split could very well cause the civil war to become a regional war, with Turkey and the US on opposite sides, the Sunni Arab countries supporting "Sunnistan," Iran supporting "Shi'istan," and Syria playing its cards as the wind blows. That would be very, very, VERY messy.

If you want my medium-term prediction for Iraq as a whole, it's this: things will proceed more or less as they did in Lebanon. That is, we'll see 10-15-20 years of low-intensity civil war with shifting alliances, parties and groups that come and go, and external powers sticking in their fingers (and getting them burned too). Somewhere along the line, America will decide it's had enough and will go home; whether it's in 2009 or 2019 won't make much difference to the end result. Eventually the hotheads will have been killed off, grown up, or just plain gotten tired of fighting, and they'll nail up some kind of facade of a state that may or may not prove to be viable, may or may not be dominated by marginally less messed-up neighbors, and may or may not erupt into a new cycle of violence after a few years of comparative calm.

Just another day in the Middle East, in other words.

To go off on a bit of a tangent, I find that one thing that seriously skews our perceptions and policies in the Middle East is that we (Westerners) have a really deep-seated, almost built-in craving for resolution. The railway carriage in Versailles, the tyrant's exile to St. Helena, the fall of the Berlin wall, the Ring thrown into Mount Doom, the fat lady singing. Hell, in a pinch will settle for the storming of the Winter Palace; the bad guys might've won that one, but at least *someone* won. The Middle East just doesn't work like that. Things just go on and on and on, for centuries or even thousands of years. I don't see any signs of that changing any time soon.

 

[chamr]

@PJ:
No doubt, there would be lots of problems to sort out to get to the 3 state solution. However, if the US, and other Western powers, want to salvage something from this whole mis-adventure and are serious about making good on their "democracy in the Middle East" rallying cries, I can't see any other way out. Re-installing a western-friendly dictator for the sake of control and influence would also be a way out, but that would seem to be non-starter at this point. You're right about the western mind wanting a resolution. But it goes beyond that into simple pragmatics at this point. So much money, blood and oil have been spilled over this, the US, and to a much lesser extent the West, may have too much at stake to just walk away and let the Middle East be the Middle East. We'll see.

I also don't think Lebanon is a good model for what may happen in Iraq. The stakes are much higher, the players much more powerful, and the power to be gained much too tempting. If the US is to just fade away, I don't think a perpetual state of mild unrest is realistic to expect. There will either be a dramatic intensification of the civil war resulting in someone "winning" and running the country in much the same manner Saddam did. Or there will be a regional war as you described even without the catalyst of a 3 state solution. What would come of a regional war is anyone's guess.

 

[Prime Junta]

@PJ:
No doubt, there would be lots of problems to sort out to get to the 3 state solution. However, if the US, and other Western powers, want to salvage something from this whole mis-adventure and are serious about making good on their "democracy in the Middle East" rallying cries, I can't see any other way out.

Those rallying cries have gotten awful quiet lately.

I don't believe that democracy as we know it is possible in the Middle East. Lebanon is a good example -- it has a system of government that's democratic in form, with pretty free elections and all, but the upshot is that FIRST you decide who's going to be the next president, and THEN you hold the elections. The reason is that Western democracy operates on the basis of the (politically) autonomous individual, whereas Middle Eastern countries operate on the basis of the (politically) autonomous clan. So the Druze will always vote for the Druze party, the Maronites for the Maronite party, the Sunnis for the Sunni party, and the Shi'ites for the Shi'ite party. And of course there's the insanely complicated formal power-sharing-between-the-sects system on top of it all.

In the long term, the only hope for "democracy" is that Middle Eastern societies figure out how to create an open, free, non-coercive society that bases itself on the reality of the existing social structures. I'm sure such a beast is possible, but we don't know what it'll look like; only that it'll be very significantly different from the American or European model. It can be done, I'm sure; the Japanese managed something very like it.

Re-installing a western-friendly dictator for the sake of control and influence would also be a way out, but that would seem to be non-starter at this point. You're right about the western mind wanting a resolution. But it goes beyond that into simple pragmatics at this point. So much money, blood and oil have been spilled over this, the US, and to a much lesser extent the West, may have too much at stake to just walk away and let the Middle East be the Middle East. We'll see.

Economists call that the "sunk costs fallacy."

I also don't think Lebanon is a good model for what may happen in Iraq. The stakes are much higher, the players much more powerful, and the power to be gained much too tempting. If the US is to just fade away, I don't think a perpetual state of mild unrest is realistic to expect.

I never said it was going to be mild. The Lebanese civil war wasn't. Low-intensity conflicts can be very bloody.

There will either be a dramatic intensification of the civil war resulting in someone "winning" and running the country in much the same manner Saddam did. Or there will be a regional war as you described even without the catalyst of a 3 state solution. What would come of a regional war is anyone's guess.

Only time will tell. I think you're falling into the "resolution craving" trap with that prognosis, but then perhaps I'm too pessimistic. I guess all we can do is hope for the best.

PS. About the Lebanon parallel: I once came across an 19th-century book on the politics of Mount Lebanon, written by a Russian guy for the edification of the tsar. The interesting thing was that the names and roles of the movers and shakers are more or less the same as they're today -- Gemayel, Jumblatt, Chehab, Khoury, Edde, what have you.

 

[POLYGON]

I think the scenarios you're suggesting will happen in Iraq are far worse than Saddam's regime, so why rid of him in the first place?, thus I still don't understand the reason behind The US campaign on Iraq and I mean the real reason. I think now it's hard to predict now what'll happen in Iraq, maybe in 15 years it'll be easier
About Lebanon which happen to be where I live, it wasn't the same, there was at least some direct reason for the war which the Maronite's refusal of the Palestinian(which I happen to be ) presence in Lebanon, the problem was that both parties were too powerful....
@PJ's comment about the same names over and over, this is not coincidence IMO, they always want revenge and to regain the former glory of their "ancestors" that's why nowadays some parties are itching for another civil war but what prevents them is the presence of an extra powerful very-well-armed Hizbullah which scares them and Hizbullah is not planning to start a war, thus there's some peace and quiet

 

[Prime Junta]

I think the scenarios you're suggesting will happen in Iraq are far worse than Saddam's regime, so why rid of him in the first place?, thus I still don't understand the reason behind The US campaign on Iraq and I mean the real reason. I think now it's hard to predict now what'll happen in Iraq, maybe in 15 years it'll be easier

I think this is one case where things are simpler than they appear.

If you want the real reason -- actually, reasons -- for the Iraq invasion, all you have to do is look it up on the website of the Project for a New American Century.

In a nutshell, there are three: oil, Israel, and democracy.

Oil: this needs no extra explanation. Control of oil reserves is a strategic objective.

Israel: Israel's regional enemies were Saddam's Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The PNAC didn't intend to stop at Iraq.

Democracy: now, this may be a bit harder to swallow for some, but... I believe that the PNAC neo-cons genuinely, truly believed in their "democracy domino" theory. That is, that (1) democracies don't fight each other, (2) democracy is the natural political order for any country, so (3) to create democracy in the Middle East, all you have to do is get rid of the dictators, resulting in (4) a set of countries that are friendly to each other, America, and Israel (because of (1)).

So, the architects of the war believed that it would be a simple matter to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam's tyranny, which would automatically result in the emergence of a pro-Western democracy, which would then cause the Syrian and Iranian "dominos" to fall, eventually spreading to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and what have you. And everybody would live happily ever after, sheltered under the wings of the American eagle.

About Lebanon which happen to be where I live, it wasn't the same, there was at least some direct reason for the war which the Maronite's refusal of the Palestinian(which I happen to be ) presence in Lebanon, the problem was that both parties were too powerful....

You know, I have this funny idea about civil wars.

It's this: the proximate causes don't really matter.

Once a war starts, already existing fault lines will be exposed, the sides of the conflict will coalesce, alliances will form and dissolve, and so on. Then it'll just keep going under its own steam.

It doesn't really matter what lit the powder keg -- a foreign invasion, somebody shooting up a school bus, a car bomb, or a fight over a football match. Things will just follow their own logic whatever the cause.

@PJ's comment about the same names over and over, this is not coincidence IMO, they always want revenge and to regain the former glory of their "ancestors" that's why nowadays some parties are itching for another civil war but what prevents them is the presence of an extra powerful very-well-armed Hizbullah which scares them and Hizbullah is not planning to start a war, thus there's some peace and quiet

Of course it's not coincidence; my point was precisely that Lebanese politics have been and continue to be dominated by a handful of families from each of the sects; even though the system is outwardly democratic with free elections and what have you, people keep voting according to denominational and feudal lines.

PS. Hope you don't mind my borrowing your kaffiyeh.