Is The BIG Mideast War Coming?

Orwell said:
I have trouble figuring out how much of the mid east troubles are due to plain old Arab nationalism(s), and how much of it is due to fundamentalist Islam. I think the two are inextricably linked, unfortunately. About point 8: what do you mean by "spreading influence"? Terrorism doesn't help to "spread influence", on the contrary. You can argue that it "influences" by the negative, though. But if we talk specifically about political power, I don't think violent fundamentalist Islam can be an important political force outside of the middle east: some mid eastern countries have adopted Sharia law, but I think we can say with a fair amount of certitude that a western country never will. It is the particularities of the Middle East (widespread poverty, lack of democracy, repressive governments, real or perceived Western intervention) that favour violent Islamism.
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Tribalism, not nationalism.
 
Ed said:
Tribalism, not nationalism.
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Uhhh... What's the difference? ;) <--- This means "I kid".

Now seriously, to me, tribalism is to nationalism what a sect is to a religion. Does that make sense to you?
 
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BPSCG said:
I haven't had time to be around much lately, and won't be able to contribute much to this discussion in the next few weeks (should it survive that long), but I've been mulling over some troubling ideas the last several days.

Let's take a few items as self-evident, even even axiomatic:
  1. Whether violent Islamists represent a majority of Muslims worldwide, or whether they are a minority, no one doubts they represent a powerful force within Islam.
  2. The governments of most Muslim nations, especially in the middle east, are either unable or unwilling (or both) to control the Islamists in their midst, particularly when the Islamists' rage is directed at the west. In many cases, those governments actively support Islamist terrorist groups.
  3. By contrast, any voices of moderation in those middle eastern Muslim countries are suppressed, either by Islamist violence, or by the governments, or both.
  4. Since the Muslim moderates in those countries have virtually no chance of coming to power, facing as they do the dual obstacles of repressive government and murderous Islamists, there is no hope of peaceful and democratic change to the status quo in those countries.
  5. There is nothing the west can do to change any of this by any peaceful means. Whatever democracy now existing in the Muslim middle east is fragile, and has been imposed by force of foreign arms.
  6. Violent Islam, even if a numeric minority, has cowed the populations of its Muslim nations, in much the same way a few thousand Bolsheviks cowed the population of all of Russia almost a hundred years ago. It has been attempting to do the same in Europe, and is making significant inroads, often with the connivance of its Muslim sponsor governments.
  7. Violent Islam's fury, never far below the surface, erupts at the slightest provocation (viz. the cartoons eruption), which reminds one of Voltaire's observation that, "To the wicked, everything is pretext." This fury is not amenable to compromise, and it appears western institutions are more willing to compromise on free speech than the Islamists are on cartoons (no major US newspapers have printed the cartoons).
  8. Nothing so far seems to be discouraging violent Islam from trying to spread its influence throughout the world. People observe that there has been no attack on US soil since September 11, 2001, but that is because of US vigilance, not because of Islamist lack of will. Whether the response to violent Islam and its government sponsors has been timid (a la Europe) or stronger (a la the US), the threat remains. Violent Islam has considered the west the enemy to be overcome, long before the west recognized the threat. This attitude long predates Gulf War II, September 11, 2001, or Gulf War I, and will survive even if Iraq succeeds in overcoming the Islamist insurrection in its midst.
Conclusion: We are destined to live with violent Islam snarling at the gates (and occasionally breaking in) until either a) fundamentalist Islam has conquered the world, or b) fundamentalist Islam and its government sponsors have been destroyed. I see a much wider, much more destructive war against Islam and/or its sponsor states coming. Ten years, maybe? Unhappy conclusion, but I see no other likely resolution.

Thoughts?
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Isn't Libanon democratic (kind of anyways)? As for alternatives predicting the future is notiriously difficult, but I can see at least one other possibility. It's possble that the west will simply have to accept that terrorism happens once in a while. Basically let the police and inteligence agencies work to prevent it, or catch the people who did it and have them military drop some bombs when appropriate, and the get on with our lives.
 
Orwell said:
Uhhh... What's the difference? ;) <--- This means "I kid".

Now seriously, to me, tribalism is to nationalism what a sect is to a religion. Does that make sense to you?
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Yeah, sorta independent of geography.
 
I'm supposed to be writing, but I'll sneak a quick post in anyway.

An alternative viewpoint is that by flattening, starving and then conquering Iraq, invading and installing a compliant government Afghanistan, and making saber-rattling noised about Syria and Iran, the USA has caused the governments and the people of the Middle East to fear that a foreign oppressor is going to systematically take over their entire region.

Thus they react against foreigners in general and the USA in particular, rabble-rousers exploit this fear to rise to power, governments start seeking nuclear weapons (the only demonstrably effective way of maintaining sovereignty against the US threat), religious leaders start riling up their populace for war and so on and on.

Is this a totally one sided picture? Absolutely, but no more than BPSCGs.

There is a reason why people talk about wars "destabilising" a region, and it's because as soon as a credible threat of war is on the horizon everybody has to start arming up and preparing their populations psychologically for war. That's what I think we are seeing now - the general militarisation of the region in response to a foreign threat.

Who is threatening and who is responding to the other's threats quickly gets lost in the muddle.
 
I had thought it was going that way, but it now looks justas likely there could be an Islamic civil war, sparked by a civil war in Iraq. A war that splits Islam Sunni vs Shiite that engulfs Saudi, Iran and the rest.

There are right wing pundits who once favoured the invasion now saying the US should just get out and leave them to their own devices.
 
It is more likely that there is going to be a series of bush wars fought over an increasingly scarce resource...fresh drinking water.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
An alternative viewpoint is that by flattening, starving and then conquering Iraq, invading and installing a compliant government Afghanistan, and making saber-rattling noised about Syria and Iran, the USA has caused the governments and the people of the Middle East to fear that a foreign oppressor is going to systematically take over their entire region.
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That might be a plausible argument if the worldwide Islamist jihad had started after the above events.
 
News for you stop obsessisng about a fantasy, there is going to be no world wide jihad. The vast majority of muslims do not worry about the caliphate , they are more worried about their cars.

The next struggles are going to be over drinkable water and once again are likely to be centered in the Middle eeast and Sub Saharan countries as they try and grab as much fresh water for themselves.
 
BPSCG said:
Do you really think we'll invade Iran one year, Syria another, Saudi Arabia another, Pakistan another, topple the governments, and occupy those countries? Not possible, unless we do to those countries what we did to Germany and Japan in WW II - wreak such devastation that the survivors would be willing to accept peace on any terms rather than face utter destruction. Do you see us doing that?

Been many years since I checked in on Leto Atreides...
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The short answer is "yes". Get the population psyched up to the max after another 9/11, and the population will be screaming bloody murder. :)
 
It's important to note that Islam has only come to Western attention since the Iranian Revolution, and quite slowly. Trouble in the Middle East has attracted Western attention since long before that. IMO it's also important to note that Western obsession with Islam post-dates the Fall Of The Wall. Islamist obsession with the West - Bin Ladenism per se - post-dates the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

As someone who grew up in and outlived the last Clash of Cultures, aka the Cold War, I'm more than cynical about current obsessions. The End Days are always just upon us.
 
CapelDodger said:
As someone who grew up in and outlived the last Clash of Cultures, aka the Cold War, I'm more than cynical about current obsessions. The End Days are always just upon us.
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Agreed. All this crap about 'the war to end all wars' and such is just crap to get the antiwar people behind the push with the false belief that every war will end all human conflict for all time. However, it's not true, wars start because people have different interests and people have agendas that they feel the spilling of blood will cure. It never does, and it just showcases that human life in the eyes of humans is always cheap with a variable (skin color, religion) being that tipping point.

What's going to happen is that a bunch of Middle Eastern nations are now afraid war is going to break out and are arming themselves. The rest of the world is seeing that America is quite a loose cannon and a tin Hitler to boot and is slowly going to become independent of it. Our power is going to decrease and eventually our troops stationed all over the place are going to leave. This, along with the Oil Card the Middle East can play, is going to make the Global Economy change. Things will be hard, people will bitch and die, politicians will keep a thumb stuck up their butt because usually they're a bunch of idiots with their own interests, and then something will happen that will shake up the world once again.

Nothing is going to 'end,' but things are going to change. Too bad that it happens to be an Idiot who has been treated fortunately by the very system he's destroying that happens to be at the wheel.
 
It could be, after all, Bush has been trying to ignite the "final conflict" for some time now.

I wonder if he thinks he's an agent of someone...
 
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