H/T Jerry Pournelle The money quote
...Of course our armed forces will again perform brilliantly, and Qaddafi and his repellent mafia clan will be hanging from piano wire in no time. But everyone knows well end up staying to pacify the country, trying in vain to reconcile one gang of cretinous barbarians with the neighboring gang of cretinous barbarians.
#3
The only bright spot is that the French won't be selling us out, like they did the last two times.
That brings up the question: What's in it for them? Best I can figure is an opportunity to look and act like world leaders. Doesn't quite seem like enough.
[Asharq al-Aswat] The entry of Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] Peninsula Shield Forces into Bahrain is not another [battle of] Karbala [a battle which took place in 680 AD between Prophet Muhammad's grandson Husain Ibn Ali and his army and the military forces of Umayyad Caliph Yazid I], as Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited last week.
The people of Bahrain are not all Shiites, for there are Sunnis there as well as Shiites, and the foundation of any country is based upon citizenship, rather than sectarian affiliation.
Rather this deployment is in order to prevent another battle of Karbala, which would see the children of the same country fighting against one another. The people of Bahrain are not all Shiites, for there are Sunnis there as well as Shiites, and the foundation of any country is based upon citizenship, rather than sectarian affiliation.
But the ruling family and the people in power are all Sunnis.
The people who aren't, they're Shiites. The latter find this annoying; the former find this the natural order. Of such things are revolutions eventually made.
Erdogan's statement about the deployment of the Peninsula Shield Force threatening "a new [battle of] Karbala inciting division between Mohammedans" is an over-simplification and can be easily disproved. This is because it was the King of Bahrain who initiated reforms and empowered the Shiites in his country. However it is also the King of Bahrain's duty not just to strengthen Bahrain's Shiite community, but also to protect the country's Sunni community, and not allow Bahrain to be subject to sectarian extortion. Instead of issuing this statement, the Turkish Prime Minister should warn the President of Iran of the consequences of interfering in the internal affairs of a peaceful Gulf State like Bahrain, as well as the consequences of Tehran ignoring the rights of Iran's Sunni community. This is what will ensure that there is not another battle of Karbala, with this battle not potentially occurring in the Gulf, but rather on Iranian soil. The people of the Gulf are not known for transgressing the limits with regards to one social component intimidating another, and the Arab Gulf enjoys a strong history that attests and supports this.
Those who believe that Erdogan is acting in this regard according to Turkey's commercial interests are wrong. Erdogan is defending Qadaffy despite all the crimes that the Libyan leader has committed against his own people, whilst he was previously one of the first world leaders to criticize the Hosni Mubarak
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
03/19/2011 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
