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2005-05-03 Terror Networks & Islam
non-state-belligerents
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Posted by 3dc 2005-05-03 8:42:14 AM|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 A civil war requires the sides are more or less evenly balanced. That is not the case in Iraq. The better organized Kurds and the more numerous Shiias would quickly overwhelm the Sunnis whose territory has no strategic advantages. It would be a short lived slaughter.
Posted by phil_b 2005-05-03 09:46||   2005-05-03 09:46|| Front Page Top

#2  The real danger is that the insurgency will ignite a civil war in the years after the US withdrawal.

This presupposes an American withdrawal. I have no idea what Rumsfeld plans, of course, but I think some carefully placed American bases will be necessary for the better part of a generation, as in post-war Germany and Japan, to support this fledgeling democracy, and protect it against exactly the kind of societal breakdown and warlordism the author describes.
Posted by  trailing wife 2005-05-03 11:11||   2005-05-03 11:11|| Front Page Top

#3 TW is right. Permanent basing will be the cost of bearing the burden East of Aden.
Posted by Mrs. Davis 2005-05-03 11:14||   2005-05-03 11:14|| Front Page Top

#4 Mrs. Davis... No need to suggest Aden - the biblical Eden being assumed in Iraq.
Nice Play on Movies though!
Posted by 3dc 2005-05-03 12:46||   2005-05-03 12:46|| Front Page Top

#5 3dc-I thought the Garden of Eden was somewhere near Moscow.

That's what Chekov on Star Trek said, anyway. ;-p
Posted by Barbara Skolaut">Barbara Skolaut  2005-05-03 17:22||   2005-05-03 17:22|| Front Page Top

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