Thursday, August 19, 2010

Ultimate destiny

While the impending acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, and Israel's possible response to that, consitute the greatest threats to stability looming on the horizon, two other threats have not been fully recognized. One is the forthcoming retreat from Iraq by US forces under Pres. Obama, and the other is the failure of the US and its allies to pacify Afghanistan. In fact both countries will likely revert to a situation that existed prior to colonization by western forces.

Remember that Iraq was an invention of the British Colonial Office under Winston Churchill and was gerrymandered together from three disparate and antagonistic groups, the Arab Sunni, the Arab Shia and the Kurds. The likelihood of their remaining under one stable government once the US forces leave is very small. More people, mostly Shia Arabs, are being killed every day now in Iraq than before. Once things start to fall apart, Iran is likely to occupy the Shia in the south, Turkey is likely to gobble up the Kurds in the north, to prevent them becoming independent, and the Sunnis will be left with a rump of Iraq in the center. This process will occur with several conflicts and major loss of life, but this is the only way that the Arab/Muslims can handle things, much like the European Christians in the Middle Ages.

Afghanistan has never been pacified, and the British were driven out after their previous attempts. While British and US soldiers are dying daily, not much is being accomplished. The regime of Pres. Karzai hardly controls anything outside Kabul, and it will be better when the western forces leave and Afghanistan will return to its fractious primitive state. In this situation the Taliban forces, other extremist Muslim groups and various war-lords will continue to battle it out for control, and the training of Islamist terrorists will recur as they seek to attack the western nations in their homelands. This will be much like a return to the status quo ante. There will not be much that can be done, but rather than trying to pacify and democratize the unregenerate, the US will content itself with attacking them from afar. Destroying them and their capability will be far more effective than trying to civilize them.

This might seem like a return to the old evils of imperialism, but instead of seeking to occupy and exploit thair lands, apart from oil, the western nations will mainly seek to suppress and destroy the aims of extreme Islam, until they get the idea and start to change internally. That could take hundreds of years, so ingrained is the expansionist and absolutist philosophy of Islam. So the future does not look bright, but the west must be able to outlast them.

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