The Iraqi Nightmare

[TooNice]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...eas_by_country
You seem more issues with the Kurds than IS. Why is that? Before IS came along, they weren't exactly expending their territories / causing trouble.

[wasabi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...eas_by_country
You seem more issues with the Kurds than IS. Why is that? Before IS came along, they weren't exactly expending their territories / causing trouble.

True. But we hadn't just given them a shedload of guns....

[Noxvayl]

I don't understand this bit about Kurds governing their own area ? Your area belongs to Iraq and the central Iraqi govt. controls it! What is this self governing bs ?

The Kurds, who are native to Northern Iraq, have never had the ability to govern themselves despite being a different population within Iraq. They have lived under the rule of other populations and now, when the **** hits the fan, they don't complain about how bad the west has treated them or how the Iraqi government are abandoning them, they simply stand up and make the best of the situation. "Your area" as you say it, is not where the Iraqi people natively occupied; it was forcibly taken by former regimes, ones we have personally gone in and gotten rid of. The Kurds lived under the regime but they were not supportive of it since more Kurds live in Turkey than Northern Iraq and many escaped the region to get themselves away from the US/UK occupied Iraq when we invaded the country to get rid of the former regime.

The History of the regions depicted by these 27 maps tells a very different story than the one we are led to believe through media reports that have no interest in history; as you can see by the first map the northern area of Iraq is mainly Kurds, not Iraqi people which are a different demographic coloured green on the map and concentrated along a small portion of the region. Iraqi people may make up the largest percentage of the total population but they make up almost zero of the percentage of the northern area of the country.

If I told you not only how to think but how you should be running your household you'd get annoyed, so why is it acceptable that we can tell that whole region that they can't redraw the borders we have carved out for them because we think it is wrong. Our opinion on the matter is not important, theirs is; I find our countries supporting the Kurds to be a good thing and would also support them keeping the region they are currently protecting as their own; it would be a just reward for them doing good by the region, and world as a whole, in fighting against IS and showing others in the region that IS is not the best way to interpret the Muslim religion or the best way to behave if you want to improve the region.

I am bias of course, as I have said before in this thread, because my best friend at University is Kurdish and left the area when we invaded it.

[TooNice]

True. But we hadn't just given them a shedload of guns....

I guess the governments offering aids have weighted the various options, and decided to take a chance with the Kurds. It comes down to this:

1. Should IS be stopped?
If IS was simply trying to create a homeland for Muslims via a temporary violent means, and live happily ever after with the rest of the world once that has been achieved, then more people may decide to just let things run it's course. But "violent" would be an understatement to their actions, and they are quite open about the fact that they are not stopping with the territory they have occupied (a pretty big chunk of land), and plan to knock in other countries door. Given that, I guess many government have decided they must be stopped. In contrast, the Kurds haven't shown to be anything like IS.

2. Are we (US, UK, coalition etc.) willing to send troops to stop them?
Not really.
So instead of shedding our own blood (okay, we do have special forces risking their lives assisting the Iraqi army too), we are asking others to do it for themselves and us. If the Iraqi army was capable of dealing with the threat all by themselves, then it would have been fine. But they suffered a number of defeats, providing IS with more fire power in the process. It may well be that they are regrouping and will be able to fight back, but I guess that various government have decided to take an calculated risk by allying with the Kurds to increase the chance of success.

I have no crystal ball to tell me whether it is the right call or not. But I guess that various government have decided that you can't really do a whole lot worse than letting IS run freely, so we may as well take a chance with the Kurds.

[peterb]

Thread reviewed again and re-opened - for the last time. Please keep it on topic and relevant.

[TeePee]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...onvert-or-kill

A fundamentalist is a fundamentalist.

[OilSheikh]

I retract my view that ISIS could have ever lead to stability. The way they are beheading people, nope - they are creating the instability. The Kurds might as well take over Iraq, seeing how the central govt. and army is just weak

[Noxvayl]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...onvert-or-kill

A fundamentalist is a fundamentalist.

So true. The idea's are not at fault, it is the people wielding them without thinking that are. I hate it when idea's, or non living statistical numbers, that are blamed for people behaving badly; it is just as wrong to say speed kills as it is to say a spade kills as it is to say that religion kills, all equally incorrect statements because they attribute autonomy to things that don't have it and forget that humans are behind them all. Humans are the problem, not ideas, not the weapons that they wield or the toys that they use.

I get annoyed when problems are abstracted so far from reality that we forget people are capable of making decisions we disagree with. Telling them they are wrong does not make it better or even help. Figuring out that their views are disagreed with by more people than agree with them is a tough pill to swallow for anyone, no matter what idea you have. Being isolated from the scale of the number people who disagree with you helps people think they can rise up and make their ideas more popular, which tends to work counter to that sort of thinking, I dislike ideas that are wielded as superior as do others I have found out to my detriment.

Society is very slowly growing up, I just hope society is able to mature fast enough to deal with natural world problems rather than get carried away with problems of our own minds.

[drone567]

I see what you're saying, but leaders are obviously filling young jihadists heads with some sort of hate ideology, that is radicalising them. I suppose once they enter into that ideology, any reference to a balanced view point gets blurred. I hope Labour Party are held to account; for the false invasion of Iraq(we are one of the main arms dealers. We should have known their weapons potential. Heck we probably were supplying them! IS certainly have some serious weaponary now, we supplied it to them(via Iraqi troops!), and have the finances to devasate the West.

[wasabi]

So true. The idea's are not at fault,.

So jihad is just something made up by modern bad people who don't really understand what it means?


So what DOES jihad mean?

[kalniel]

So jihad is just something made up by modern bad people who don't really understand what it means?


So what DOES jihad mean?

As far as I understand it, it's basically standing up for your values. There was a call to jihad for other Muslims against IS, in other words resisting the IS idealogy. I don't think there's any clear instruction on how to do that, ie it's not necessarily violent resistance or standing up.

[OilSheikh]

LOL. Jihad means Holy war. These wars were waged against non-believers i.e. non-Muslims during Prophet Mohammed ( pbuh )'s time in Arabia as Arabs then worshipped self-made statues and God ordered the prophet to turn people into Muslims. After the Johads were over, God told us to respect other religions.

ISIS think that they still need to continue Jihads. Sigh!

[Noxvayl]

So jihad is just something made up by modern bad people who don't really understand what it means?


So what DOES jihad mean?

I refer you to OilSheikh's explanation of jihad, he knows better than I about it. Whether or not a person understands jihad does not make their actions any less repugnant when using it as their reason for killing innocent people. The idea does not absolve people of responsibility for their actions, and attacking the idea does not help address the problem.

OilSheikh has a different thought on what jihad is, is his definition better because we agree with it or because it is more moderate and therefore less likely to be misconstrued as extreme? What a person thinks of an idea is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what reasoning led them to that conclusion. The reasoning and lack of questioning information that leads to that point is more important than the unfortunate situation of people agreeing with what IS wants to do and their current rhetoric.

Either way I look at it, people are the problem as well as the means to our solution. Blaming the ideas they use as justification for their actions is not helpful in my eyes. Those ideas are simply justification for doing what they wanted to do anyway, remove one idea and it will be replaced with another and you have achieved nothing.

[DeludedGuy]

I refer you to OilSheikh's explanation of jihad, he knows better than I about it. Whether or not a person understands jihad does not make their actions any less repugnant when using it as their reason for killing innocent people. The idea does not absolve people of responsibility for their actions, and attacking the idea does not help address the problem.

OilSheikh has a different thought on what jihad is, is his definition better because we agree with it or because it is more moderate and therefore less likely to be misconstrued as extreme? What a person thinks of an idea is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what reasoning led them to that conclusion. The reasoning and lack of questioning information that leads to that point is more important than the unfortunate situation of people agreeing with what IS wants to do and their current rhetoric.

Either way I look at it, people are the problem as well as the means to our solution. Blaming the ideas they use as justification for their actions is not helpful in my eyes. Those ideas are simply justification for doing what they wanted to do anyway, remove one idea and it will be replaced with another and you have achieved nothing.

The problem is that these people are inherently unreasonable, how do you approach a debate with a fanatical religious person about their mis-interpreted beliefs? Firstly, they have been taught that anyone who is not Muslim is of a lower human species so therefore any question posed by a christian/catholic/atheist is automatically dismissed, a debate would need to be from within the muslim community by a respectable Muslim group.

Secondly, religious people are taught not to question their religious texts as these are the words of God, this makes debate very awkward because unlike political viewpoints and opinions that are created by man and can therefore be changed, religious scripture cannot. The word of God/s are not man made according to religious folk, a quick history and science lesson would prove all these things wrong however it goes back to the aspect of belief, it is something which is extremely difficult to change, the individual needs to have an open inquisitive mind.

I was brought up a catholic but from an early age I questioned it all and as I became educated in science and history it all became obvious to me - it's important to understand what the world was like thousands of years ago, it's important to understand the lack of scientific knowledge and the lack of authority, something was needed help bring order and unite people, however it's used more to divide than unite these days - my view is that there is no place for it in our educated liberal society.

[Noxvayl]

I agree with you DeludedGuy, I find the decline in religiosity to be comforting but it will take time because of the nature of the beast. We are slow to change our minds and a small percentage of the population actually uses trial and error to help them improve their thinking and decision making, the rest have this insane God Delusion; it's not just religious text, it is the same nonsense that allows people to just go ahead with whatever a doctor says despite doctors being fallible (the link is a TED talk on trail, error and the God Complex). We give people authority and once we do we refrain from questioning because it is too much effort, or our society has made it difficult to do so. Too many kids get told to shut up and sit down as soon as they are taught how to walk and talk; uncurious kids are the hallmark of our broken education system which is a major part of the problem.

The cognitive dissonance people experience because their beliefs don't match the real world is a growing problem; I feel it is a major factor in the significant rise in mental health issues. The world has changed and no longer conforms to views that were perfectly practicable 30-50 years ago; instead of changing views, being extremely stubborn creatures, we slowly break down and start to distrust either the world around us or our thinking. Unfortunately I have first hand experience with mentally ill people in my family, it is so tough to point it out to them because you can see the effects of the dissonance in real time. I've had a personality trait pointed out as being repugnant and asked if they thought the same of me because I am similar and was met with the answer "but your different, I know you better." Never occurs to them that other people might have different aspects to their personality just like I do and saying it doesn't help them realise it.

Beliefs coming before reality is a less severe mental illness in terms of how the person can function but much more severe problem in terms of impact on society as a whole; the ones who distrust the world and bury themselves in their beliefs tend to cause harm to others either through actions they think are beneficial when they aren't or through violent tendencies that can be encouraged by the wayward beliefs. It is a major problem we face but history is edging towards more considerate and more flexible thinking which is resulting in a reduced religious population and a more secular society.

None of this changes the way we handle the problem though, if a debate or conversation to do with a serious topic, like religion, becomes tedious I tend to say that I disagree rather than engage the points being made (talking about face to face interactions here). I have found more success with doing this than engaging in the debate when the other person's views are slowly getting less coherent and the abstractions become more tenuous. My family don't talk with me about religion because they know I'm Agnostic. The views they hold, denying evolution for one, are undeniably false in my eyes and I simply won't entertain their reasoning. My family still functions despite the conflicting views within it and society can do that as well. We need to become comfortable disagreeing with others in general for it to work though; it is crazy to think that it is ok to fight because you disagree with someone. Telling people you disagree and walking away can help show others, whether or not they agree with your ideas, that disagreeing with people does not have to be a problem.

If you want a more detailed reason for my views on religion as a whole you can read the post I made earlier in the thread here. I make a point of mentioning the decline in religiosity and the video posted is a very interesting take on history, with respect to war in particular, from Steven Pinker.

Essentially you can't engage extreme people in beneficial debate because all it does is get their backs up; when that happens you may as well leave because all they will do is attack your views with whatever information they can and their mind becomes insulated from any information because they are so focused on telling you that you are wrong. Having said that the real world can't be ignored and will eventually cause cognitive dissonance for people with extreme beliefs. I'm not saying we have to wait and see, we can use our actions to show that disagreement shouldn't result in aggression towards those with opposing views. It is the only thing I know of to have an impact on extreme views based on my experience.

[wasabi]

I refer you to OilSheikh's explanation of jihad, he knows better than I about it.

How so?