A poem on Iraq

[richardf8]

Sometimes I wonder
If George W. Bush wasn't told the whole truth:
That there were no WMD's in Iraq
That our accusations were a little game we played
By gentlemen's agreement
That our occasional bombings and strafings
Were a price he was willing to pay
To let his neighbors believe
Or wonder at least if
He was too dangerous to attack.

Sometimes I wonder
If he was told
And he just didn't give a damn
Eager perhaps, to rain fire and brimstone
Shock and awe
Upon Saddam and his Saddamists
To end the Saddamy there
Once and for all.

Sometimes I wonder
If, squirreled away in Syria
There aren't missiles
Avec au France
From Chinese parts
That could have flown far
Crossed Jordan
Remaining to be found
Hidden away
in a compact between tyrants
with a common goal.

We were rash, we were brash
We tipped our hand far too early
We did not draw
Our house was not full
When we called the bluff
And when we won
The pot was empty
Because no one else had raised
And now we'll never know
What the stakes were or might have been
or if there were any at all.

Comments

[richardf8]

But the point was, simply, that poor economic conditions are not the cause of this terrorism. In fact, were the US to match China's expanding nuclear power development, the reduction of money flow to the Saudis might cut off its funding.

Concentration of most of a nation's wealth in the hands of a relatively few people at the top does not mean that the economic conditions in that country are not poor. And indeed, most of the wealth in Saudi Arabia is concentrated near the top. And there it gets used, as you suggest, to fund terrorism. I agree with you about the solution too. Nuclear Energy has a host of risks, and problems, when they arise, are quite severe. But that is offset by the rarity of such incidents, and by the human cost of our oil dependency. But given the luddites of the left and the oil infrastructure investors on the right, chances of increasing nuclear power is slim. I wish it weren't so but it is.

As for your last question . . . I think a clash of fundamentalisms, Christian and Muslim, is the largest threat. I see them playing off each other, goading each other and prodding each other along. I think it is theocracy that is the largest threat facing mankind at this moment - doesn't matter whose. The biggest thing that keeps me from moving to Israel is that the Orthodox Rabbinate has too much say in civil life.

Nations tend to use armies, period.
The predominantly muslim countries have not been using armies for about 30 years now, despite being nations. Funding terrorism is what they have been doing instead. I call an equivalency here because these are each strategies for waging war. But if I'm in the crossfire between the terrorist and the regular soldier, I'm just as dead regardless of who fires the lethal shot.

[level-head.livejournal.com]

Concentration of most of a nation's wealth in the hands of a relatively few people at the top does not mean that the economic conditions in that country are not poor.

Of course not. Such concentration of wealth is a mark of all human society for all recorded history.

Now, back to Saudi Arabia, where economic conditions in the country are not poor. Saudi Arabia distributes money from oil to its citizens, resulting in a large number of young Saudis who have no inclination to work at anything less than professional positions.

While the unemployment rate of young Saudis is described as 30% to 50%, depending (apparently) on region and age cutoffs, those same "poor" Saudis are very often the employers of the African guest workers doing the menial work.

The Wahhabi and similar madrassa schools, now spread from the Middle East across much of Europe and Africa, teach hatred, the deaths of all non-converts, and the re-establishment of the Caliphate and its expansion across the world.

I am aware of nothing even remotely a counterpart to this among the Christian faiths.

The Chinese are battling Islamic terrorism within their borders -- you'd have a hard time asserting China as a "predominately Christian nation".

And you seem to have discounted the armies of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Sudan and so on. Hussein's army alone had more ammunition than the United States, acquired almost entirely from Russia and France.

Where do you see this "Christian fundamentalism" operating in the world?

Do you think that the jihadists are killing Iraqi citizens because they are Christian fundamentalists? Do you think that this is the reason for the jihadists' attacks on Russia, on England, on France, on China and so on?

===|==============/ Level Head