David P. Goldman, June 5th, 2013
Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum (where I am associate fellow) replies this morning to Bret Stephens‘ June 3rd Wall Street Journal column, “The Muslim Civil War: Standing by while the Sunnis and Shiites fight it out invites disaster.” The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when the Reagan administration quietly encouraged the two sides to fight themselves to bloody exhaustion, did America no good, Stephens argues:
In short, a long intra-Islamic war left nobody safer, wealthier or wiser. Nor did it leave the West morally untainted. The U.S. embraced Saddam Hussein as a counterweight to Iran, and later tried to ply Iran with secret arms in exchange for the release of hostages. Patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner over the Gulf, killing 290 civilians. Inaction only provides moral safe harbor when there’s no possibility of action.
Today, he adds, there comes “the whispered suggestion: If one branch of Islam wants to be at war with another branch for a few years — or decades — so much the better for the non-Islamic world. Mass civilian casualties in Aleppo or Homs is their tragedy, not ours. It does not implicate us morally. And it probably benefits us strategically, not least by redirecting jihadist energies away from the West.” This is not a good thing for the West, but a bad thing, he concludes. Pipes and Stephens are both friends of mine, and both have a point (although I come down on Pipes’ side of the argument). It might be helpful to expand the context of the discussion….To Read More….
My Take – Interesting commentary. He is right that there is no way the west can fix this mess. Let’s put it this way. We have two opposing - actually more than two - Muslim religious factions killing each other with great glee. Are we to expect that someone from the west - who they hate with ever more passion than they hate each other - is going to ‘fix’ their problem? One of the points he makes in this article is that lack of food was at the core of this Syrian human catastrophe, and quite frankly, all these recent revolutions in the Muslim world. What he doesn’t mention is that the price of grain stuffs skyrocketed when the greenies demanded alternative fuel sources and we started using grain to create ethanol. We put food in our fuel tanks and as a result people starved and governments fell. There is one more thing. He also fails to clearly outline the real problem. Islam!
His conclusions on what will be done are all wrong in my opinion. At some point the world will come to the conclusion that the root of all these problems is Islam itself. At some point the world will come to the conclusion that this isn’t a secular war with secular foundations. At some point the world will realize it is embroiled in a religious war, which will be particularly difficult for Americans to accept since the very concept of a religious war is alien to the American ethic. At some point the world will come to the conclusion that the only effective result will be to eliminate the religion. But that would be difficult, so what they will do is attack all religions by turning loose the socialists at the U.N. This will then give these people the opportunity to do that which they have always wanted. Destroy religion, especially Christianity and make the state as the ultimate moral arbiter, with the ultimate goal of making the U.N. a true world government. That is frightening and that is the inevitable outcome. Get over it!
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