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Date Posted: 10:21:35 01/28/10 Thu
Author: Jeffman
Subject: Re: Scorecard on the MidEast
In reply to: Paul Davis 's message, "Scorecard on the MidEast" on 12:13:23 01/27/10 Wed

Awesome information there. I havent had the time to digest it fully but it makes a lot of sense.

>Iran is a Shiite state. It's a state run by the
>Muslim clerics, as they can overrule anything the
>government does. The place is in considerable turmoil
>right now as the last election was stolen by the most
>conservative faction, in collusion with most of the
>clerics. Since they are far enough past their last
>major war that the younger people don't remember it,
>they are rioting in the streets and being savagely
>beaten and sometimes killed for it. Social cohesion
>is undergoing major upheavals. Don't think this means
>the rioters want to cooperate with the US or are in
>love with Israel, it just means the kids are sick and
>tired of having a bunch of back to fundamentals
>preachers run everything. Of course the Iranian
>government blames everything on US or British or
>Russian involvement to justify treating their own
>citizens so harshly.
>
>Keep in mind that Iran is, and has been for 30 years,
>a fundamentalist Shia state. We'll get back to that.
>
>Saudi Arabia is a Sunni state. They are the
>possessors of Makkah (Mecca) and are the central
>religous focus for all Sunni Muslims. It's worth
>noting that Saudi charges a fee for going to hajj, and
>this is a requirement that all are supposed to meet,
>so the Saudi govt makes a nice piece of change off the
>pilgrims. The Saudis support the Wahabbi sect with
>money and the Wahabbi's are Sunni fundamentalists.
>
> >href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sau
>di/analyses/wahhabism.html">http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pag
>es/frontline/shows/saudi/analyses/wahhabism.html
>
>Like all fundamentalists everywhere, they believe in
>oppressing those who don't believe like them. That
>said, it's no surprise when I say they are heavy
>supporters of Al Qaeda.
>
>Al Qaeda is pretty much wholly a Sunni organization.
>There are as many flavors of Al Qaeda as there are
>different groups of militas running around the US, and
>they are about as connected. Al Qaeda Arabian
>Peninsula (Yemen) recently merged with the Saudi
>branch, but they aren't giving orders to Al Qaeda in
>Iraq, which is pretty minimal now. Al Qaeda in Iraq
>is pretty much the same bunch that calls itself Al
>Qaeda in Mesopotamia. And there are a bunch of
>others. See what I mean when I say you need a
>scorecard?
>
>This was started or at least spurred on by the
>writings of Sayyid Qutb who called for the imposition
>of pure sharia law and the establishment of "pure"
>Muslim states. Now, you'd think Iran was a pure
>Muslim state, but no, Qutb was Sunni, so Iran is full
>of heretics who aren't really Muslims.
>
>And that's how the Taliban and the Al Qaeda groups tie
>together, they all look to him as inspiration. Al
>Qaeda (in theory) is all bound up with Bin Laden (who
>practically worshipped Qutb due to the influence of
>his uncle, who was so close to Qutb he was the
>executor of his estate) but the Taliban is it's own
>movement - and is considered by quite a few Muslims to
>be heretical as well.
>
>And now you see what Al Qaeda wants, they want to
>create a "pure" Muslim state, and they don't care much
>where.
>
>And that brings us to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
>
>Any of those places are considered possible choices
>for the new Muslim Sunni state. Pakistan was rapidly
>falling to the Taliban, the government had ceded them
>the SWAT valley (local equivalent of Aspen), the
>Taliban was within 60 miles of the capitol, and they
>meted out some Taliban justice to a young girl.
>
>The Pakistan people were revolted and they've beaten
>the Taliban back, and their public support in Pakistan
>dropped to near nothing after this hit the internet.
>A lot of Muslims were very angry over this, because
>they didn't follow the sharia law they tout when they
>punished this girl. It's easy to find the video, just
>search youtube.
>
>So Pakistan is now looking unlikely as the new Sunni
>Islamic state.
>
>Afghanistan is a mess in every way, but they have
>groups supporting the Taliban. It has to be noted
>that Afghanistan has never in any war with outsiders
>stuck together as a nation, it always fragments. It's
>more a collection of sometimes cooperative groups, not
>a state or nation as we understand it. And they are
>the drug lords of the planet. Everyone in Afghanistan
>profits from the opium/morphine/heroin trade, without
>it, they'd all starve.
>
>Afghanistan might become the Sunni state, but if it
>did, they'd have to come up with a reason why the
>strict Koran allows provision of drugs to outsiders.
>They probably can manage that without problems, just
>like a Southern Baptist can preach all day Sunday
>about the evils of divorce, while being on his third
>or fourth wife.
>
>And then there is Yemen. Yemen is in a huge mess,
>they are fighting Sunni groups getting support from Al
>Qaeda in the South and fighting Shia groups getting
>support from Iran in the northwest with the help of
>Saudi Arabia. They have government breakdown and
>every other ill you can imagine. We'll be putting
>troops into Yemen sooner or later, probably after the
>2012 election, or shortly before, depending on
>politics.
>
>Looks to me like it's all warming up to a Sunni/Shia
>war, and the fact is that the US gets attacked by
>Sunni, not Shia groups, at least so far. Iran's
>rhetoric is just that for now, lots of talk but no
>actual move against the US. If so, then we could
>pretty easily see a lineup where the US and Iran make
>nice because they've got a common enemy, while Saudi
>Arabia falls to the fundamentalist groups and openly
>turns against us.
>
>And that would be a pure mess, and probably the start
>of WWIII.

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