Is the War in Iraq part of the War on Terror?

I do that mostly because I really feel like I'm treading beyond my comfort area. I don't want to post something and then have the next post be point-by-point proof of how I am so very, very wrong.

In all honesty, the more I hear about Iraq and the Middle East, the less comfortable I feel commenting on it because I just don't know.

But I am willing to go a little further and say that I would be one of those ones who would argue the point I made.

But I hate that I think that way because it just proves that despite thinking I did, I really didn't think the whole war thing through completely, either, and didn't consider the probability of such an outcome. And I should have considered it way back then.

 

Absolutely cool. I was pretty much joking, anyway.

I myself have done worse; I supported the first Gulf War, and while I still think it's a defensible position ( as opposed to this war), I later came to see and admit to myself that, at least in part, I supported the war without nearly enough information, and moreover was excited by an event that could define my generation and make me feel actually part of something in a way that I never had, but had sort of envied of my parents' 60's generation.

I believe you have preconceptions, as do we all, and your 'first stpe, to use a basketball analogy, will always be to the right...but I also see that you are a man of conscience, and believe you will try to do what's right in the end, whether or not it's comfortable for you.

 

giddy,

Seriously, his history is often way off. As someone mentioned, Islam was generally very accepting of other religions within it's "domain."

Again, one easy example is Spain. This guy paints it as nasty until Christians took it back, but pre-1492 medieval Spain was quite vibrant. It is often referred to as "La Convivencia" or simply "Convivencia" because of the peaceful coexistance of jews, christians, and muslims. Parts of Italy (Sicily, for example) were similar. Islamic scholars were also key in preserving ancient texts and artifacts that christians were burning or ignoring.

I am sure you will just say my history is biased, but then you also have to extend that claim to pretty much every medieval Spanish scholar. A little harder to do than question one guy (with no known credentials) you found on the internet whose writeup appears at such un-biased sites as hanoijohnkerry.com. Or maybe not, you are good at stuff like that.

 

Minor exceptions???

SamFisher starts with:

And then MacBeth (one of the people who I trust on history) says:

and...

After large portions of this tale have been demonstrated as historically inaccurate garbage, you come back and claim that there are only "minor exceptions to his thesis." When glaring errors in historical fact are represented as accurate, it is the reader's responsibility to view all other parts of the text as questionable. This is why you get nailed on your Snopes-debunked emails when you post them and it is why this article needs to be taken with a grain of salt the size of a deer lick.

If the writer cannot get basic facts about history down, why would anyone take the rest of the piece seriously at all?

When I write about the drug war, I am very scrupulous about posting facts that have been confirmed and I do everything possible to make sure that I am accurate on everything I write. This is because if there are even minor issues with historical facts and/or evidence presented, the reader has the obligation to be skeptical about the rest of the article.

 

If the article was written with Republican agenda bias (or Democrate for that matter), then the historical commentary is fundamentally undercut and lacks credibility.

It isn't worth my time to read "history" from an agenda setter, thank you very much.

Give me a link to a credible historical reference and make commentary on that. But don't present the history if you ain't a historian. That's called false advertising.

 

And yet when people attacked it you claimed it was historical and "You guys attack the politics of this piece but not the history." So then people challenge the history and you get upset? Good job.

To play your game a little bit...

Never heard of it. When I googled the phrase, it only returned this article. See, he put it in "s to make it seem legit.

Taxes were generally lower under Islamic rule, which greatly helped conversion. Conversion, however, was not really forced. When the Sassanid Empire fell, the persians were still allowed their own national identity. It was after a little time, then, that the Persians themselves became a huge push for Islam, while still maintaining their own identity. Spain was already mentioned, as was Italy...and those were some of the earliest movements in the West...so, again - no forced conversion there. in 1492, though, Spanish muslims and jews were told to convert or else...

Pretty sure it was Oghuz Turks who took over Constantinople...an empire which had already been on the decline. Then the Ottomans began growing within and expanding, the West started to send troops against, but not all of the Eastern nations accepted the West's help. By the way, under the Ottomans, christian leaders were still allowed to have their congregations. They also made feudal land public and freed forced labrers of their dues...this made them more popular than the Western Christinas, so that greatly helped their spread.

Don't really know anything about Wahhabism and the rest of what you asked about was 9-11 stuff, not historical.

So, there is your "historical treatise." You asked percentage of historical truth in it...maybe 5-10? He got some names and places right.

 

Giddy; these aren't minor. I started reading this, posted my thouhghts as I read, and soon became too bored to read further. This is, in no way, an hisotrical piece. I alter tried to start again, read a lineat random, and wrote how that was ridiculous as well.

Let me put it to you this way: The premise is that they are building an historical recollection of the rise of Islam and it's interaction with Christianity...and they don't mention the Crusades. At least not during the period in question; I stopped reading about there. I don't know if you can understand how silly that makes the entire pretense to historical objectivity or even general accuracy. This is, in no way, a minor point.

I'll try and addres yourr furhter points, but aside from the reference to the Shah (!?!?), I haven't read beyond the carrot and the sword paragraph...

This is like saying " The Crusaders today call their invasion of Iraq the Last Crusade", or some such nonsense. I'm sure some people are calling this a Jihad, some even the "Third Great Jihad."...but their is no continuity of authority over this; jihadists are not a race or a culture, and share no link of responsibility. It's been, literally, over 500 years since the last "Great Jihad", as you call it; which group is speaking for Islam as a whole in claiming the title today?

I am sure that some have called for a Jihad in Iraq; in many ways a reclamation of an Islamic land from Chrisitian invaders fulfills the classic purpose of a Jihad...But there is no universal voice, and certainly no way of calling anything the Third Great Jihad with any realism.

If you are refering to the War on Terror as a great Jihad on their part, you are even farther off base.

Essentially untrue. Treatment of extra-religious peoples within Islam was far superior than among Christians, and while there were, at times, some advantages to being Islamic, it was rarely forced, and killing infidels ( in a non-war setting) was a rare exception. Again, during this period, during the Christian 'Dark Ages', the Arab/Islamic world was the zenith of knowledge, education, culture, medicine, sophistication and industry on the planet.


This was contrasted with Eurpope, where people like the Cathars were hunted down and massacred for worshiping the Christian God in a way not approved of by the Church Burnings at the stake for religious unorthodoxy were common, and the fates of a Muslim or Jew were often far worse. There is simply no comparison; examine the cultural and religious interactions of, say, Cordoba, and compare it with the action occuring not too far away in Aragon, or Castille, and you'll see all you need to in order to put this article in it's proper place; lining a bird cage.

This comes fairly close to accuracy in terms of what it inclides, but is missing key pieces.

Mahomet ( Mehmed)'s conquest of Constantinople in 1453 was the end of the Byzantine Empire, not so much the Roman anymore ( ironically, based on the last line in the quote, the division was larglel cememnted by religious differences), but it can be stated as such.

What it omits are thse pices of relevent information:

At the time of the Turkish capture of Constantinople, it numbered only some 10, ooo people, a far cry from it's former glory. It had suffered many set backs, and quite a few extensive sieges, but the largest blow was dealt by Christian Crusaders from Europe in 1203/04, when most of the cities wealth and religious artifacts were taken back to European capitals. ( The story essentially goes that the Byzantine Emperor asked for a Crusade from Europe, and the Crusade was raised ( more due to the prospect of land and booty than religious fervour) and sent underway. Along the way they decided to pay call to Constantinople and the Crusades patron, but when they saw the wealth the city contained, they decided that it wasa better target than the Holy Land and the guests turned to conquerors.)

The Byzantines and Contantinople recovered somewhat after that, but never again approached it's former power or glory, and couldn't sustain anywhere near the same number of inhabitants.

Mehmed's siege and conquest also came despite repeated requests from the Byzantine Emperor for European help, which were repeatedly ignored. Aside from a few individual Euro-faithfull, the city was left to it's own devices by the people who had betrayed them previously.

While only the 10, 000 I mentioned inhaboted the city at the time of the conquest, Mehmed tolerance and generosity stimulated a huge growth,and within 30 years the population had increased seven times. Mehmed took grat pains to populate the city with an intentionally diverse racial and cultural mix, protected the religious practices ( and buildings) of every religion, including Christian, ( aside from the city's symbol, St. Sofia, which was converted to a mosque) and guarenteed the lives and property of all within the city who recognized his authority and paid his taxes, which were relatively minor. The city was soon home to Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Balkans, and other Europeans, and experienced a mass influx of intellectuals and artists attracted to it's cultural liberty, and Jews fleeing persecuation in Europe.


Will look at the rest later...

 

Of course he mentions Wahabism, but fails to mention the group that's suffered most from Wahabism. The sect is roughly 100 years old. Given the 9/11 attacks, the bombings in Bali etc. the most people killed by these fanatics are Muslims. You can take those bombings, all the Christians, and all the Jews that Wahabi terrorists and groups have killed add them together, and it still won't equal the amount of Muslims killed by them.

But that doesn't get mentioned in the article. The people who have suffered the most from Wahabists are not Christians or Jews, but Muslims.

Others have pointed out other historical inaccuracies, and how the author omits and slants his writing to support his premise. This omission by him only adds to the list.

 

Since there is overwhelming evidence that this administration planned to overthrow Saddam from the day Junior was inaugurated, and would have done so whether or not 9/11 happened, I don't see how anyone can consider the War in Iraq any more than a peripheral part of the War on Terror.

 

Hmmm. Perhaps this is another example of the victors writing the history.

The conquered. Bad.

The conquerers. Good.

 

The historical errors aren't just nitpicking. The points brought up shows he doesn't have a clear grasp on history. 9/11 is a fact, and it did happen, but as I pointed out, that even with 9/11 Wahabism has killed more muslims than Christians and Jews and combined.

 

This is selective beyond the extreme.

The point this fellow was trying to make was to contextualize the War on Terror as an extension of Arab-Western conflict dating back to, he says, the 8th century.

Aside from all the errors included theirein, which in and of themseves refutes his claim, I point out that he skipped one of if not the single greatest occurences in that historical interaction and that he did so implies less a reliance on faith than bias.

And you come back with " The Crusades ended centuries ago."

 

Zinni.

 

Not at all. But much of what the person who wrote that piece, talks about is Islam vs. Christian or Jew history. I was merely pointing out that he was missing the larger danger of wahibbism.

 

What does Al-Queida have to do with any of the historical examples the writer gave? How long has terrorism been around for that matter?