Quote Originally Posted by Ray View Post
Iraq is like any Islamic country.

The social and the governance model is shaped by the norms of the religion.

The religion is very clear where the rules are inflexible and 'detours' are practically unacceptable.

In the rigid matrix of the religion, only a rigid iron hand (if you will) can succeed.

Take any Islamic country and it will be noticed that whenever democracy has been tried it has failed. Even Pakistan is seesaw in democracy and military dictatorship. Its current democracy is in turmoil with the fundamentalist holding the nation at ransom.

Egypt is back to a military leadership in the guise of democracy.

Syria is in turmoil.

Turkey is hardly a democracy.

Therefore, it is better to let them live the way they want and not superimpose what others feel is 'right'.

The happenings in Iraq and Syria only indicates that we are making it fair grounds for the fundamentalists to run a riot.

Watch this space for what happen in Afghanistan and the experiment in democracy.
Ray---I had a very good Iraqi/Kurd as a Cat 3 interpreter in Iraq who had fought as an Iraqi CPT in the artillery during the Iranian /Iraq war and who at the same time was an Peshmerga intelligence officer and who had family members gassed by Saddam before going to Canada.

At the beginning of the sectarian violence which really started in late 2005 not as many thought in mid to late 2006---I sat with him once and discussed the increased ethnic violence and the barbarian results we were seeing in both the Shia and Sunni communities.

He said something that has always stuck with me. He said---hey Shia and Sunnis are Arabs and as Arabs they will not negotiate a problem if each one believes themselves to be correct---they will beat each other to a pulp and when both are on the ground and can barely move then and only then will they negotiate what in the end is what they should have done in the first place.

He went on to say you Americans are trying with the surge to put off this blood letting because you Americans cannot stand to see "blood" being let when in your democratic eyes there is a solution to always be found.

When I worked with Slavic types in the last couple of years---they had a similar concept---ie you can tell us the truth, but we will beat you up for telling us the truth, then when we finally see that it was the truth then we will beat you up for not convincing us it was in fact the truth in the first place.