Iraq is SO different from anything typical Americans have experienced....
Our society is, though history revisionist and libs with agendas will deny it with endless lies, steeped in Judeo-Christian influence. Islamic nations are VERY different at their very core than anything we're familiar with.
Absolutely true. Up until just a couple centuries ago the Islamic world was the center of trade, science, civilization, art and reliable government. The Christian world (with the exception of parts of Africa) was backwards, superstitious, insular, chaotic and run by armed gangs who practiced utter oppression of the vast majority and crushed any and all expressions of religious tolerance.
Don't think all people are cut from the same cloth and that there is a "one size fits all" system of government that's going to work. Americans are often viewed (and resented) overseas for being incredibly naive.
It's that combination of ignorance and a belief in our own infallibility that gets us into things like this.
Your talking about people who wholeheartedly subscribe to ideas such as....
1. As a man, it is your duty to avenge the blood of your male relative. You and dad and your bros. go out and murder one (of more) of theirs....regardless if they had anything to do with it.
2. If your daughter is raped by the local band of thugs.....when she gets home you kill her because she has dishonored the family.
3. If one of your daughters is pregnant out of wedlock....you kill her for dishonoring you....then you kill all of your other daughters, because they have been contaminated by their sisters influence and will certainly follow her example. (just happened in Pakistan last month....slit their throats while mama begged him to stop).
Strangely enough, this wasn't exactly what Iraq was like before. But we have destroyed the (bad) order that existed before and replaced it with a puppet government that can not govern, one in which the only sources of authority are religious ones. Do the vast majority of Muslims believe in the rather colorful and horrible practices you present here? Depends on where you are. The places where our good friends the Saudis have had the most influence, certainly. The places where it's so backward that they have daylight brought in by donkeys once a month? Yep. But there's a lot more to the Muslim world than that, regardless of what Faux News and Pat Robertson would have you believe.
Pakistan? You bet. That place really is a reactionary, fundamentalist, backwards tribal pit when it comes to religion in public life. I hate to say it, because most of the Pakistanis I know have been really wonderful people, but there you are.
Heck, it wasn't that long ago that SOP for pregnant girls in parts of America was abandonment without help or support to starve with the baby. And before that our Christian Values consisted of sayings like "Nits make lice" and "Segregation today. Segretation tomorrow. Segregation forever!" I remember a saying about beams and splinters from some carpenter turned rabbi.
Dr. Rice knows what is pretty obvious.....the Sunnis and the Shiites hate each other and will commit genocide in a heartbeat. Iraq will never have a drop of stability and we will not be able to get the h@ll out of there until this stuff gets under control....which seems less and less likely to happen.
At least the Kurds are congregated into a fairly homogenous region and can put up some kind of a "fence" (trench line with machine gun nests).
Another reason to thank our friends the British and French. Just like the Scramble in Africa they drew arbitrary lines on the map after the Ottoman Empire collapsed and said "These are the nations." We'll take three groups. One has always been kicked; we'll split them up among all their neighbors (the Kurds). We'll include one smaller religious group and promote it over the larger one during the colonial period but make sure both of them are stuck in the same country.
At least the Kurds have some hope. They've got a more-or-less democratic form of government, oil, a sense of identity. If the European reports are correct they've cut most of the roads heading towards the South to make it harder for the Arabs to invade them.
