This is an interesting item: even as Sunni-Shia violence is getting hotter by the day in Iraq, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s preeminent intellectual, has called on all Sunni Muslims to join the anti-Assad forces in Syria, now that Hezbollah has joined the coalition fighting for the preservation of the regime.
The ancient hatreds are burning hotly now, throughout the region. Instability is always dangerous, of course, and the humane mind recoils from such horrors as are now being described in this bloody civil war — but from a purely pragmatic point of view, to see civilization’s fiercest enemies slaughtering one another with such brio has clear advantages over other imaginable scenarios.
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Turkey.
Since the patriarchal scaffolding holding up civilization has been dismantled, giving way to sub-Saharan African behavior patterns of serial (if not parallel) polygyny among “independent” females, the only hope for civilization is the introduction of religions like Islam that are not as far along the road to the loss of their patriarchal scaffolding.
JK, one other word:
GÁ¼len.
Guy walks into a Jewish deli and orders a turkey-salad sandwich. The deli guy tells him he’s out of turkey salad. So the guy orders a chicken-salad sandwich instead.
Deli guy says, “Mister, if I had chicken salad, wouldn’t I have given you a turkey-salad sandwich?”
Most ya’ll know I’ve been against arming this or another of the factions currently battling the other for whatever – I’ve spent sometime reconsidering the optional options.
I’m no longer against arming – provided we (the US) could deal Russia a tying hand.
We don’t need the port of Tartus – and I doubt Russia wants Guam.
If we and Russia could come to an accommodation to effectively blockade then, what the heck, airdrop snub-nose .38 revolvers to both [each/all] side/faction (keep tabulations on whichever side/faction looks to be losing – then re-supply until the other needs an airdrop).
Rinse – repeat as The Horn of Africa requires then, all we need to “pay” attention to will be the bargains left in The South China Sea. As we all recognize, the Chinese’ve already bought up all the promising mineral rights to what we and the Russians’ve been contesting.
Then we (the US) and Gazprom can sell our natural gas to the Chinks so they can operate their heavy-extractors where there’re absolutely no EPAish rules acting as constraints.
It’d be a “Win/Win/Win/win” I’m figuring – ME’s governments’re always complaining their youth have “no employment opportunities.” We (the US) and Russia could monopolize shovel production. Chinese’d need people good at digging holes. The Arabs’ve for the last thousand years or so should’ve by now, gotten pretty good at digging holes to put stuff into – probably take some slight effort re-training ’em to take stuff out of the holes they’ve dug but then, they’re complaining about a lack of educational opportunities too are they not?
(One bad thing though – beauty pageant winners’d have to come up with a new ‘wish for’ when they get crowned – “Peace in the Middle East” would no longer be an option.)
Ah yes, GÁ¼len.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Kemal_Bey