State and CIA would have nothing to do with fellows like him both in the Kurdish and Shi’ah regions before the war and a major portion of the shit we’ve been through can be traced directly to that dereliction of duty on DoS and CIA. Your analysis is the stuff of paranoia and lacks cogent and coherent support for its major supposition which is that the suppressed Iraqi majority, the very ones MOST affected by the Iranian attacks during the Iran and Iraq war, have sold Iraq down the river due to some notion of religiosity that never stopped the blood flowing before nor yet has staunched the flow of Pilgrims to mutual holy shrines I might add. Deeds man, deeds tell the story in that culture. You offer as evidence no deeds. The Deeds Of the Malaki government stand in opposition to your charges.

I will listen attentively to evidence of deeds that support your claim.

Also, I understand the reluctance of the Shi’ah to forgive and forget insurgent actions. Commiyted on the heals of Saddam’s reign of terror, it will take much to heal the wounds, and there is much to be gained in the attempt. The Shi’ah will require more than the self interest of the Sunni to overcome their reluctance. You have to know that, the Sunni should be aware as well.

I don’t see why Americans should die to protect a Sharia/Islamist state.

It isn’t about theocratic elements in a constitution; it’s about bringing what was previously the most unstable and destabilizing state in the most unstable and destabilizing region in the world within range of reasonable modernity.

That’s a cultural change that allows two parallel tracks: a traditional Islam track and a secular track.

If it all falls apart, then so be it. It’s the Iraqis, first, who will bear the suffering. But there are opportunities here for Iraq, the Middle East, and the world that needed to be created.

So, the pretense that there’s no serious objective in this mission, with the implication that U.S. troops have died for something unworthy of their effort, reeks of the sour grapes of losing the policy argument about how to handle the Hussein thugocracy and take care of the mess in the aftermath.

There are serious consequences in a failure to reform the Middle East off this intervention, and they could easily be far worse than anything we’ve seen in this small, long war, inclusive of things I don’t even like to mention.

That “loan” of power seems to have been put through a workout during the factional adjustments of the past few years.

Again, Maliki has a sovereign country to run; he’ll meet with another destiny if he accepts Iran as a surzerain.

“Maliki’s interests lie in the Arab world, not the Persian world, regardless of his Shi’a association.”

My apologies for brevity but duties call. I would simply point out that for the majority of Arabs, being Sunni is integral to being an Arab. Shiite Islam is apostasy, and this draws Dawa and SCIRI closer to their sponsors in Iran than the rest of the Arab world. Let me put forwardd an illustration of this dynamic: why do the Saudis keep insisting that the Iraqi government is nothing but Iranian stooges? Maliki consults often with Ahmadinejad and Khamenei,which is why the Bush admin. have bugged his office (Woodward’s new book reports this.) Can you name a Sunni Arab politician he meets with on a regular basis?

Wadeusaf:

“Unfortunately I have not found the hard evidence to support your POV on Malaki. What I have seen in Al Sadr’s decline is an in your face statement opposed to Iran hegemony in Iraq, and Iranian interference in Arab affairs clearly served via another surgical death in Damascus.”

Don’t just look at Sadr, look at SCII (SCIRI), the Shiite Islamist party that is deeply allied with Maliki’s Dawa. They are cousins and parliamentary partners. SCII was created as an outright Khomeneist party and their upper echelons are still attached to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The Iranians have multiple channels and forms of influence within the Shiite Governemnt in Iraq, including Ahmed Chalabi, who is a snake.

Check out the NYSun article from July 22nd entitled “Maliki Bets that Obama Will Prevail”. From that article will learn:

“We are opposed to the hot button issues like immunity for contractors and the granting of Iraqi air space and the granting of permanent bases. Ahmad Chalabi has said this on a regular basis,” Mr. Brooke said.

A scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the architects of the surge, Fred Kagan, said that Mr. Maliki has come under some political pressure to oppose a status of forces agreement from the Iranians, who he said have launched an information operation.”

Fred Kagan even knows this, but Wretchard hasn’t heard it yet. As to whether the Dawa (The Call to Islam) Party is an Islamist party or not, I suggest that this is easily ascertained. Simply read up on their history, where they were during the Iran/Iraq War and what they believe in, what their party platform is. Don’t forget that Sharia has been enshrined in the Iraqi constitution.

I don’t see why Americans should die to protect a Sharia/Islamist state.

1.Slavery was not going to go away, ever, by itself, and even Jefferson knew it and predicted the Civil War as such.

Jefferson was good, but he was no all-knowing Sage. He did know he and Madison had created a great flaw in the Constitution in preserving the “Peculiar Institution” then making the Constitution so difficult to fix, enshrining the rights of private property (as in slaves), and the right to secession.

He did not anticipate the economic model of the Southern Slave system would become antiquated and the South left behind in population, power, economic wealth by the Northern industrial system. Efforts to modify the slave system and have slaves on small, family-run mechanized farms and slave factories were general failures.

This mirrored global trends and had as much to do with slavery as an institution being dropped, without war, in both hemispheres. The only instances of it ending in armed struggle were Haiti and the USA.
Which, with historical hindsight, look to be avoidable tragedies.

2. It took war and the dead to end Slavery, because Southerners would not free the slaves ever.

Except every other slave holding nation outside a few African and Arab despot’s turf did just that.
And by the 1850s, the South was having fits about the North and Europe seeking alternatives to “slave cotton” as production began booming in other countries under British and French rule. It was just a matter of time, British abolitionists said, before enough alternate cotton could be produced to begin an embargo on slave cotton. Same with sugar cane.

3. Even the poorest, most destitute Southerner understood that ending slavery would bring retaliation, and the most poor would be the first target for retaliation (of being made a slave).

There were only 4.4 million blacks in the USA in 1860, out of a population of 31.5 million. Neither the North nor the South had any fear of black thugs running amok after emancipation and retaliating by making the whites the slaves.

4. It’s why all those poor Southern whites fought and died. Not for slavery itself, or secession, or states rights. But because they feared retaliation.

Not true. They fought because they were invaded, did not want to lose state sovereignity. And thought the flawed US Constitution gave them full legal right to seceed and resist. The Confederate Constitution was virtually identical to the US Constitution.

5. Ironically, the long fight and Federal Occupation made the retaliation a non-event, given the dominance of White Northern troops.

Hard to be ironic when you are so wrong. Troops in Reconstruction did not enforce a blissful peace and become beloved by Southern black and white alike. They were hated. Reconstruction was a mess. After a few years, guerilla war had started, and Northern troops couldn’t wait to leave. Blacks who did engage in land seizures, thefts, rape and killings were dealt with by white self-defense organizations. One of which, the KKK, went from near universal support in the late 19th, early 20th Century to becoming more of a problem in everyones eyes – a backwards, lawless embarassment – beginning in the 1920s.

6. Despite mechanization, the number of slaves in the Antebellum South grew rather declined from the 1830’s to 1860.

You talk apples and oranges. As slavery was becoming economically obsolete globally, as more efficient and skilled immigrants from Europes wars and famines were flooding the Western hemisphere – the number of slaves did go up. From a high black slave birth rate.

7. I’ll note Cedarford’s usual fixation on Jewish financiers as the source of all evil which speaks for itself as to ignorance and bigotry.

Ignorance and bigotry is actually with those who word-twist to make any criticism of SOME people of a group into a collective criticism of ALL in that group – by Marxist identity tactics. Try and deny it and demonize all that mention it as bigots who must HATE ALL JEWS – but there has always been a huge, disproportionate Jewish involvement in radical Leftist politics. From anarchism to communism to the SDS.
Nor are they all financiers, as Whiskey tries using the tactic of exaggeration to render the criticism absurd.

One great reason why antipathy for Jews is rising so high in Europe and Asia is the Jewish inability to admit that they are in any way culpable as powerful individuals and associations for some very sorry episodes in history. Other nations and ethnicities HAVE found admissions of error and need to change their ways essential to get greater harmony, cohesiveness. Refusal to admit mistakes, errors makes others see such holdouts as arrogant, intransigent.

Yes, in the mind of the Long March revolutionary left, it is a sign of success whenever they “sharpen the contradictions” to the point that the primitives on the right raise their standards in formations as of war.

Their expectation is that these manifestations are strictly analogous to the antebellum hardening of Slave Power, the viciousness of the Klan, or the brutality of Bull Conner and George Wallace.

They have no clue about American character. They comprehend neither Cincinnatus nor Lincoln nor the Cowboy ethic. Without a spiritual awakening of their own interiors they will ever repeat their zombie-like invasions, uncomprehending and undead until they win or the universities stop creating them.

(just to keep a few of this thread’s themes going, you know… doin’ my best Mr. Cat imitation–smile)

If nothing else, Westward Expansion only made the question worse, as slave and free states fought over what territory would be free and which slave. It took war and the dead to end Slavery, because Southerners would not free the slaves ever. They all feared the consequences, even those who had no slaves and would have benefited from only free labor being available. Even the poorest, most destitute Southerner understood that ending slavery would bring retaliation, and the most poor would be the first target for retaliation (of being made a slave). Since they were the most convenient and least powerful. It’s why all those poor Southern whites fought and died. Not for slavery itself, or secession, or states rights. But because they feared retaliation.

Ironically, the long fight and Federal Occupation made the retaliation a non-event, given the dominance of White Northern troops that cared neither for White Southerners or Freed Slaves.

Despite mechanization, the number of slaves in the Antebellum South grew rather declined from the 1830’s to 1860. That’s with the Royal Navy essentially ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade by then.

I’ll note Cedarford’s usual fixation on Jewish financiers as the source of all evil which speaks for itself as to ignorance and bigotry.