Civil War in Iraq: effect on Iran

Charles Krauthammer says of course it's a civil war...Duh!!, but several others like Ian Bremmer and Bill Roggio have contributed, IMHO, a more sober and less sensationalistic analysis of what Civil War really means.

I notice a conventional wisdom coalescing about the idea that civil war would somehow benefit Iran. I wonder if we should accept this opinion. Clear evidence exists that Iran has agents fomenting unrest via the Badr and Sadr militias, but is Iran certain that they could confine any type of widespread sectarian violence to within the current borders of Iraq? Clearly, a power vacuum would lead to ingress of multitudes of proxy militias if the issue is Sunni vs. Shia, and unfortunately the Shia are outnumbered if you look at the total numbers of Muslims all over the world.

Consider the Iranian Sunni Arabs who are quite numerous around the oil fields and ports of southern Iran. They are not likely to remain idle in a regional sectarian conflict and could conceivably put a hurt on Iranian oil exports or otherwise provide aid to the minority Sunnis Arabs in Iraq.

I might even venture the outrageous observation that fomenting a civil war in Iraq might even relieve some of our own problems in the region, by giving Islamists somebody else to blow up, and by providing the Iranian mullarchy another use for their resources: IRBM's and nuclear warheads might not nearly be as useful against IED's and guerilla warriors. Iraq-Iran War II.

Allen Ginsberg Spins in his Grave

while I am ROTFLMAO!!!!!

Sometimes, it IS that simple...

"Our foreign policy up to now was to kind of tolerate what appeared to be calm. And underneath the surface was this swelling sense of anxiety and resentment, out of which came this totalitarian movement that is willing to spread its propaganda through death and destruction, to spread its philosophy. Now, some in this country don't -- I can understand -- don't view the enemy that way. I guess they kind of view it as an isolated group of people that occasionally kill. I just don't see it that way. I see them bound by a philosophy with plans and tactics to impose their will on other countries."

George W. Bush
White House Press Conference, 20 March 2006

Islam will be victorious: Items.

From an interview of Mullah Krekar by Norwegian journalist Carsten Thomassen:

“We have no fear of the Western mindset. It can never be victorious. In Iraq the two sides are facing each other. On the side of Islam are men who love death and are willing to become martyrs for their beliefs. On the other side are soldiers who fight for a 1000 dollars a day. The number of dead American soldiers are proof of defeats. In Afghanistan the same thing is happening. From 2001 to 2004 five suicide attacks occured. In 2005 it was 17. While the US and their allies are becoming smaller, Islam is expanding the front. And the reports from Guantanamo tell the same story. There they try to rip the faith our of the Moslems’ hearts. They fail. In Denmark they printed those cartoons, but the result is that the backing for Islam increases. I and all Moslems are proof of this. You haven’t managed to change us. We are the ones who will change you.”

And earlier today, there was this about how conservative parents outnumber liberal parents in the U.S. so perhaps if we can muliply "like mosquitoes" there will be hope.

Appeaser Dies

First off let me convey my condolences to the survivors of Tom Fox in the unlikely event that they would run across this post. It saddens me that he died at the hands of evil subhuman filth, but it does not surprise me.

He belonged to an archetypal group of peaceniks called Christian Peacemaker Teams who, judging from the lit on their webpage, bend over so far to appease that they can kiss their own asses. "It is hypocritical to label Muslims as terrorists when our own countries have been the greatest perpetrators of terror and violence around the world," reads a press release setting forth CPT's position about the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. It is surprising to see an avowedly Christian group befoul the issue with such abject moral relativism, but there it is. And as they mourn Tom Fox it is only cold comfort to crack open the New Testament (Hebrews 9:22)and read "without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sins."

It is even less comforting to flip open that other book (Qu'ran 4:171) "O people of the book! Commit no excesses in your religion: and say nothing of God but the truth. Jesus Christ, son of Mary, was indeed an apostle of God...therefore, believe in God and his apostles, and do not say 'Three'. Desist, and it will be better for you, for indeed God is one God, exalted above having a son..."

A preponderance of events and words like this nudge me in the direction of giving up on the whole "containing Iran" concept. I am filled with dread that the Islamofascists are going to get their holy war because they will leave us with no other choice. Alan Dershowitz makes a great case for the emergence of a jurisprudence of prevention out of the current paradigm of deterrence, and one of the pillars of geopolitical containment is deterrence. Because the Soviet Union was capable of a rational cost-benefit analysis, nuclear deterrence was an option for stable co-existence.

There can be no rational cost-benefit analysis, however, if you are convinced that the costs/benefits are tallied up in the afterlife. Therefore, our enemies the Islamofascists are not amenable to deterrence and they are not otherwise accessible to negotiation. The only option is force, and no amount of Christian turning of cheeks will suffice, whether facial or gluteal.