Quote:
Originally posted by CamChicks
Thanks to GW Bush, in the absence of someone as tough on the clerics as Saddam, soon we will be facing a United Islamic States who will be governed by the most fundamental anti-western extremist religious leaders - who will control almost all of the worlds oil and share a nuclear arsenal.
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While this scenario sounds somewhat plausable if you only take into account religous leanings, Iraqis have a clearly defined nationalism that has been generated out of a generation of war with Iran. While there are crossovers of support within certain sects of islam, and 'invasions' of particular strains of islam (ie. khomeniist shi'ism into iraq which advocates control of government by the supreme jurisprudent), Iraq as a whole and their shi'i contingent specifically would not take kindly to Iran exerting control over their country... at least, not at present.
Now, should there be some sort of external event that crystalizes islamic support across all intercultural barriers, say something like israel attacking iranian nuclear facilities, you'd be in serious danger of seeing a unified islamic presence... one set and determined to sweep over israel and exterminate every jew in the place. Something like that could well be the trigger point for the final overthrow of the house of Saud as well, an event that's been brewing for quite some time.
It's entirely possible that the current administration is aware of these possibilities and are, in fact, banking on them in order to use these events as justification to bomb the hell out of the entire region with some quasi-plausible motive... although Occam tells me that they just lack any sort of cultural sensitivity and foresight beyond the next election cycle.
Juan Cole examines the nuances between the various brand of islam and the complex interplay between them, and has written on these exact same topics. Check his site out:
here at 'Informed Comment'