"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Wow! Stepping our ahead of the game .. how original!
Trying to analyze the anti-Iraq-war sentiment, whatever the source, always comes back to the anti-Bush phenomenon.
I’ve yet to hear a discussion on the subject that doesn’t take very long to generate a comment about, oh, say, Bush stealing an election. Clear analysis of the mideast such as the above story simply won’t be read by the anti-Bush crowd. You just can’t force feed facts/history to folk’s not interested in learning. It’s instructive to remember to the days before Gulf War One-—no one wanted any one mideast power to control anything there; oil, water, anything——same rules should still apply. My most serious dissappointment in the prosecution of the mideast stabilization is probably our apparent lack of a comprehensive psyops/educational effort. I’ve said as far back as ‘91 that we were going to need a full generation of educational effort to bring the Iraqis into the 20th century.
There is no point in listing criteria of success for the edification of a dishonest and hostile opposition. They will simply pick at it until it looks like the defeat they want.