Posted on 11/19/2005 5:00:05 AM PST by FerdieMurphy
THEY WERE not hard to spot — the dead tanks — as they littered the sides of the main Baghdad-Tehran highway deep inside Iran. Heavy twisted monsters, blasted by artillery, mounted on stone plinths like trophies as a warning to any other army that came to fight and die here, as Saddam’s divisions had done. After 40 I stopped counting.
On the Iranian border itself the little town of Mehran had become a shrine to martyrdom and death. Like a mini-Stalingrad, it had been razed three times during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, its streets filled with the corpses of Iranian child soldiers sacrificed in human-wave assaults; but in the end the Iranians expelled the invader at an awesome human cost.
Saddam has gone, but Mehran is once more in the front line of potential war. The Iran-Iraq border is just a few miles to the west of the town on a flat plain — ideal tank country. The border itself is marked by a meandering stream but on either side now are the opposing armies of the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, all waiting for orders from above. If the Americans do ever invade then it will be here, as the shortest distance to Tehran from Baghdad; and that little stream the Rubicon for a war of unimaginable consequences.
In No10 the tom-toms of war of war are drumming again as Tony Blair warns that he will not tolerate the meddling hand of Iran in the affairs of Iraq. In Washington the neoconservative tom-toms are even louder, warning that the West must “surgically strike” at Iran’s hidden nuclear facilities and robustly challenge Iranian state-sponsored terrorism. Nor it seems can the EU countenance Iran’s rise as a nuclear power either. A new nuclear crisis now looms later this month with the threat of UN Security Council sanctions over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.
In Tehran the hardline President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has done little for foreign relations with his chilling call for Israel to be wiped off the map. We are, it seems, close to the on-ramp for another spectacular confrontation in the Middle East.
But before we succumb again to the hysterical warnings of our leaders it is worth seeking a cold-eyed measure of this new enemy they would have us fight. Iraq and Iran are very different. Iran is nearly four times the size of its neighbour and six times the size of Britain. How could an already undermanned American army expect to control such a huge territory?
Nor will those already fabled “surgical strikes” by the US Air Force deliver a decisive blow to Iran’s growing nuclear capability. Iran’s nuclear plants are already well hidden across its huge land mass. And all that a partial strike will do is unleash an unstoppable war without significantly damaging the enemy’s capability.
Iran’s population at 70 million is three times that of Iraq’s and it has one of the youngest populations in the world. Iran’s standing army is estimated by the CIA to be 520,000-strong, but each year 817,000 17-year-old Iranian boys are potentially available for military service. That is an awful lot of martyrs or suicide bombers.
The Iranians are Persians, not Arabs, a consideration entirely absent from most neoconservative analyses of Iran’s supposed weakness. Persian imperial dynasties date back to Cyrus the Great, around 530BC, and Xerxes, 486-465BC, who plagued the Greeks.Unlike the chaotic Arab shambles of Saddam’s Iraq, Iran remains a hierarchical society where the vast majority live in rigid terror of the authorities above them, religious or imperial, and will utterly obey their commands.
In many ways Ayatollah Khomeini, who came to power in 1979, was the greatest Persian Emperor, fusing his own version of Shia Islam into a state ideology. And during the Iran-Iraq war he revived the ancient Shia tradition of martyrdom: hundreds of thousands of soldiers, many of them children, died in futile suicidal assaults over minefields. “The Tree of Islam has to be watered with the blood of martyrs,” said Khomeini without regret.
Martyrdom is still the state religion. Huge posters of the war dead and Palestinian and Lebanese suicide bombers dominate every surface in Tehran and every speech of the political leadership. Any attempt to threaten or invade Iran will be a huge asset to a regime longing to re-energise its faded legitimacy among its own downtrodden population. Invasion by the Great Satan would be a godsend.
Nor should we underestimate Iran’s capacity to punish its enemies at long range. In 1982 Iran sent a thousand revolutionary guards to Lebanon to spread the Islamic revolution. The plan failed but Iran was behind three of the greatest acts of postwar terrorism: the American Embassy bombing in Beirut and the blowing up of the US Marine and French paratrooper barracks by suicide bombers in 1983. The French and the Americans left Lebanon in defeat soon afterwards.
Iraq is a mess but widening the conflict by attacking Iran would be an act of madness. That little stream on the western edge of Mehran is a Rubicon we must never cross.
I actually think it may have been better if the Persians HAD over-run the Greeks. The Romans would then have had an easier time in the Mediterranean and they could have tossed over a weakened Persian Empire. This would have resulted in a huge Roman Empire stretching from Britain to Baluchistan (or maybe even Burma), which could have swatted Mad Mohound's cult easily.
Obviously Muhammed was a fundamentalist breathing hell-fire, but there is good news in the Koran for some lucky ones:
Koran 5:82 says (Arberry): "Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, and the Christians, and those Sabeaans, whoso believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness--their wage waits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow."
Its clear Hitler was into various religions and witchcraft's and so on. He may have used Christianity to further his cause among certain people, but the teachings of Jesus or his Apostles do not line up with that. If you want to prove to me that Christianity as Jesus walked it spoke of murdering Jews and proselytizing by force, please quote me the verses where this is taught. Don't quote some propaganda piece Hitler may have said.
Too bad so many Christians (including many in this forum)don't practice what Jesus preached which is love and tolerance in my opinion. Christians in Europe have a long history of persecuting Jews and although I'm not that knowledgable about it I understand the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina are fairly peaceful people while their Christian tormenters are less so.
Maybe you should email a copy of this hate-mail to President Hamid Karzai, I'm sure he'd appreciate your kind words.
hrmn. weak. also: are you familiar with the doctrine of substitution?
are you familiar with the doctrine of substitution?
Not until just this minute, why?
later suriya supplant earlier ones.
pre-Medina "revelations" were fairly tolerant towards "people of the book" as what amounts to a PR/merchandizing ploy
after the jews and christians in the region rejected Mohammed and he was forced to flee to Medina, the later "revelations" became distinctly intolerant of all non-muslims.
this kind of mod is justified by the doctrine that Allah can substitute a new-and-improved diktat for an older one. The validity of the older diktat is ERASED.
you will also kindly note: NOWHERE in the Koran is there any hint of tolerance, even in superceded verses, for "pagans" and unbelievers.
Excellent point. Agreed.
Would this be your idea of "Christian tolerance"?
nope.
I'd call that the voice of fear and disgust.
I would not call that fear and disgust unfounded.
I agree with all of that but I would also add that much of that voice seems remarkably similar to the rantings of the fundamentalist Muslims. That's how it looks to someone outside both Islam and Christianity. In fact, I get pretty disgusted and fearful when I read some of the things Christians say here.
Another one of Hitler's lying speeches in order to sway any sympathetic, weak Christians to his side. He hated Christianity because it's basis was Jesus, a Jew. Read Mein Kampf, it's all there. He put hundreds, if not thousands, of Catholic priests in his concentration camps. He was quoted that after the war (assuming it was won) he would seek to destroy the Church, the only other institution in his way. Hitler was not a practicing Christian, nor was his parents, according to any history I've read. Stick with ALL the facts, just not those chosen for your arguments.
And with regard to your comment that maybe Islam overtime will be somehow tamed; no, it cannot, it is based on lies and evil to begin with, therefore it's outcome can only be the same.
THIS is the heart of Christian "tolerance"
1. Love God with everything you are.
2. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
corollaries:
a. your neighbor is he who does right by you - not necessarily your co-religionist
b. Christians are required to patiently endure the abuses of their fellow men (to a point: there is ample evidence that Jesus did not advocate total pacifism - "If you lack a sword, sell your shirt to buy one" etc...)
c. Christians are called upon to "witness" the "good news" of sacrifice and redemption of all Mankind
d. Christians are also called upon to leave in peace those who choose not to accept such witnessing
e. Christians are required to have faith that God Himself will sort out all the rest: No temporal holy war is needed or called for.
That many a Christian has fallen FAR from these basic principles has no bearing on the actual content of their holy writ.
In the same manner: That many a Muslim has NOT been a bloodthirsty jihadi maniac has NO BEARING on the actual content of THEIR holy writ.
>Read Mein Kampf
Life's too short. I'd rather listen to hip-hop than read that garbage.
>In the same manner: That many a Muslim has NOT been a >bloodthirsty jihadi maniac has NO BEARING on the actual >content of THEIR holy writ.
My Muslim neighbors (who suprisingly enough are not bloodthirsty) would probably be amused at a Christian lecturing them on the content of THEIR holy writ.
you evidently either cannot read, or have a very short memory.
cast your eye up-thread: I have explicitly stated that I am NOT a Christian.
Now, the next time you have a chummy chat with your Muslim neighbors, ask them how the Koran can say "there is no compulsion in religion" in an early revelation, but then state in later revelations that the penalty for heresy, apostasy or conversion away from Islam, and paganism is DEATH.
I don't need to be a Muslim to read and understand the literal meaning of the Koran and Hadith.
Indeed, I began to read them because a friend, a Persian and lapsed Muslim, was horrified that I (like you, now, it seems) thought the bowdlerized made-for-PR "five pillars/religion of peace" nonsense was a faithful rendition of Islam.
He used very strong language to persuade me to cure my ignorance of the true nature of Islam by reading the source material.
I have done so.
Don't blame me for comprehending the clear denotation of the words attributed to Mohammed.
Blame those who have fooled you into believing a Kumbayaa lie.
What's up with this sneer? I didn't choose them as neighbors and as far as I'm concerned they're just people who might have chosen the wrong parents.
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