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.
Why should I do that when you have provided such an excellent example yourself?
in·fi·del:One who doubts or rejects a particular doctrine, system, or principle.
It's pointless though. I don't believe Christianity is evil and I don't believe that Islam is evil but there are plenty of evil men period.
I agree with this assessment.
Our best hope is to have the Iranian people overthrow their Mullahs. I believe actually the majority of Iranians hate the Mullahs. Unfortunately there is sufficient affluence in the nation that the wealth producers are not willing to change the status quo.
Iranians are also very proud of their Persian heritage and would unite against an outside invasion. Because the Mullahs have not murdered as much of the affluent citizenry like Saddam did his, we would not get the same effect we did in Iraq.
This is a tough cookie, On one hand we need to maximize our containment strategy and keep them surrounded. On another hand we need to foment rebellion and maintain a positive image with the average citizen, which actually we currently have. And finally we need through whatever channels make it very clear to the Mullahs that a nuclear weapon passed on to terrorists and used against us will result in Iran's elimination from this earth. Oil be damned we will salt their land if it comes to it.
The oppressed Russians and how they responded to Germany's invasion of "Mother Russia" is instructive. In spite of the millions of deaths from Stalin's rule, the people united against the German invaders and repelled them.
bkepley, I would like to gently point out that I believe you are confusing that the Lord will allow Islam to further his goals vs Islams' foundation and nature..
The Lord has allowed, and allows Islam to bring people to him, even though they have not learned of Jesus.
On the other hand Islam was founded by one of the most evil and vile men that ever stood on the face of this earth.
Mohammad was not a prophet of the one true God, As the character Grissom may point out on CSI, the evidence never lies. Mohammad left a lot of evidence that he was a murderer and a thief, was covetous, and lied and did not change from these actions but carried them on and expanded them after his supposed visit from the Angel Gabriel. Mohammad's actions were pretty much exactly opposite of Jesus's actions.
Remember Jesus's promise was to believe in him and we shall not cease to exist. Mohammed gave no promise of such, in fact he stated that of every 1,000 people, 999 will inhabit Hell after their lives. Jesus proved his promise and was raised and stated all can enter the Kingdom of eternal life if they were to follow his commandment. That being simply, love your neighbor as you love yourself and love your Creator, your Lord who loves you..
And such the mighty Creator has allowed Islam to further his desire to bring people of true intentions and seekers of truth to his kingdom.
Free will is a many edged sword for us humans.
Thank you Creator and our King, Jesus, for loving us.
on old response for this line of sophistry:
oh, joy: yet another round of the moral-equivalency tango.
Christianity and Islam are not significantly different in their holy texts, eh?
OK, try this on for size:
You tried to equate Christianity with Islam. This is why I ask you to find even one passage, relating to religion and treatment of others, which fulfills the following requirements:
1. in the "catholic" post-Nicaea Christian testament (but I'll gladly throw it open to the Jewish book)
2. a literal...
3. plain-text...
4. indisputable...
5. ongoing present-tense (as opposed to a one-shot past-tense record of history/folklore - ie: Joshua)...
6. commandment from God (not a pope or a bishop or some >a-hem!< televangelist)...
7. as a directive to the believer to take literally and actively in the temporal realm
8. to do any or all of the following:
-a. to slay the heretic and non-believer,
-b. to forcibly convert the heretic and non-believer,
-c. to enslave the heretic and non-believer,
-d. to persecute the heretic and non-believer,
-e. to wage holy war upon the heretic and non-believer
9. Directly analogous to the dozens thereof in the Koran.
(so you know, things like II Thessalonians 1:8,9 don't count - that is God kicking ass, not his faithful doing so for him. An important distinction equivocators seem to like to sweep under the rug.)
Now, turnabout:
Find JUST ONE passage in either the Koran or the Sunnah which is the direct analogue of the Parable of the Samaritan, or the directive to the witness to leave an unbeliever in peace - to "knock the dust of his home from their soles as they leave" - rather than butcher him in zealous fury, or to the believer contained in I Cor 7:12-17, or I Cor 10:32, or II Cor 6:14-18, or Ephesians 6:10-12, or... do you get the point?
Find JUST ONE comparable passage in the Koran or the Sunnah.
Good luck - I have been looking for over a year and have not found any such analogues
and, no: I am not a Christian
HORSESHIT!...The Nazi's Hatred of Christian and Jewish faith is well documented...The Christian Faith was borne of a Jewish Mother and Child. They weren't Christians, @ all...If your looking for comparisons, try the Soviets/Maoist/Arabist Jhadist.
Only the Liberal Ones...
They're are a few conservatives dims left, but not many...no more than 20% perhaps.
...More Rocks and Ewes. :D
...6 Year old Children. :(
That's a good PC argument for all religions being equal.
OBJECTIVELY study the life of Muhammad and the derivation and teachings of the Koran, then do the same with Christ, Judaism and the Bible. If you don't see a world of difference, let me know. I'll pray for you.
Christianity is the only faith that claims a personal relationship with the living God. And although there's no way to know what one is talking about until you've personally experienced it, it's the only faith that has the witness of God's spirit to verify its truthfulness in a way that even the strongest belief in and of itself can never do.
I was a faithful follower of a major world religion in the past, and thought that my belief and faith, because they were strong and sincere, was the epitome of what faith was all about. After I came to recognize, through much skeptical study, that the Bible is true and there are absolute unchanging principles for life in all times and ages I did what it told me and accepted Christ as the doorway to eternal life. It was only at that point that I truly understood what faith is.
I know it's not polite to say one religion is "better" than any other today...which itself is a clever spiritual warfare ploy, but if your family was in a burning building and you knew where the only safe exit was, would you not point them to it if you had the opportunity even though hordes of people were running toward other exits that you knew were dead ends?
Not only are all religions not created equal, but my point in the previous posts was that even as false religions and prophets go Islam stands out for it's blatant appeal to the most base elements of human nature. Muhammad was a fraud and Islam is a not only a false religion but Allah can be none other than the Prince of Darkness.
Islamic scholars have found it necessary to do all sorts of gyrations to try and give credibility to their prophet and his boring, repetitive and often incoherent ramblings, including completely discrediting Christianity by denying the deity of Christ and his resurrection. Since Muhammad, who was illiterate, couldn't get the parts of the Old Testament right when he incorporated them to try and give himself credibility (he couldn't even tell the Exodus account the same way in all of his 27 repetitions of it) it has been explained away that the Bible has it wrong, even though there is far better archaeological support for the Old Testament than for the Koran, which wasn't even written down for centuries and then existed in several very different forms.
So if you want to use the old argument that all religions can be bad under certain circumstances there are far more worthy ones than Islam to defend.
Sources from antiquity, Plutarch and others, generally attribute this to Caesar in his burning and sacking of Alexandria in 44-48BC. Stabo, a renowned scholar of the era noted the burning of the library as a part of everyone's memory, writing in 20 BC. It appears there were later libraries and musems which were subsequently looted and burned throughout the next several hundred years, until destroyed once and for all by the caliph Omar(that's a moslem bigshot, to you). Your desire to slander Christianity by focussing on one slender thread in history and ignoring the bulk of the story tells us about all we need to know about you, junior. You can go now, and as you leave--DU is just down the hall, next to the toilets, on the left.
As great a crime as slaughtering millions when the slimes conquered central asia and the indian sub-continent? Or the millions that were forced to convert from Christianity, or the forced enslavement of Balkan women, or the Jannissaries?
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