ISIS on the offensive in Iraq

[HoreTore]

Deng Xiaoping a liberal...? He was anything but.

Deng Xiaoping was the kind of man who accepted no opinion but his own, and eradicated all dissent. I still like him, but that's purely because I'm not one of the dissenting voices.

I am amazed at how quickly American conservatives become apologists for communist hardliners.


Still, Deng had little to do with unification, nationalism and the end of the fractionalism. That was Mao and the revolution, I'm afraid. You would have to look very hard to find sectarian interests in 1971. Credit Deng with calming the majority, but silencing the minority was all Mao.

[Pannonian]

Deng Xiaoping a liberal...? He was anything but.

Deng Xiaoping was the kind of man who accepted no opinion but his own, and eradicated all dissent. I still like him, but that's purely because I'm not one of the dissenting voices.

I am amazed at how quickly American conservatives become apologists for communist hardliners.


Still, Deng had little to do with unification, nationalism and the end of the fractionalism. That was Mao and the revolution, I'm afraid. You would have to look very hard to find sectarian interests in 1971. Credit Deng with calming the majority, but silencing the minority was all Mao.

Deng Xiaoping was liberal by Chinese standards. I challenge you to find a Chinese ruler/government more liberal than his since Kang Xi that was also successful. That's 300 years of Chinese government for you to look at to find one that was more liberal.

And when I talked about chaos, I was referring to the Cultural Revolution, which was as bad as any of Stalin's crackdowns, with the possible exception of the Holodomor. The very top of the elite remaining in place is not stability when you have millions being purged. As far as internal repression goes, Deng's biggest purge was the several thousand (upper limit) who were offed in the Tiananmen affair, either during the initial massacre or afterwards. That's small fry by Chinese standards.

[Brenus]

"I was referring to the Cultural Revolution, which was as bad as any of Stalin's crackdowns, with the possible exception of the Holodomor." Excepted of course there is no evidence that the "holodomor" was political and not a bad political decision based on political/economical prejudices/pre-conceptions (as in the Indian and Irish Famines where "the free market economy" should have auto-regulated. Well, technically, it did in killing millions).
However, the Cultural Revolution was clearly a political crack-down.

[Viking]

If they are, the middle east christians would have been wiped out 1500 years ago.

Mao is actually relevant(for once). A hundred years ago, who would've thought China would be this unified?

The Uyghurs don't think China is that terribly united.

I am sure dictator powers can help a country become de-facto united, but once the dictatorship ends, it may all come apart (think Soviet Union).

Redrawing borders isn't always going to cut it. Centuries, or even just decades under centralizing states has meant that populations that were once geographically divided are now relatively intermixed. Without resorting to ethnic cleansing, people are going to have to learn to live with each other.

The creation of separate states can encourage a (relatively) peaceful disentanglement. Typically, there are border areas where the mixing is fairly even, but beyond those there is typically one group that dominates.

I am not sure how viable Sunni-Iraq and Shia-Iraq are as separate states, but I think any attempt at a united Iraq runs the risk of becoming another Somalia. In the recent decade, Iraq has at times not been too terribly far away from this scenario, anyway - the status quo is just a new record.

My prediction at this moment, is that without foreign ground-intervention, IS will not be defeated. It may gradually warp into something else (which would be a pretty natural development, should it survive for a longer period of time), or split into smaller groups; but it will not be defeated. Neither the Iraqi nor the Syrian state is strong enough.

IS and the areas under its control will probably turn into some sort of miniature Taliban-Afghanistan, and once there are no minorities left - either because they're fled or dead - the world will stop caring as much as it does now. In this scenario, the de facto, if not de jure, Shia-Iraq may be relatively stable, depending on how much split there is among the Shiites in this part of Iraq.

How many years have those minorities lived there without any of that happening?

Don't make the mistake of assuming that the current state of affairs is the natural state of affairs.

There is no natural state of affairs for any place. As time passes, the mechanisms and order of things constantly change.

And when I look at history, I sure see a lot of slaughter - modern history or old.

[Noncommunist]

The creation of separate states can encourage a (relatively) peaceful disentanglement. Typically, there are border areas where the mixing is fairly even, but beyond those there is typically one group that dominates.

I am not sure how viable Sunni-Iraq and Shia-Iraq are as separate states, but I think any attempt at a united Iraq runs the risk of becoming another Somalia. In the recent decade, Iraq has at times not been too terribly far away from this scenario, anyway - the status quo is just a new record.

My prediction at this moment, is that without foreign ground-intervention, IS will not be defeated. It may gradually warp into something else (which would be a pretty natural development, should it survive for a longer period of time), or split into smaller groups; but it will not be defeated. Neither the Iraqi nor the Syrian state is strong enough.

IS and the areas under its control will probably turn into some sort of miniature Taliban-Afghanistan, and once there are no minorities left - either because they're fled or dead - the world will stop caring as much as it does now. In this scenario, the de facto, if not de jure, Shia-Iraq may be relatively stable, depending on how much split there is among the Shiites in this part of Iraq.

While Iraq and Syria might not be strong enough to take out IS, Iran probably could help them enough to eventually kick them out. That and the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistans. And if they ever did take out Syria, they would border Israel which probably wouldn't suffer that sort of state to sit on their borders for very long.

[Viking]

While Iraq and Syria might not be strong enough to take out IS, Iran probably could help them enough to eventually kick them out. That and the Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistans. And if they ever did take out Syria, they would border Israel which probably wouldn't suffer that sort of state to sit on their borders for very long.

There is a problem with motivation. AFAIK, the Iraqi forces could have held their ground in Mosul if they had wanted to.

The Shias want to protect their turf, and the Kurds their - but to go beyond those areas? It's not their land, after all; and they may even meet fierce local resistance some places if they do.

[HopAlongBunny]

Well they better not mess with Texas!:

http://wonkette.com/560381/crazy-fox...hemselves-ayup