NEWS: Hezbollah East: Baghdad

POLITICS: Hezbollah East: Baghdad

Hezbollah was started in 1982 by a group of Muslim clerics, with a lot of help from Iran, after Israel invaded Lebanon. Iranian Revolutionary guards were sent to Lebanon to create a militia that would resist the Israeli occupation. Now 25 years later, we get to watch the exact same circumstances create the exact same radical political and military organization, but this time in Iraq.

Iran is certainly funding Shiites in Iraq. Why shouldn’t they? Their greatest enemy, the US, is constantly banging the war drums. The only logical and smart path for Iran to take is to set up another Hezbollah type organization in Iraq. They have certainly learned from their mistakes in Lebanon and will know how to implement a plan that will win over the locals quickly.

Hezbollah gained favor with many Lebanese by providing social services that the government was unable to provide. The US invasion and pathetically planned occupation of Iraq has created the perfect environment for a new Hezbollah to rise out of the chaos and win over the locals. In the '80s Hezbollah provided desperately needed social services, hospitals, schools, along with radio and TV stations. They basically provided the basics to build a society, something the US has not done in Baghdad.

According to CBS News, a Hezbollah type organization is taking root in Iraq. The Mahdi Army has always been a problem for the US. The smart, brutal and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is their leader. Much of our fighting in Baghdad has been against the Mahdi Army. They rule a slum and the street fighting can be quite dangerous. But now it seems they have stopped fighting, and that is not a good sign.

Last week, US ambassador Ryan Crocker warned that Sadr’s men were taking over businesses, like gas stations and other “basic services,” in Shiite neighborhoods. They are beginning to use control over necessities and social services as their main weapon.

Now the US finds itself in a delicate situation. To attack the Mahdi Army will be to attack those giving basic services to the people. Whoever wins the support of the street, wins the war.

But the US is doing exactly that, in an attempt to find the “bad guys.” So, one day maybe we pick up the guy who was delivering medicine to sick people, or the guy who supplies clean water, or the mechanic who fixes your car. Maybe we destroy a building some insurgents run into and it turns out to be a medical clinic. This is a situation built for our failure. We don’t understand the culture or the language. Iran and Sadr do.

Looking back on the invasion, this should have seemed so obvious when the looting was going on, as our soldiers stood around and watched. They were not given orders to stop the looting of the entire country. Hospitals, offices, schools; everything was torn apart and carted off. Iraq’s entire infrastructure was demolished in a month. Not enough soldiers on the ground meant massive security problems. Nearly every choice the Bush administration made in Iraq was the wrong one. Now, out of the chaos will rise an organization that can provide help and it’s not the USA. It is a radical Islamic cleric, with support from Iran.

It turns out one country had very shrewd leaders and another one was full of idiots. Too bad the idiots have all the planes and bombs.

Ironic, since, if I recall correctly, Sadr's relations with Tehran at the beginning of the occupation varied from suspicious to outright antagonistic.

I am curious how you think that the Mahdi acquired those businesses. I don't know either but I am betting that they did not buy them from the previous owners. I am betting that they got them by killing the owner or just walking in and forcing them to find another place to run a business out of.

You are right it is a precarious position that we are in over there, but saying that all the infrastructure was destroyed is just complete idiocy. We didn't destroy near as much as you think, despite what the reporters tell you. And business as usual goes on every day.

Yes there are small parts of the country that have very serious fighting still going on but it is a small part of the country. It could become a lot more if we don't control it and if we don't break up the Mahdi it will become a much bigger problem. What we need to do is to get them to work with the new government and stop killing each other. And yes it is a societal thing but over tiime it can change. It is just a matter of getting people used to living without violence. And they must also learn to rule themselves, and it is not impossible, it has happened in other countries.

The thing is - even if the Pentagon had ordered the troops to prevent looting, it's not at all clear that it would have helped much. The fact remains that the US military is neither trained nor equipped to be a police force. To just drop them in the middle of a foreign country they are not familiar with (with most not even speaking the language) and expect them to effectively police it is absurd.

Hezbollah was created in response to Israeli aggression in Lebanon (I'm waiting for Wendy to jump in here and accuse me of something) and the illegal seizure of the Golan Heights. To that end, they remain more or less a single issue group - if Israel were to unilaterally withdraw from the Golan Heights, Hezbollah would presumably lose much of its political leverage and power. Unfortunately the situation in Iraq is more complicated. If the US unilaterally withdraws from Iraq there isn't much of a functioning government to fill whatever power vacuum would be left - in essence we would be helping to install al-Sadr because his group is better organized that everyone else there. Of course, if we don't withdraw then our continued bungling of the occupation would still strengthen his group. So we're sort of stuck in a bind.

Too bad no one in the Bush administration knows a damned thing about nation building, since this is exactly the kind of scenario that would have been prevented by a well planned postwar reconstruction effort.

When did anybody say the "infrastructure was destroyed" in this article? It was certainly heavily damaged, in fact so, for example, that post-invasion electricity generation was less than pre-war levels, and continues to get worse. Unfortunately for you, twisting words and using political straw men (reporters hide the truth because they are anti-American) makes you sound like a partisan idiot.

What I can take from this paragraph is that FTR is right when he asserts that we don't really understand their culture. "...getting people used to living without violence" and "...learn to rule themselves..."? You should be a sociologist!

Clearly, Americans would be completely civil and non-violent if somebody invaded our countries with false pretenses.

Nicely done, I appreciate you saying this, and I agree.

It couldn't hurt to also try to show the Iraqis what they'll get if they do follow Iran's path. The average Iranian likely hates her government as much as the average SG member, though they probably love their country a bit more. After all the chaos they've experienced, though, the Iraqi people may settle for totalitarianism rather than continue to wait for both liberty and order.

This is the direct quote from the article... I hope you aren't going to say destroyed and demolished aren't synonymous

Or win the owners over by providing security and resources at cheaper prices if they are overtly supportive of them. Basically not enough ionformation to exclude any posibility

Not with the help the the US it hasn't. Somalia was given to the UK to administer and Afghanistan to NATO because the US is totally incompetent to assist an impoverished country in a meaningful, positive way.

So the US didn't do anything to help in the Phillipines during their revolution, and how about the American revolution. Granted our revolution did not have the looting and outside influence, but we did have to change our thinking of how we should be ruled. And Somalia was UN Mission with only a small part run exclusively by the US.

Given the US turned into a buch of war monging retards, that was hardlly a success The Philipines is hardly model of a stable society unless you count the right wing fasist dictatorship that ran it once the US pulled out as a good thing. Or are you pretending that the 1989 invasion wasn't an invasion?

KUNGFOO said:
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What I can take from this paragraph is that FTR is right when he asserts that we don't really understand their culture. "...getting people used to living without violence" and "...learn to rule themselves..."? You should be a sociologist!


Ok so apparently you forget that as Americans we lived under the rule of a king for how many years. And our ancestors lived under the rule of Kings, and feudal lords for how many years. And that we paid huge taxes and lived as endentured servants. We learned to change.

I didn't say we understand their culture, but it has been proven that democratic or parliamentary states can work in the Middle East. There is a goverment in place there that with a little bit of peace, and a lot less interference by Iran, could very well work. Oh, ya I forgot you people don't think that Iran is running money, men, guns and munitions into the country to destabilize it. It is all the fault of the current administration and the Army, isn't that right?

Don't argue if you don't know the facts to back it up.

Actually, no. The United States didn't. Perhaps you should brush up on your history, but we actually hunted down and arrested their most prominent revolutionary leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish-American war, when the Philippine conflict was relegated to simple colonialism. The only reason the US got involved in the revolution in the first place was for strategic military purposes, as sea power was quickly gaining ground as an eminent military philosophy. The entire purpose of the US involvement in the Philippines was to establish one or two military bases, thus allowing in the future for both our involvement in the Pacific in WW2 as well as a classic musical, and had absolutely nothing to do with the support of the revolutionary cause. In fact, it started an entire war on its own.

Does it suck being ignorant? Oh wait, I know the answer, nevermind.

Except for that whole thing about how French aid is the only reason we won.

So it'll be like when the Soviets invaded the U.S. after finding out that all the pussy liberals wouldn't fight back, only with turbans. Gotcha.

Wolverines!

I'm pretty sure conservative could do that just by reading a grocery list.

I'll bet you $10 he's masturbated to that movie at least once.

It really is amazing you all talk about me twisting words. You need to turn the mirror to look at yourselves. You take my words and twist them all around. Let's be honest the media is not conservative, is it? It is totally liberal and it has been at 20 years since there has been a true news REPORTER. Media is dominated by liberals and therefore the news is dominated by their views and beliefs. You call names and use other childish methods when someone says something you don't like.

And ardour, who isn't smart enough to know that a name is supposed to be capitalized tries to sound smart but just ends up sounding ridiculous, and makes absolutely no sense at all. So again I bid you adou, for now.

Because you all need my help to keep yourselves under control.

I came to the same conclusion yesterday. For the most part, the "politics" section of this site has become a joke. It has morphed into a refuge for a few, with FTR as the de-facto leader, that engage in misinformation, vitriol, obscenities and ad hominem attacks on anyone that disagrees with their position.

In reality, this is something new. Until the Internet, the best venue for personal expression was letters to the editor published in newspapers and magazines. In that venue, people either expressed themselves in a civilized manner or they were not published. But that isn't true with the Internet. Sites such as this allow members to maintain anonymity for obvious reasons. However, there are some that use that anonymity as a veil behind which they can launch the vilest personal attacks imaginable. Email is another perfect example. Some of the notes I have received on this site have contained threats and insults that I doubt the senders would have the courage to make to my face %u2013 all because I allow for the possibility that neither the left not the right have all the answers and that the United States continues to be the greatest country in the world %u2013 warts and all.

As I said, anonymity on this site exists for good reason. However, it has granted to some the ability to express themselves anonymously and has debased discourse in the politics section of this site. Cursing, ad hominem attacks and/or the utter absence of logic characterize a large number of posts. And sadly, as this is not unique to this site, and because people tend to do what society says it is OK to do, many people, especially younger people, are coming to view such primitive forms of self-expression as acceptable. That is of grave concern to me.

Some might argue that anonymity enables people to more freely express their thoughts. But I would suggest that this is not true. Instead, anonymity only enables people to more freely express their feelings. Anonymity values feelings over thought and immediate expression over thoughtful reflection.
FTR's essays and his responses to comments that challenge his position, along with the comments and emails from others that follow his line of thought so willingly, are perfect examples of this.

But really, who's hasn't? I mean, the combination of Patrick Swayze, Harry Dean Stanton and Powers Boothe is hard to resist.

So much for not being "worth commenting with anymore."

I'd suggest that the mainstream media doesn't have a liberal or a conservative bias, but a corporate bias. The mainstream media exists to help sell products, and thus will present whatever helps the corporations that own that media outlet sell more products.

So not only does the media lag behind the popular opinion of many major issues (the assumption that negative media coverage increases public dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq puts the cart before the horse), it reflects a bias that leads to maximizing the potential number of customers, which for many social issues is more liberal than average, but on economic issues is more conservative.

However, since the rise of the internet, cable news and talk radio and the demise of the fairness doctrine, claiming that the media in total has a liberal bias (or a conservative bias) is pretty hard to swallow.

Leginnaire, Uncognitive you guys are so mature it is really amazing that you can put an entire thought together.

Alright, this just made my day.

Sorry I'm not freaking out at the concept of the United States being invaded by Jihadists. I mean, I've only lived in New York City since the late 80's, so I can't even begin to imagine what it'd be like to live in a city that was the target of a major terrorist attack.