Surely there is more to it than this. More people have been killed in the name of God or whatever people choose to call their supreme being deity than for any other reason. This one seems stranger than all the others. It is all over the successors to Allah. Surely all the conflict can’t be over this?
Where do riches, water rights in a desert country, haves over have-nots come in to play? Afraid I will never understand the stupidity of all this killing, regardless of what is written. I don’t understand the extremism or the willingness to annihilate.
I expect western culture probably is the real cause. Had we left things alone and not tried to carve up the middle east after WWI, perhaps things would be different and that includes Palestine and Israel.
Then there is the notion, as far as Iraq is concerned, that if you go in and bust up someone else’s country over something that isn’t really there, then you reap what you sow. Yea, Saddam Hussein was a brutal monster. So was Tito. However, there is something to be said for someone who goes in and says, if you fight, I will kill you. They do, he does, and point made.
I see the primary issue here differently than you. I think the real question is “why do they not fight”? Why are the countries in this region full of screaming macho men so unable to defend themselves again aggressors, over and over?
I started saying this decades ago, that Middle eastern nations were full of decadent people, idly rich, who lacked the basic manhood to fight against aggressors. There should have been no good reason that Saudo Arabia could not have fought Iraq circa 1991 – no reason they had to sit and wait for us to fight for them.
There are always aggressors in the world. The real question is, what is wrong with these people such that we give them superior weapons, and they lay them down and run at the first sight of a small peasant army coming at them? They are completely decadent peoples.
My view of them is and has been 180 degress different than that neocon line we were fed circa 2003 that these were noble people who would prosper from freedom. I have long ago noticed, and periodically mentioned, that they are abjectly weak people, unable to maintain a civilized society mainly because they are soft and cowardly.
They feel superior because they were born wealthy, from oil. They feel tough because they dominate their women abjectly.
But they’re cowards, moreso than anyone else on this Earth. hate to sound like Lawrence of Arabia giving that “silly, barbarous people” speech, but it’s true. The evidence keeps presenting itself.
Why do they fight?
Same as why any political group uses violence to achieve its goal: power. They seek weakness and think that they can take over.
First of all, it is not about a “successor to Allah”. The Shias and Sunnis are divided over who is the successor to Mohammed. That said, I somewhat agree with Rick but with an added comment–they don’t fight because we are all too willing to lay our young men and women on the altar of the war gods. But it runs even deeper than that–the average grunt soldier is as dumb as a rock when it comes to understanding anything about warfare–most are illiterate and many of their officers are not much better. They don’t trust the government or their leaders. To say they don’t fight really isn’t so because some of the are fighting like banshees–ISIS. I don’t think we westerners will ever understand these folks because their very lives are the antithesis of ours. They have existed for thousands of years in tribes, following tribal leaders, not central governments. And the beat goes on…