The World is the way it is now because of one person
From the pen of Ex-PH2;
3-20-09 –News story on Wednesday that the military, esp. the Navy, is reducing re-ups in what could be called critical rates, like aviation mechanic (AM), because they are “overstaffed”. Why would that be done when it’s unclear (at least to me) whether or not we still face an external threat? Did Gates (SECDEF) agree to this? Did he come up with the idea? He was GWB’s SECDEF. Zbigniew Brzezinski was Obama’s foreign policy advisor when BO was a senator and now he’s on the WH staff in the same position. And he’s the one who talked jimmy carter into opposing the USSR’s incursion into Afghanistan and supporting the Taliban in 1979, and now, 30 years later, the USSR is gone and the Taliban is trying to take over the minds of all muslims. In Jan.1998, Brzezinski said, in an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur “What is more important to the history of the world? The end of the Soviet empire or the Taliban? The end of Soviet control of eastern Europe and a free Europe, or a few disgruntled muslims?” And I’ll just bet he’s “advising” Obama to reduce the military right now. What the hell is that arrogant ass up to?
That’s an old journal entry I made right around the time the stock market was wobbling, on the verge of a crash. Make a note of that name – Brzezinski – because that Polish gasbag’s name has figured in a lot of stuff that has done more harm than good to the USofA.
1966 – 1968 – Zbigniew Brzezinski is in the White House as a counselor to Lyndon Johnson’s administration. This is the period during which the Vietnam War reached its peak, culminating in the Tet Offensive, which started at 2AM on January 30, 1968. Giap’s VC volunteers had been ferrying supplies and equipment, broken down and carried on their backs if need be, for months along the Ho Chi Minh trail which ran south from Hanoi through Laos and through tunnels in Vietnam, to set up outside every military base, city and many, many villes in South Vietnam, without being detected. That was the same year that LBJ realized he’d bitten off more than he could chew when the hippies protested at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and Mayor (John) Daley gave the order ‘shoot to kill’ to the police. Shortly thereafter, Johnson went on national TV and said “I will not seek, nor will I accept the nomination as your President.”
1969 – 1974 – Nixon won the fall election because he promised to end the war in Vietnam. His National Security advisor was Henry Kissinger. Kissinger’s assistant was Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg went over the fence. There was a raid on Ellsberg’s shrink’s office to prove his incompetence, but the files about him didn’t have his name on them. Clever shrink.
The 1970 Kent State University shooting probably had more impact on Nixon’s presidency than anything else except the Watergate Hotel break-in. But while Nixon wanted the US out of Vietnam in 1971, Kissinger thought it would destabilize the country and blow the war up all over again. It was Kissinger who got the 1973 Paris Peace Accord accomplished, but by this time Nixon was in real trouble over the Watergate break-in and either had to resign or be impeached. Gerald Ford took his place after he resigned, holding that office until the 1976 elections.
1976 – 1980 – Jimmy Carter – not James Earl Carter, mind you, but ‘Jimmy’! – is elected, and who goes right back into the White House? None other than Zbigniew Brzezinski. His new title was National Security Advisor, from 1977 to 1981. Note that in 1957, he visited Poland for the first time since he left as a child, and his visit reaffirmed his judgment that splits within the Eastern bloc were profound. He developed his ideas he called “peaceful engagement.” (Source: Wiki) Make a note of that phrase “peaceful engagement”. It’s important.
In 1979, Carter authorized aid to the mujaheddin, based on Brzezinski’s advice, quoted as follows:
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujaheddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention [emphasis added].
When he was asked by the reporter for Le Journal Observateur for this article (at previous link) if he had considered the global threat of Islam, his response was as follows:
Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q : “Some agitated Moslems”? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today (1998).
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West has a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid: There isn’t a global Islam.
Brzezinski persuaded Carter to have the CIA recruit and support al Qaeda under a young bin Laden, as well as the Taliban, to oppose the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. If you remember the events during the Gulf War, the Afghan government asked the US to help them get the Taliban out of Afghanistan, which we did. After we left, they went right back in. This was all broadcast on C-SPAN in 1990.
That interview was part of a paper by David Gibbs (Arizona State) The pdf of the full article by Gibbs is here:
It is long and involved, but it is interesting enough. And it clearly shows that Brzezinski’s interest was two-fold: break up the USSR, and establish the USA as the head of a world empire.
1992 – Brzezinski criticized the Clinton administration’s approach to the war in the Balkans after the collapse of the Soviet Union. If you will recall, Clinton viewed it as a law enforcement matter.
In 1997, Brzezinski publishes “The Grand Chessboard”, his view of how the USA can become the dominant entity in his vision of a world empire.
Unfortunately, he has never understood that empires are for emperors, and that the United States is a democratic republic without dynastic succession. I don’t think he liked that part.
2006 – 2008 – Barack Obama runs for a seat in the US Senate and wins as the freshman Senator from Illinois. Brzezinski goes right into Obama’s office as his foreign policy advisor. Before the dust has even settled, Obama is out the door on the presidential campaign trail, so fast that papers flew up in his wake. He gets the nomination, and guess what? He wins.
And who is his Foreign Policy advisor? Well, not Jimmy Carter, that’s for darn sure.
Obama begins ‘drawing down’ the military in the Middle East, and is now (2016) in the process of demilitarizing the US military, and for all I know, the influence behind this may have been Brzezinski’s from the start. Remember what I said about ‘peaceful engagement’? Between 2009 and now, the US military has become a shadow of itself, with unnecessary and very stupid changes inflicted on it by people who despise it and what it stands for.
In 2012, Brzezinski gives up on America becoming an empire:
So you see, there is no conspiracy involved here. There is only a decades-long history of one person, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-American, interfering with and meddling in the functions of a sovereign government because he was able to find people with inflated and/or weak egos (LBJ, Carter, Obama) who were easily manipulated by him into doing stupid things that have cost this country and its people their peace of mind, financial stability, and political sanity.
What we face now is worse than anything else we have ever faced, including the second invasion by the British in the early 19th century. And all because of Brzezinski’s grandiose egomania and his dismissive attitude toward a ‘few disgruntled muslims’.
You can blame him for everything that is wrong right now.
Category: Jimmy Carter
Zbigniew Brzezinski has done a lot to shit all over this country for almost 50 years and his daughter (Mika) is nothing but a mouthpiece for the JEF and his minions.
Zbigniew Brzezinski has always, seemed to me to be a scoundrel. And, while Russia and the USA have a difference in ideologies, we have much in common, and when Islam is removed from the equation, we have gotten along fairly well, even if only as a “live and let live” relationship. The weak leaders of the USA that have followed the suggestions or advice of Brzezinski has cost us dearly in world stature, and in lives lost in wars that could have been avoided.
Seriously, are you high? When did we get along with Russia? Please don’t say WWII, because that was a marriage of necessity that almost immediately fell apart when the war was over.
Islam was nowhere near the equation when we were staring at Soviet tanks in Europe. Mutually Assured Destruction is not a ‘live and let live’ relationship, it is a ‘I would kill you right now if I wasn’t sure that you would kill me too’ relationship.
Since then, Putin has invaded sovereign countries in Eastern Europe, intimidated the rest, and is threatening invasion of NATO partners. There is also a lot of evidence that they have used cyber tactics to intervene in the elections. Regardless of who you support, that is an act of war.
Brzezinski certainly made some mistakes and gave some bad advice, but opposing the Soviets and bleeding them dry in Afghanistan aren’t among them. You talk about wars that could have been avoided; the ‘soft power’ dismantling of the Soviet Union avoided a war that would have cost millions of lives and potentially destroyed huge portions of the planet, if not the whole thing.
Yes, but you missed the point, Red Devil, and that is that Brzezinki’s ego made him quite dismissive of any threat from Islam. He said so. I quote him in my article. His goal was, as he indicated in ‘The Grand Chessboard’, to turn the world into the Empire of America. He hated the Communist government more than anything else. His dismissive attitude toward the mujaheddin allowed them to become al Qaeda and the Taliban and laid the groundwork for the current threat from Daesh.
In addition, the USSR and Red China were both just as vulnerable to complete destruction as the USA during the Cold War. You forget that the UK, France and India developed their own nuclear arsenals, as did Israel and South Africa.
Well, the Soviets were an existential threat- they could have literally destroyed us and our interests overseas, not to mention our allies and the rest of the planet.
He was quite right at the time he was a in the NSC, and the world situation did not change for at least a decade after he left. Islamic terrorism was not an existential threat during his time, and it still isn’t- at least until our friends the Pakistanis give up a nuke or the Saudis buy one.
Even then, while that is a significant event, it pales in comparison to the threat the Soviets posed- taking them down profoundly changed the world for the better.
I know everyone is excited about ISIS, but they simply aren’t anywhere near the threat to world peace that Russia is.
Putin has straight up invaded countries in this decade, and is setting the conditions to takes a few more. He”s a dangerous man, despite what Trump thinks about him.
Well said.
That Hobo fellow may quibble with a few things I said, but I will stand by what I said: all of the problems we face now are the result of that jerk’s meddling in our affairs. And he was allowed to do so, because he had a doctorate from Harvard and all sorts of other creds as well.
Every time someone says ‘conspiracy this or that’, I know much better. The real question is, how do we repair the damage that’s been done since the 1960s?
I’m putting polish sausage on the weekend menu.
And beans. Remember the beans!
Wrong on several levels……
Ewwwwwwwwwww
Agreed. Kraut, carrots, and mashed potatoes work much better with kielbasa.
Yes, Poles eat sauerkraut also. There are even Polish kraut variants (one is called Kapusta).
FWIW, if you are in the Texas area, is the Bestfest in Fredericksburg this weekend.
Some good German Wurst is the best thing.
http://bestfest.net/
And, PLEASE, my Friday sammich. Thank you very much.
The Russian and I have been sick x 5 days with colds; not the flu. Big differences found under google. Russian worse than me. I think she expelled a lobe of her right lung during her last coughing bout.
Taking its toll but it, too, will pass. Had a massively severe case of the flu about 7 years ago. Finally couldn’t stand it and went to a doc-n-the-box, knowing they could do nothing. The Russian and primary offspring forced me to go. But, the doc did the obligatory ‘treatment’ and I left with a script for antibiotics (which are worthless for a virus, which is what causes flu) and advice to take ASA, get rest, drink water. Hmm, how many times have I given the same advice to others? Docs know patients expect a script for something/whatever when leaving. Filled the script but didn’t take the pills knowing they would help me in no way … I wanted to save them for when I had a problem that would respond to antibiotics. Ended up trashing them a year later.
Standing by for previously mentioned sammmmmich. Oh, with Hellman’s or Duke’s, please. Kraft mayo sucks.
Yep. The corpsman on our boat would tell us “if you take these pills, it should clear up in seven days, if you don’t it will take a week”.
Thank you Ex-PH2 for the detailed and informative article. I’ve seen Zbigniew Brzezinski’s name in the shadows for my whole adult life and never thought anything of him. I’ve learned that if I look at who listens to a person’s advice, I learn more about them and the listener than anything the media tells me.
I have to quibble with some of the statements made in this post.
The US never backed “the Taliban” in the 1970’s or 80’s because the Taliban didn’t exist then. For that matter, Bin Laden and his radical Arabs didn’t even get into the fight in Afghanistan until very late in the game – 1986 or so IIRC.
Bin Laden always hated and opposed the US so the idea that he would take aid from the US is not accurate. OBL certainly never would have solicited money or arms from the US and the US would never have dealt with someone like OBL who violently opposed not only the US but all of our “friendly governments” in the Arabian peninsula and Gulf as well.
Read “The Looming Tower” for a good breakdown on the relationship between OBL and the US during the Afghanistan operations of the 1980’s. While it’s true that some money or weapons funded by the US may indeed have wound up in the hands of OBL and his radical Arabs, they took a circuitous route to get there.
As for the Taliban they weren’t even established until the early 90’s, long after the USSR had pulled out (and with it, the US interest in backing the Afghan Jihadis who were fighting them.)
Unfortunately it’s become an accepted practice in pop culture to say things like “The US supported OBL when he was fighting the Russians” and “Bush lied about WMD’s in Iraq” but neither one of those things is true.
Actually the people the US gave support to, the Mujahideen, became the Northern Alliance, and very much opposed the Taliban. The Taliban established themselves in the mid-80’s, but it wasn’t until the mid 90’s that they allied themselves with Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.
Mostly correct.
We used the term Mujahadin for the groups we supported, but the term really just refers to any islamic fighter. We supported a loosely federated group of tribal militias that could all agree that the Soviets had to leave. This group included the militias that would someday become the Northern Alliance as well as warlords like Hekmatyar. Al Qaeda was in the mix as well, but not in the form we now know.
Once the Soviets left, the warlords initially agreed to share power, but soon started fighting each other.
The Taliban exploited the chaos, and captured a lot of territory, to include Kabul.
You are correct, the Northern Alliance was formed to fight the taliban, and they got their support from Iran, India, and a few other countries. This scared and pissed off the Pakistanis, the Soviets, and Al Qaeda, which is why they assassinated
I’m going on what Brzezinski himself said, that the CIA was instructed by the Carter White House (per Brzezinski) to recruit bin Laden and his followers as well as el Talib’s followers, all coming under the single heading of ‘mujaheddin’ AT THAT TIME. They were not officially al Qaeda or Taliban at that time.
You can take issue with it if you like, but Gibbs’s article (see the pdf) is very clear on that subject, as is Brzezkinski himself in the 1998 interview.
The object was to lure the Soviet Army into a conflict they couldn’t win. At the end of it, when the Red Army pulled out, the comparison was made that it was the Soviet Union’s ‘Vietnam’. As it is, it bankrupted the USSR and by the time Reagan’s term in office was nearing its end, the end of the Soviet Union was at hand.
By being so dismissive of Islam as a global threat, Brzezinski set the stage for the mess we are facing now, but HE is the person responsible for setting them up in the first place. There was no reason to drag the USSR into a long-term war in Central Asia, but that’s exactly what he wanted to do.
You’re entitled to disagree with my view, but I quoted Brzezinski’s answers to an interviewer’s questions in 1998.
He left us with this colossal mess because he didn’t take seriously a threat that had been simmering for decades in the Middle East.
Are you saying that Carter orchestrated the fall of the Soviets and Reagan just took credit for it? First off, we had every reason to bleed the Soviets dry in Afghanistan. They had Eastern Europe under their thumb, they were poised to conquer the rest of the continent they were threatening Western prosperity all over the world, and they posed an existential threat to not only the US but the entire planet. This is a minor point, but the Taliban was not named after a guy named el Talib- they were called the taliban because they were originally Madrass students ( the Arabic word for student is talib) You are right, the problems in the ME have been simmering for a long time, arguably since the aftermath of WWI. However, supporting the mujahadin against the Soviets is not really the reason we saw the rise of groups like Al Qaeda. These groups rose because we completely misunderstood what was happening in the Middle East AFTER the Soviet-Afghan war. There is plenty of blame to go around- Carter is somewhat responsible, but Reagan, Clinton, and both Bushes along with other world leaders made a series of mistakes that got us to where we are today. There was a major ideological shift in militant Islam in the ’80s. There were a number of groups, to include Islamic Jihad, that were committed to destroying Israel. They were angered by the Camp David accords, and assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. The Egyptian government threw a bunch of Islmist leaders in prison, two of whom were a guy named Aiman Zawahiri and the Blind Sheik, a man by the name of Omar Rahman. While in prison, these guys made the decision to shift from fighting the near enemy (Israel) to fighting the far enemy (the west and the US) to get us to withdraw our support to Israel. Zawahiri became the ideological founder of Al Qaeda (and he took over after Bin Laden died), and Rahman was behind the first WTC plot in 1993. Remember that during this whole period, Iran and Iraq were at… Read more »
You’re correct in that, but I will still insist that Brzezinski was involved every step of the way in what happened. He exerted a great deal of influence on Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War and even more on Carter.
When LBJ left the presidency in 1968, he literally began to fall apart. He had nothing left to do. Brzezinski knew how to find his weak points and exploit them, and the result was an unpopular war that created chaos in this country.
He did the same thing with Carter. Yes, Reagan did take credit for the fall of the USSR. No doubt about that at all, but the movement toward its elimination started with Carter’s White House and foreign policies.
Brzezinski looked for those weaknesses in Carter and exploited them.
Basically, I was trying to be brief and make it clear that (in my opinion) Brzezinski’s ambition to create an American world empire, which did not happen, failed to account for the remote possibility of any kind of threat from the Middle Eastern tribes.
Don’t you think the destruction of the Soviet Union was a good thing?
I don’t thin Z.B. Was trying to create an American Empire as much as defeat the Evil Empire… We had some stupid wars of liberation and defense, and we’ve certainly reinforced the Monroe Doctrine, but weve never started any wars of expansion overseas- our wars of expansion were right here in North America…
‘I don’t thin Z.B. Was trying to create an American Empire as much as defeat the Evil Empire…’ If you had read what I put in my article, which you did not do, there is a link to his 1997 book ‘Tha Grand Chessboard’ in which he lays out HIS plans for making a worldwide American Empire. He was a child when his family fled Poland, which had been targeted before WWII by the Soviet Union. On 17 September 1939, early in the morning, the Soviet Union invaded Poland. Poland was already in a state of war with Nazi Germany that had started on 1 September 1939. The Soviet invasion of Poland was a direct result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August 1939. That was Stalin’s work, and while the Nazis were rampaging through Poland, Stalin acquired it for himself. Brzezinski’s family knew what was coming if they stayed. They saw the Nazis at work. His father was posted to the Soviet Union during Stalin’s Great Purge. The family went to Canada in 1938. At the Yalta Conference in 1945, Poland was allotted to the Soviet Union. This had nothing to do with politics. It had everything to do with survival, and later, revenge. I know revenge when I see it, even if you don’t. Dismantling the Soviet Union must have been his goal from the moment he saw an opening in US government with LBJ. Brzezinski was really good at finding people with weak egos who were easily manipulated into doing what HE wanted them to do, hence the ramping up of the war in Vietnam, which became LBJ’s biggest failure because the riots and protests about the war were something Brzezinski did not take seriously. He was ONLY interested in dismantling the Soviet Union. I doubt he saw China as any kind of threat at all, despite their above-ground testing of nukes and Mao’s Red Gangs. Likewise with Carter, he found a weak, easily manipulated idiot who followed his advice about using the CIA to recruit the mujaheddin, which… Read more »
First, I’d like to say that I fat fingered the report button, silly me. Second, the entire western world ignored the potential threat of Islamists whose ultimate goal has and will be to restore the caliphate. The Soviets were threat numero uno, and we exploited that without knowing what repercussions it would hold. Once the Soviets fell, meetings were held to discuss the next step or how to take down the next power who could do anything about Islamist expansion which happened to be America. I don’t have to explain how the past two decades played out to illustrate that fact.
I didn’t have time to read ZB’s book this weekend, but I did read the excerpt from the interview at the link you provided, as well as the foreword and first chapter of his book, and a contemporary review by Bernard Gwertzman.
I remain unconvinced that ZB was calling for an American Empire as much as a leading role as the sole superpower in a newly unipolar world. I remain convinced that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a good thing, which you seem to dispute.
ZBs central idea in the Grand Chessboard was that with the Soviet Union gone, as the sole superpower the US was, like it or not, the only nation that could prevent chaos in the world.
Richard Haas at the time called the US the reluctant sherriff. ZB used the term ‘a new kind of hegemony’. He calls for the US to strengthen NATO and keep cooperative Eastern European states in the western sphere of influence and create a framework for shared management of a peaceful Europe.
You’re right, he’d seen his native country invaded on two sides, and spend the next few decades under the Soviet thumb. Was his drive to break the Soviet Union solely out of revenge? I’m sure it was in some measure. However, he probably also agreed with Reagan when he called the Soviets an ‘Evil Empire’. The Soviet Union was an existential threat to Europe and the US, and a threat to peace worldwide. Millions of people were living under authoritarian rule, and the threat of a new World War was real.
Here’s an excerpt from “The Grand Chessboard”, where ZB warns that without US influence the world will descend into chaos:
‘The disruptive consequences of population explosion, poverty-driven migration, radicalizing urbanization, ethnic and religious hostilities, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction would become unmanageable if the existing and underlying nation-state-based framework of even rudimentary geopolitical stability were itself to fragment. Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene”
‘Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene’.
His entire aim was to have America running everything, as if this were the 19th century with the Brits running a global empire under Queen Victoria. I don’t know how you could miss that. It’s a form form of megalomania that is much more subtle that Hitler’s or Stalin’s approach. Theirs was overwhelm and engulf and then clamp down, unlike the approach of the British Empire which started in the very early days of the 19th century, even though its roots go back much further.
His Grand Plan was to have the USA running the entire world.
And yes, I do believe he was strongly motivated by revenge. If it had simply been to get rid of communism, why not go after China, too, and get rid of Mao and his influence?
Islam is a serious threat to the West because of how morally weak the West has become, not because of any inherent capabilities islam as a global ideology might have.
Islam cannot win their war against the West because of 3 things i have observed while fighting against them in Iraq and Afghanistan, and while training our local allies in the same places.
1) Fatalism vs training. Muslims hate military training and believe wayyyy too much that their deity grants victory or defeat. It is really hard to get them to train and to learn battle drills and tactics.
2) Experience vs training. Muslims value experience over training. They could not understand experience without military training leads to learning the wrong lessons from the battlefield which sooner or later ends in defeat.
3) Anti technology bias. Muslims see technology as a consumer product, as trinkets, not as the result of an industrial and cultural process that leads to incredible advantages on the battlefield. Technology is a force multiplier that consistently makes the conventional armies of the technologically backwards completely obsolete.
This is the core reason why muslims resort to terrorism. They cannot win conventionally. And win they must, their world view requires it. It is unthinkable the infidel can be so successful.
Within the muslim world, the Saudi propaganda and claim to ideological supremacy is that their deity gave them their holy places and the oil riches, and this is a source of national pride. But on the global scene, it is clear the muslim world is backward and poor, with little industry and technological prowess, and they become full of hatred against the infidel.
When you add to that their cultural tendency to blame everything on outside factors, and the perceived moral weakness of the West, and you have the world we live in now.
Thus my point that islam is only a threat because we are morally weak.
So how do we become ‘morally strong,’ in your opinion?
Good question- also, does our moral weakness mean that Islamists are relatively ‘morally strong’?
Stop beaming American reality TV to every house in the ME/SWA with a Sat tv receiver would be a good first step.
Hey, the fact that they choose to watch ‘The Apprentice’ instead of ‘Brady Bunch’ reruns is a reflection of their morals, not ours…
Most of these issues have more to do with Arab culture than islam.
This article was written in 1999, and compared to my experience training Iraqi troops it is spot on: http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars
What we see as countries in the ME are really a collection of tribes and provinces, many times of different ethnic and religious groups. The West created them essentially out of whole cloth when we carved up the Ottoman Empire after WWI.
The military tradition in the ME relies more on tribal militias than a strong central army: https://portals.jhuapl.edu/media/RethinkingSeminars/2005docs/Vlahos_Two_Enemies.pdf
This explains why the Iraqi Army can’t seem to defeat ISIS. For one, the Iraqi Army is really sort of a collection of warlords- the divisions support different factions of the government, But mainly, as a mainly Shia force they don’t really care about a bunch of Sunnis killing other Sunni. They certainly aren’t going to risk their lives over it.
If WE and the rest of the Western world are to reduce the threat of Islam, then WE have to find a way to set them all against each other. This goes far beyond Vlad Putin’s piddling around, making airbase deals with Iran so that he can bomb Syria.
The only way to put a stop to this mess is to set THEM against each other and get out of THEIR way.
Muslims already kill far more Muslims than anyone else. ISIS kills mostly Muslims, as does the Taliban, Houthi rebels, the Syrian government, and anti-Assad groups, not to mention the Kurds (also Muslims)
That’s true, but it isn’t what could be called an all-out war. It’s sniping at each other, which is less effective.
This is an old report, but in Iraq alone in 2014 there were over 24,000 deaths.
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/UNAMI_OHCHR_POC_Report_FINAL_6July_10September2014.pdf
Syria is worse, anywhere from 200,000 to 470,000, depending on who you ask.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/22/u-n-envoy-revises-syria-death-toll-to-400000/
(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/world/middleeast/death-toll-from-war-in-syria-now-470000-group-finds.html)
Now, Boko Haram does kill a lot of non-Muslims, but no one cares because it’s in Africa.
Yef. Interesting perspective and well articulated. You have mentioned that English is your second language. I have always been curious, what is your “first” one? Hope you don’t mind me asking.