(March 3, 2019 at 2:11 am)AtlasS33 Wrote:(March 2, 2019 at 11:36 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: You've never in all your time taken a breath to explore whatever my view may be, and it doesn't matter what my view is in the first place.
I'm pointing out that the same means of controlling the middle east that have always worked continue to work today. It hardly matters who's employing them at a given moment in time because they operate on something that the target does to itself. Just as raiders took over the middle east centuries before the US was formed despite being outnumbered by total opposition forces, their descendants do the same, domestically, to their own populace. The regime that controls your country could not suppress all resistance simultaneously so it seeks to spread that resistance into ideologically opposed camps. As that numerically greater resistance is spread into multiple sub-divided portions the relative size of the smaller regime forces reaches or exceeds parity with any given subdivision of resistance.
You're marching to the sound of your enemies drum, and making enemies of friends. Historically, that's been a losing strategy. Appealing to western humanitarian values isn't going to save you from a middle eastern despot...and the only people who will hear that plea are we westerners..ourselves, and pro-west resistance that you would not include amongst your own. You've managed to make yourselves smaller than your opposition, squandering whatever numerical advantage you possess and burning the only people who give a shit about what you're saying.
So, again, good luck with that.
In my OP, I wrote these lines:
Quote:AtlasS33 said:
The west =/= western people.
It equals Western governments and systems and the people who support them
=/= means not equal. Let's put that as a major constraint for every word I say -in both the OP and the posts after-.
Let's put a very obvious line here between "the past" and "the present". In the past, there were no atomic weapons, no modern weapons, but yet early Muslims took down Persia and Rome in mere few years. Doesn't that hint that the people under the Persian empire and Roman empire hated the guts of their empires and wanted to see them taken out?
People hated the guts of Persia and Rome, don't ask Arabs; ask Germans and early Europeans before early Arabs.
Persians and Romans were brutal in war, and were the super powers of their time, So let's stop picturing them as the "innocent kittens that were eaten by the early Muslims". Their war machine was monstrous and their combatants spread terror in the whole world and ruled with a fist of steel. So no remorse for seeing these empires go, criminals always get defeated and go, even if they wore silk and gold.
-
Then, let's speak about the connection of today's Middle East, to the Middle East of early Islam.
The two are different worlds, not even connected by a single hair. At least early Muslims were capable of bringing down empires like Persia and Rome; but the citizens of the modern Middle East can't even bring down weak governments living on American financial aid.
Your comparison is not just unfair; it's out of this world and also wrong. I speak about models of rule; America is an extension of Rome because it follows the Roman model in ruling, but are the regimes of the Middle East -today- are following the early Islamic model?
They are indeed not, but they are following the model which the winners in WW2 wrote. Just like Japan which followed that model, China which followed that model, India, ...etc.
We are discussing this model. Confusing today's model with the model early Muslims ruled with is plain unfair, wrong and not legit.
Your revisionist take on early Islam, which isn't accurate on its own merit, ignores the fact that the model which you claimed existed did so primarily as a means of survival, as Muslims were in the minority at the time, and could not afford to buck the majority. They did so anyway by guerrilla attacks on caravans, and targeted violence against groups and individuals, in spite of your modernist apologia that they did not. Regardless, the historical truth is that any time Islam gains sufficient power to challenge things, and especially when it is in the majority, they quickly abandon the faux model that you dishonestly appeal to in this case. There is simply no reason for Muslim majorities to subscribe to the model you suggest, and so they don't. Who exactly are you thinking it would be better for such that people could be persuaded to follow your imaginary model? It hasn't worked in the past, so you're just a nutter for thinking it will work in the present, or even that it is possible to achieve such through practical means in the present. You're arguing an ideal which never actually existed, and has no chance of existing now. Your comments are not so much wrong, thought they are that, so much as they are simply irrelevant to a modern Arabic state like Saudi Arabia.