Cofty:
The Iraqi army seems to be impotent.
Most reports suggest that the Iraqi Army, (trained to a superbly high level of military skill by the Americans) is running away. However, what we (westerners, dumbed down by the owners of media) don't know is, what are the spiritual allegiances of the soldiers who are running away?
galaxie:
Imo western commercial interests combined with ill advised and planned regional border remarking exaserbated an already totally misunderstood knowledge of tribal and nomadic peoples.
I suggest that the higher level of western (Read USA and UK, If not France and Germany) have a clear understanding of the allegiances, sympathies and antipathies of the peoples of west Asia.
The British grabbed the former territories of the Ottoman Empire after the so-called Great War (wrongly named World War I*) in an effort to maintain control of cheap oil for their Navy. Iraq was purposely formed out of three mutually antagonistic ethnic/religious groups, in the belief that it would make it easier to control them. Even so, there were rebellions against British rule, and Winston Churchill (after WWI) had no compunction in bombing the peoples of those territories. The short-sightedness of western politicians, who usually cannot see further than the next election, is now bringing about this crisis.
until the arabs sort out their own cultural mess.
Indeed! But do not forget that the above - that the west has caused THIS crisis, and if it brings harm to the world, western politicians must be held responsible.
* WWI was really an intra-European War,(some scholars call it a European civil war), in which the European nations fought over the last pathetic bits of the world that had not yet been colonised by their Imperialistic regimes.