A Somalia with a standing army...
I still think this is a meaningless hypothetical. Somalia doesn't even have a government. It hasn't had a government for decades.
You might as well hypothesize about what would happen if Somalia had nuclear weapons or an army of robot bees with lasers.
my point is you have two unpopular Presidents cleverly using the scare-card ''terrorists'' ''Al-Q safe haven'' to receive funding,international protection to prolong their disgusting Dictatorships. Traditionally in Somalia the military would step in and depose the government but unfortunately this establishment collapsed
I agree with you—the current Somali "government" is corrupt and is not tenable in the long run.
This in no way justifies the Islamic Courts' behavior. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Granted! but let me ask you this; are the enemies of ''A'' cowards? or brave? or simply opportunistic vultures?
Never having been in a war, I don't feel that I'm qualified to judge the cowardice or bravery of any individual person fighting. (Honestly, I don't really care about individual bravery in warfare, since I'm basically a pacifist and I think these are hollow virtues more often than not invoked to force people to die for stupid causes.)
I will say that
politically and strategically, the Ethiopians certainly appear to be "opportunistic vultures," and the ICU certainly appeared to run away with their tail between their legs in the face of overwhelming military force.
Heavy losses of course loss of territory without doubt again they were not a national army there ranks consisted of young men trying to get their country back on it's feet. They would have held their own the way their holding their own today acquiring more territory in the process
Sounds like gang warfare in the American ghettos.
Qingu please do not distort the reality on the ground, it's not them that is shelling whole residential neighbourhoods with tank attillery. most of their mortar attacks is in the Presidential vicinity of Villa Somalia
They are still killing innocent people and civilians.
read again: A military analyst and a western diplomat to Somalia, neither of whom wished to be named, warned that the angry mood and conditions that allowed an Islamist movement to defeat a gang of warlords and take power in Mogadishu last year were returning.
result is:
The insurgents are gaining not only in physical strength, but in moral strength too
So is al-Qaeda. So is the insurgency in Iraq. What exactly is your point? Radical Muslims have great propaganda, and using military force against them gives them even better propaganda ("They are infidels attacking Islam, we must fight holy war!").
Qingu if the Islamic courts are really 'that bad' why are there ranks swelling in numbers? why would a population growing in anger turn to them and not the government? ponder on this please before your reply.
In Rome, the Romans felt threatened by the new religion of Christianity and often persecuted them, outlawing their gatherings and occasionally killing them or making them fight in the Colosseum.
Rather than deter the Christians, this actually helped to increase their numbers, because it gave them wonderful propaganda—because everyone wanted to follow Jesus' example and become a "martyr."
In modern Japan, there was until very recently a death cult called Aum Shinrikyo. These people were strongly opposed by the Japanese government, but like the Christians they seemed to thrive on this opposition, claiming they were persecuted for their true beliefs. Their numbers continued to swell until they killed a bunch of people on a subway train and the hammer came down on them.
Death-obsessed religions, like Christianity, Islam, and a number of modern cults,
thrive on persecution. It gives their recruiters an urgency that they can yell at people with. Certainly you don't think that early Christianity or modern death cults swell in numbers because of any
merit these ideologies have—why on earth would you then suggest this is the case for the ICU?
If North Korea attacks South Korea in 2008 and let say the US doesn't react evendo it reacted and defended Taiwan against China on Christmas eve 2007(play with me), their complete silence would be seen as a condonation of NK's adventure! why should this be different on a individual level?
I think this hits at the central misunderstanding between us.
I am not saying the Somalis should do
nothing in the face of oppression.
I am saying there are better ways to act out against oppression than declaring jihad and blowing yourself up. That way gets you nowhere.
Nonviolent resistance? That's worked incredibly well for a number of countries and movements.
To answer your question above: okay, what if NK or China attacked one of America's allies? What would you advocate America doing—invading North Korea? Because that strategy worked so well in Vietnam and Iraq? Nuking China? Because they wouldn't respond with their arsenal of nuclear weapons?
Violence is only
one way to respond to oppression. The reason there hasn't been a world war in the last 50 years isn't because conflict has ceased between all countries. It's because rival countries have found
better ways to fight their conflicts. America didn't win the cold war by blowing crap up, we won through economics. Embargoes and sanctions are the new weapons of war. This is the reason why nonviolent resistance can be so effective: it seizes on the economic might of a country.
your completly silence regarding the attrocities committed by this government yet you demonize the ICU ad nauseum hence i showed you the resume of this dictatorship sponsored by the west. Are you saying you honestly cannot see why i would find your one-sided criticism suspicious?.
This thread is about the ICU, not about the current Somali government.
Also, I'm assuming everyone on this forum agrees that the current Somali government has committed atrocities, so I'm not sure what my agreement or dwelling on the issue would add to the discussion.
If you really interested why i would take the ICU over this government any day of the century please check the links on this
post
But you are again ignoring the reality. Maybe in an ideal world the ICU would have been a sustainable government (though I certainly would never want to live there and I doubt you would move there if you had the choice).
But the reality of the situation is that the ICU is not a sustainable government, because of their incredibly aggressive policies towards the Ethiopians. We can debate about the justice of it all day, but the fact of the matter is that when the ICU ambushed those Ethiopian convoys and killed all those soldiers, then declared holy war, they provoked a war with Ethiopia—
a war which they cannot win.
Their foreign policy is just as stupid as George Bush Jr.'s. And because of it they endanger the people living in Somalia just as much as any warlord.
And this doesn't even deal with their record on human rights, which we can probably just agree to disagree with for now (obviously, I am not a fan of Shariah law.)
