9/14, Spengler, "
It is a misperception that America is the main object of Muslim rage.
- Most Muslim rage is directed against other Muslims.
Religious violence perpetrated by Muslims against other Muslims is a routine feature of life in Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Of the 1,868 acts of religious violence listed by the Global Terrorism Database, all but a handful were conducted by Muslims on Muslims. America has done its best to suppress such violence. What if America (or Russia, or India, or China) were to incite it?
- The Islamic world's claim on Western attention rests on its propensity to fail.
- America has spent a trillion dollars and 5,700 lives to prop up notionally pro-American regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention $2 billion a year to Egypt, and several hundred million each to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, as well as smaller sums to other Muslim countries.
America will continue its efforts to stabilize fractious Islamic lands for the foreseeable future. Obama holds a personal as well as an ideological commitment to foster friendship with the Muslim world, and the Republicans will not admit that they were mistaken to commit so much blood and treasure to nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq. - But America's attitude might change. Iraq may descend into civil war, especially now that the Americans have armed and trained 100,000 Sunni fighters in the so-called Sunni Awakening, Petraeus' "rent-an-Arab" strategy to contain communal violence until American troops could leave. ..."
There are so many ways in which the (mid east) region might descend into religious conflict that it is pointless to make book on the scenarios. In another location I suggested that
Weapons are there to be used, and theological weapons may turn out to be some of the nastiest means of war-fighting at hand."
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