Iraq - where is the rest of the Muslim world now?

How about asking the Arab league of nations to get it sorted?

 

People are dying now all over the world from various conflicts so why did the West decide that the one in the Middle East is so special? You are yet to answer that.

You've opened the more important question - if the Middle East don't see it as important enough to get involved, why do the West?

 

Both sides hate us (the west) let them wipe each other off the face of the planet. I don't want to see one more drop of British blood wasted on that miserable place.

 

Quite.

 

That's my point. I don't see why I should feel any more inclined to help Christians than Muslims. I'm not religious and despite the fact that culturally I have more in common with a Swiss Lutheran, probably, I don't condone his slaughter any more or less than an Iraqi Mohammetan.

 

Nope, can't find Iraq anywhere .... ooh there it is about 60mm away

 

No one is deflecting - you're OP was not supportable. You haven't in any sense demonstrated that Muslims don't care about this, or care less than Christians. If your evidence is that the US and UK Governments are leading the way then they of course represent a whole range of different citizens including Muslims.

I haven't watched Al Jazeera. My guess is that it's fairly independent in the way it reports, but any unwillingness to report these atrocities would be more explicable by the fact that it is Qatari based, rather than being Muslim. It's possible you hear less from Muslim countries also because many of them are dictatorships that do not allow a free press and would certainly not entertain the criticism of policy undertaken by the likes of the BBC.

There is no implication that humanitarian support from the Red Crescent 'negates the need for any other assistance'. The point I'm making is that how individuals care about things is not based upon their religion.

What you cannot dodge is the need for sophisticated analysis. Why has this nasty brand of Islamofacism had such success? There are a number of reasons. Our disastrous interventions have left many in the religion absolutely desperate and filled with hatred. Simply the number of malformed babies in Fallujah and elsewhere following the US Marines rampage with Uranium tipped bullets would leave a scar for decades. The Gulf States have been allowed with American complicity to arm these groups and support them. And lastly IS itself as nasty as it is has been a preferable alternative for many desperate people to the huge cost of others.

How on earth you can look upon this suffering and not link it to, not only the simply wicked things we have done in the past, but also how we continue to play the region is quite beyond me. You are right that we should not be sending our children to fight and die there, but this ignorant, simplifying and polarising just makes it more likely that Cameron or the next Blair will do it sooner or later.

Of course we should provide aid and we should do all we can to get the UN to lead. But the fact remains if you want this to stop then it has to stop with our 'allies' in the Gulf.

 

Is there some sort of hive mind that links all Christians/Jews/Muslims e.t.c that allow them to communicate and reach consensus on all matters as they pop up? Does this apply to atheists/secularists too?! Is religion really the great reducer here?

 

No, let's hear what you would do?

 

On the subject of reporting of this, I noticed on the morning after the first US bombing that the BBC headline mentioned only "US Aid Flights" and you had to read some way down to find out they'd dropped a load of bombs too!

I hear today that in order to resolve the situation, the US intends to send a whole load more weapons and bombs there. Great. That ought to do it.

Moose is absolutely right when he pins a lot of this disaster on the US arming and training of Afghan 'mujhadin freedom fighters' to take on the USSR. It was frightening how quickly they transformed into the "hated Taliban".

The best thing we can do is to keep our noses out. Don't arm anyone, don't covertly fund anyone, don't drop any bombs on anyone, don't assassinate anyone, don't obliterate anyone by drone, don't make any more enemies.

Left in peace for a while, I'm sure it'll sort itself out.

 

The only 'big' economies who can do anything are the Gulf States and they are the problem. You may not have noticed but most of the others are in utter turmoil or are very small or like Iran are already involved. These other countries will sadly get involved when it knocks on their door.

You are asking for an altruistic intervention by tiny countries. Why did Sweden and Switzerland keep out of WW2 - because they'd have been nuts to. Why didn't France invade the US or UK when we blew that 10 year old Iraqi's arms and legs off? Carlos's point is quite reasonable. The only hope for the little countries around is that the bigger organisations, the UN or the Arab League will act.

It's not at all easy to see what we can do. Any time we put weapons into the region they normally end up with the wrong team. We often bomb the wrong people. We need to provide aid, work the UN night and day and denounce the Gulf States at the security council.

 

This

 

I would provide aid for those effected by the rampant surge of the IS troops, in conjunction with efforts to stop IS advancing further. Try to get the UN to pull their finger out and send in peace keeping troops to protect innocent civilians. Avoid if possible any unnecessary air strikes that don't directly protect civilians, and aid and advice any trusted resistance to IS. All in all try to stop genocide with as little destabilisation as possible.

Why don't you want to hear what squibba has to say? Seems unkind to shut him off like that. I'm sure if he chooses to engage he can do so without your help.

 

Forgive me for sounding like Michael Burke but all things aside, do people in the thread believe it is a moral duty to prevent genocide?

 

My OP was supportable.

If you disagree with it, explain why. As far as I know, there has been very little, if any, condemnation from the neighbouring muslim countries in the media. If you disagree, show me. If there has been a Muslim lead governments assistance with aid, show me where/how. If there has been military support from the heavily armed neighbours show me where from. I'm baffled so far.

As for the majority of the rest of your post, if you start off with the stance (everytime) of a sort of, well, no one else is perfect, therefore what is happening is somehow acceptable, then I despair for us all.

As for "sophisticated analysis". When someone is breaking in to your home threatening to rape your wife, or something equally evil. Do you carry out your "sophisticated analysis" before you try and protect her, maybe concluding that well he felt aggrieved by something that happened to him years ago and let him get on with it?

The rubbish that you and others (all of whom are probably ordinary law abiding people, with family and responsibilities) are coming up with are totally baffling. And it all seems to stem from your hatred of the US and or the UK. You and others constantly try and make some sort of justification for the genocide that is happening right now, and quite honestly, it makes me sick!

 

Obviously people don't believe they have a moral duty.

A while back I worked on a project in Guatemala, accompanying the displaced back home again after the civil war (in which 200,000 died and around 1 million displaced). The idea was to act as a witness - death squads etc don't want to act in front of a European witness and (hopefully!) don't dare kill you. We also reported on the human rights situation. That was a moral duty.

Now if people really believed they had a moral duty to help those people in Iraq, they'd be catching the first transport to the mountain to help defend them with whatever came to hand.

Not stroking their beards and endorsing thousands more tonnes of bombs to be dropped on the country and the delivery of thousands more tonnes of sophisticated weapons.

 

first country off the top of my head. googled it. answer found.

http://muftah.org/absence-regional-consensus-iran-seeks-curb-isis-violence/#.U-kIeKJX-uY

thats about the limit of how far i'm prepared to use google for you though. sorry!

 

The answer to the question originally posed - "where is the rest of the Muslim world now?" -is the same as the answer to the question of why we didn't help the plights of various non-oil rich nations we've ignored for years. To name a few: Assad's Syria, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, even Pinochet's Chile if we want to look a bit further back.

Once we know why we didn't get involved in the above issues we'll know why various countries in the area of the IS conflict are trying to keep out of that particular conflict.

 

Nice idea, but in the current climate that would mean sacrificing countless lives of Christians, Yazidis, and a lot of ordinary Muslim people who just want to get on with their lives without all this cräp.

I don't like the argument that the West 'created' the Taliban by helping the Afghans against Russia. If I saved you from getting beaten up by a bigger bloke, and then you went on to beat me up... who would be the ärse hole? Not me, and the West didn't deserve 9/11 for its interventions in Afghanistan.

In the seventies, Afghanistan was a very liberal country. Women wore miniskirts, and the people weren't so strictly religious. That was generations ago now, but it's not the West's fault that the nutters took over, because we helped defend a completely different society.

I'll say it again. It's Saudi Arabia who's responsible for the destabilising radicalisation that we've been witnessing over the past two decades. If there's a problem with Western leaders, it's that none of them have the guts to stand up properly to this menace.

 

Ought they though? Or do we have a moral duty most people are unaware or unwilling to fulfil? That's incredibly brave of you to work on such a project.

Do you think we're just accepting of the passive responsibility of not acting? Because as a nation we are in a position to help stop it, or at least do what we can to provide aid. And it's generally accepted that passive responsibility is a thing. Maybe not on an individual level but on a national one, or supra-national one such as the UN we ought to do something.

Providing aid at the very least is something we ought to do rather than ignore it all.

 

if i understood the thread correctly (and i'm sure i have), it's guatemala's responsibility to help those guys. and indonesia's responsibility to help the muslims! fight the power!

 

Send (non-military) aid yes.

Send doctors and establish impartial neutral field hospitals treating all injured - yes.

Contact all parties and find out what they want to stop it - yes. Offer to act as negotiators if required - yes.

If we can't stop it, then offer all those who are in danger asylum in Europe or the US. Ought to be easy enough to fly them out.

Those are the sort of things we'd do if there was a scintilla of a sense of moral duty.

Sending a load more weapons to a war and dropping bombs from 50,000 feet on the other hand are fine demonstrations of a complete lack of morality.

 

100% accurate ZZ, I'm glad you're speaking out when others aren't. I just wish Al Jazeera would report on this atrocity, it's sickening that they aren't. I mean, why isn't there a website dedicated to the conflict like this one http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/iraq/ ?

Also, why start a thread when you aren't even aware that Iran has been involved for quite some time now? I'm not sure you know what you're on about, you just felt like being controversial.

 

Hey! They told me they were Christians, just like us.

I say let other heathen followers of Melek Taus, "the Peacock Angel", help them out in that case.

 

Yeah, 'cause the first thing people need when they've been crucified or beheaded en masse by Jihadists is a farking food parcel.

Sorry, but you're living in Toy Town if you think bunging these people some grub is going to solve their problems. ISIS are committing genocide. They're beheading people. Crucifying people. Cutting people in half. The media we get is giving a very sanitised version of events if anyone believes charity is the solution.

I don't care if the West's interest in the region is oil based. I just want some serious military action taken against these barstards, and it should be a global effort, not just us and the yanks.

 

I don't think anyone would disagree with any of it apart from the last line.

Would you object to bombs and arms if there were a sizeable utilitarian outcome?

 

I don't think he suggested that was a solution, just a good thing to happen.

 

Excellent, I'm pleased that Aljazeera are reporting on it, albeit somewhat hidden away in the "indepth" section, rather than in the news reporting section. They have also been very quiet on the genocide side of things, you know, like burying women and children whilst still alive, but have just been calling it violence, like a normal battle. But, it is better than nothing. Strange that most other people on here, instead of just coming up with this partial answer to my OP, have spent their time telling me why the other Muslim nations shouldn't be involved.

As for Iran, I know that Iran were involved a bit, but it was extremely limited, and much of it secretive, which somewhat defeats the object in the propaganda war.

What should be happening is that the Muslim/Arab nations should be getting together and publically and loudly condemning the genocide to reduce recruitment, and jointly getting in there and destroying ISiS until they are no more. None of this Iranian secret drone flights, etc.

As for my motive, forgive me, I just don't like the idea of women and children being decapitated, tortured, raped, buried alive, etc, and I am annoyed when I see the people who are best equipped to sort it out, mostly standing back and leaving it to others.

As for your motive, I think it is so you can show off your line of pathetic sarcasm.

 

Partly correct, I like showing off my pathetic sarcasm. I don't have much else going for me, so I make the most of it.

 

Call me hard faced but the west can't get involved without stoking a whole lot of hatred and I include humanitarian aid in that. It's up to the Arab world to police themselves and as they have no shortage of finance the aid should be their responsibility too, all of it. Of course there will be wars and deaths in great numbers but this is hardly new, it's been going on for eons and nothing we do will stop it.

If the greater Arab world needs assistance from western nations then at least let them ask for it first.

 

I do however think its now ours and USA's duty to help out those in Iraq, considering we invaded their country and trained their army - which have been major triggers for this event. If in 2003 we had left them to it then I'd now be saying we shouldn't get involved, but we have made Iraq our responsibility. I just hope airstrikes will be enough and we don't need to put troops on the ground again.

 

Oh god ZZ when will you ever stop arguing in this ridiculous way? It's all false propositions and provocations.

That's a lie that I am justifying genocide - so take it back please.

 

I just find it hilarious that we send troops to Iraq where MUSLIMS are killing MUSLIMS but we don't send troops to help the thousands of women and children dying in Gaza.

In answer to your question Simms, I don't know what I'd do, I don't even know that much about politics to even start debating, all the history mentioned previously seems to have happened before I was alive.

One thing I do know is that America is not helping the Iraqi people because they feel any sympathy for the thousands dying, they're there to protect their assets.

In regards to ZZ, I've said it a few times before, if these guys are true Muslims like they say they are then they will know they are going to hell. The Quran does not welcome any killings like these. Plenty of Muslims voice their discontent but the media tend to show idiotic ****ing *****rs like Anjum Chowdree rather than a sensible voice like Ajmal Masroor.

 

I find it sad that thousands line the city streets protesting about "genocide" in Gaza (which isn't) but the streets are silent about the genocide in Iraq (which is)

 

With your first point, it's not about religion, at least that's not the reason the UK isn't getting involved in Gaza. The UK essentially started the problem and now feels guilt and doesn't want to have anything to do with it. The head of government at the time (I'm sure someone on here can say who it was) became greedy and wanted to add Palestine to the Empire and so accepted Palestine as a League of Nations Mandate, with the hope that it can become a full part of the British Empire. Their greed blocked any foresight into the troubles that was inevitable in controlling a state with a city that is the home to three religions where there have been religious wars between at least two of them before. Couple that with the Zionists who wanted to create a state for the Jewish after getting shat on countless of times during history with the Nazis being the last straw, and the many terrorist incidents that happened during British-controlled Palestine on British military outposts and other British establishments in that area by Jewish freedom fighters, and this led to the British government leaving the mandate and creating the state of Israel.

Note that I have referred to organisations like Haganah, Irgun and Lehi as both "terrorists" and "freedom fighters" to appease both parties of people on this forum who view these groups as one of the two, based on the lovely quote by Gerald Seymour- "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". It is interesting that both Haganah and Irgun exist today, in different forms. The Haganah developed into the Israel Defence Forces and Irgun turned into the political party Herut, which then turned into the current political party Likud, of which Benjamin Netenyahu is the leader of.