Cristo Vive!
Y ahora, mi amigo Tomas tambien vive!

I have been trying to add something, subtract something or even just say something, but what can we do with such a simple straight balanced post?

You are almost worse than Servetus, so far he was the only man on this forum who could despatch this peasant into such speechlessness!

Tomas,

I sincerely hope you stay.  I'm glad to have another evenminded Christian who does not buy into the media smoke screens.

Angela, any true anybody never does. We begin to fall into these smoke screens only when walk in our own darkness.

Pax Tecum, Tom,

Welcome to the discussions.  I, for one, think that you ought to reconsider your position and start salivating for Armageddon.  To assist you (and others) toward that end, I have written what I think are some timely and, if responses to the thread are any indication, clearly unpopular agitprayers for war.  Please find them here:

http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9462&PN=5 - http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9462& ;PN=5

By the way, our goal, or mission, should we choose to accept it, is to never reduce Whisper to a state of speechlessness!

Best regards,

Serv

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Hey you!  Democratize this (the US economy)! 

Angela wrote: Tomas, I sincerely hope you stay.  I'm glad to have another evenminded Christian who does not buy into the media smoke screens.

Oh but he is buying into it: http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8924&PN=1&TPN=1 - http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8924& ;PN=1&TPN=1

Oh but he is buying into it: http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8924& ;PN=1&TPN=1 - http://www.islamicity.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=8924& ; ;PN=1&TPN=1

We hope you stay as well for we badly need at least one or two self-obssessed court gesters, for all the fun posts!

One of the things that I fail to understand about your political theory, Sawtul, if I have read it correctly, is this: if Iran is covertly acting as America�s and thus, by extension, Israel�s ally, why is such a prominent and influential neo-conservative and Zionist activist as Norman Podhoretz imploring this Administration to take military action against President Ahmadinejad?

When, for another instance, AEI�s Thomas Donnelley writes essays against the potentially appeasing �realists� (school of thought in American foreign policy) and describes a nuclear Iran as a security threat because it would impede the Bush Doctrine of, among other things, waging wars �preemptively� in the Middle Eastern region, would you have us accept that he is acting as little more than a disinformation agent?  I don�t understand.

Serv

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I am convinced that Democracy is a conspiracy designed to thwart my political will to power.

One of the things that I fail to understand about your political theory, Sawtul, 

Uncle, our Prophetius descends upon his peasants, with a package of some predictions, never with any political theory.

Servetus wrote: When, for another instance, AEI�s Thomas Donnelley writes essays against the potentially appeasing �realists� (school of thought in American foreign policy) and describes a nuclear Iran as a security threat because it would impede the Bush Doctrine of, among other things, waging wars �preemptively� in the Middle Eastern region, would you have us accept that he is acting as little more than a disinformation agent?  I don�t understand.

Sorry I didn't respond to this post (I missed it) but if you read what I've written carefully you'll find the answer (that is the whole point, they want people to think that they are enemies so they tell us that they are planning a war with Iran, something that they been saying for nearly 30 years).

Regarding your above post, Sawtul, I have read plenty of your entries and I still don�t have a very clear answer to my question.

Let me take another approach.  I am interested.  Would you say that you agree, disagree or remain neutral with the following somewhat lengthy excerpt from Vali Nasr�s book, The Shia Revival?

�What Iran�s revolution had failed to do, the Shia revival in post-Saddam Iraq was set to achieve.  The challenge that the Shia revival poses to the Sunni Arab domination of the Middle East and to the Sunni conception of political identity and authority is not substantially different from the threat that Khomeini posed.  Iran�s revolution also sought to break the hegemonic control of the Sunni Arab establishment.  The only difference is that last time around the Shias were the more radical and anti-American force, and now the reverse seems to be true.

The same constellation of regional forces that resisted Khomeini�s challenge will probably resist this one.  Although the context and ideologies at play are different now, the national interests at stake are the same.  The battle lines in Iraq today are essentially the same as the ones during the Iran-Iraq war; they have merely moved some two hundred miles to the west.  They will likely rest on the line �more or less running through Baghdad, among other places- that separates the predominantly Shia from the predominantly Sunni regions of Iraq.

Iran�s strategy in this conflict is the same as it was in the 1980s: to focus attention on anti-American and anti-Israeli issues, appropriate popular Islamic and Arab slogans, and avoid discussion of sectarian differences.  This strategy worked for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Sadrists, inspired by Hezbollah, tried to implement it in Iraq as well.  The Saudi and Jordanian strategy too will be the same as it was in the 1980s: to contain Iran by focusing on sectarian issues and rallying the Sunnis.  Hence, while Iran complains about the U.S. and British �occupation� of Iraq, the Jordanian and Saudi monarchies lament sectarianism, the Shia revival, and growing Iranian influence in Iraq.  During a visit to the United States in September 2005, a frustrated and uncharacteristically blunt Prince Saud al-Faysal, Saudi Arabia�s foreign minister and the son of King Faysal, told his American audience that the potential for disintegration of Iraq was real and that that would �bring other countries in the region into the conflict.�  Leaving little doubt as to who Saudi Arabia considered to be its greatest rival in that conflict, he chided the United States, saying that �we [Saudi Arabia and the U.S.] fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait.  Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason.�  The princes refrain would soon become the mantra for leaders from Lebanon to Bahrain: warning of growing Iranian influence to gain international support for resisting Shia empowerment.

By seeking to rouse sectarian conflict, Sunni extremists are filling more or less the same role that the alliance between Iraq�s Sunni-led Ba�thist regime, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Kuwait performed during the Iran-Iraq war, which was to prevent Shia Iran from becoming a regional power.  In this sense, the violent Sunni extremists are also serving the national interests of those countries.  Although ruling regimes in Riyadh, Amman, and Kuwait stand opposed to Sunni extremism and support the US.-led war on terror their interests in Iraq are aligned with the insurgency and its goal of wrecking a new, Shia-led Iraqi state.�

Serv

Ref:  Nasr, Vali, The Shia Revival, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2006, ISBN-13: 978-0-393-06211-3, pp. 241-242

Regarding your above post, Sawtul, I have read plenty of your entries and I still don�t have a very clear answer to my question.

Uncs Mk II, if you don't mind me jumping in to this one, please, would you translate it into Americaan as the chap you are addressing finds it hard to understand English.

Not that he ever understands or overstands much else, but still. 

Whisper, ya wahstez, ah�len w�sah�len. As far as I am concerned, the only one who has interrupted the thread thus far is Daniel, from you-know-where, who has done so by insisting that we focus upon those at times annoying things called facts.  ()
 
Speaking of which, Sawtul, have you anything to say regarding Vali Nasr�s excerpt above?   
 
Serv

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Of course there is an �minence grise, but it is not the American Vice President.