Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Iraq (Now) = Yugoslavia (Then) ?

Yugoslavia and Iraq both were artificial nations invented after World War I.

At that time Yugoslavia had one, usually-mutually, understandable language, two alphabets (Cyrillic and Western), three major religions/ideologies (Latin-Catholic, Orthodox and Islam) [With atheist, secular, Communism added later] and a variety of mutually-hating ethnic minorities. Once the heavy had of Tito (Always strong-minded and sometime bloody handed) was removed by his death, Yugoslavia began to fall, then, fly, apart---At some cost in rape, murder, robbery, genocide and suffering.

Although it once had strong and productive Jewish and Christian minorities, Iraq has now only one predominant ideology (Islam); But, that is divided into two and mutually hating sects (Sunni & Shi'ite) whose members seem more intent on killing each other than those Islam teaches are the enemies of both—Christians and, most specially, Jews.. The invention of Iraq,, to suit the interests of Western powers (Chiefly France and the United Kingdom) forced together Arabs, Kurds and other non-Arabs (Muslims and others). Both Arabic and Kurdish are spoken as very different languages and are written with differing alphabets.

Now that the always heavy and ALWAYS bloody hand of Saddam Hussein has been removed from control in Iraq, can that artificial and created nation survive any better than did Yugoslavia?

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