Iraq: Should America, Britain and other western powers intervene?

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Originally Posted by FlyingJesus

Forced segregation of cultures wouldn't work either - if it did then no wars would ever have happened and no invasions would have been attempted in all of history. You seem to think that if you give someone a bunch of like-minded people to sit next to they're never going to want to move or look outside that circle, and yet

It isn't forced at all, what is forced is keeping these people together in an aritifcial politcal, economic and cultural union called Iraq which was invented out of thin air. If you look at the history of Iraq, it's been one of each of the groups attempting to gain dominace over the other - hence a history since independence of one strong man after the other. Even the Ba'ath regime, a supposed secular regime (composed almost entirely of minority sunnis) used sectarianism to keep other groups at one anothers throats so that sunni rule could continue.

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Originally Posted by FlyingJesus

And it is an imagined problem because it's only the violent radicals who really care about oppressing the opposition; most Sunnis and Shi'as are quite content to live alongside each other just as my Christian and Muslim friends don't stone me as a heretic. Also you completely ignored my response to what the thread is actually about :P

And yet if you look at the events in Iraq since independence and especially since 2003 you'll notice how it's essentially been a battleground for control of Baghdad between the sunni population (backed by the Gulf states and the Saudi Kingdom in particular) and the shia population who've been backed by both the Assad clan in Syria and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Saying that people should just learn to live together is very nice, but isn't realistic. If you have distinct groups who consider themselves literally foreigners to the other group then settling things over democracy isn't going to work, no more than the Christian South Sudan could tolerate the Islamic northern Sudan imposing it's will over the south, hence the partition.

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Originally Posted by FlyingJesus

most Sunnis and Shi'as are quite content to live alongside each other

Doesn't appear to be the case in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain - all contries which have a sizable sunni or shia minority.

Indeed if you look at reports coming in from Iraq over the past few weeks, there have been reports that the ISIS forces have been greeted as liberators in sunni areas who absolutely detested the Prime Minister Maliki (shia) government.