International 38 million became rufugees as result if War on Terror/Islam

[12ga.]

I agree with your sentiment, although I don’t think the feudal term “vassal” applies as well as “client state” - and that might sound like semantics, but I think there’s a real difference in the way a colonial vassal and a client state operate. The U.S. would never ask a member of their global empire to garrison an American base in the USA for example, while the British would have been fine with Indians or Canadians serving as garrison troops as well as on the front lines as a part of a combined imperial army.

I see the difference thanks. BTW I worked in Saudi for two years with a company called Bechtel ...was my first job out of college as a young accountant. And 85K tax free sounded pretty good. Anyway We had "bases" all over - literally all work seemed to be done by Americans and European and they treated us better than Saudi's let alone other MENA ppls there. Kinda bugged me as I hate bullies and people thinking they are better than other but I caught on 30 years ago what was going on. Client state.

 

[Islam Imamate]

The Assad regime is the greatest contributor to refugees and while it did eventually become part of the war on terror, it was unequivocally the right thing to do to combat them and the results were fantastic, anyways.

Sure but those terrorists were largely able to organize and succeed due to the regional instability caused by the WoT itself, mainly the invasion of Iraq. If anything the invasion of Iraq made the US, the Middle East, and Europe less safe rather than more safe.

So killing some terrorists in Syria that might've never become a problem had we not invaded Iraq is a small victory in my eyes. Say what you want about the Baathist regimes but they both had notoriously effective intelligence apparatuses so I believe that if Iraq was left in tact then ISIS would've never become a serious concern.

Yes, of course that’s true, we in the west have that “secular humanism” that I love so much.

But I believe that religion is used cynically by those in power to rally troops and justify crimes. I don’t think we could colonize and invade the way we do without Christianity; I might be wrong, but I just don’t see it.

Not being “explicitly Christian” matters, but I could easily see the massacre of Christians in any country being used as an excuse for a western nation to invade someone “non-western.” George Wallace often referred to Hitler as Satan during WW2, and so on. The rhetoric is there, and it induces an “othering” that secular humanism was meant to wipe out.

French Revolutionary governments legitimately made attempts at de-colonization too! The real secular governments made actual moves in that direction. Haiti for example, until Napoleon, was the shining star of western decolonization as justified by a secular “citizen government” under Robespierre. (He was literally beheading slavers and slave owners.)

Idk, personally I think Christianity hasn't been a serious moral force in the West for some time now. Europeans still like the aesthetic of Christianity but not much beyond that. The French wept when the Notre Dame burned but how many who wept had attended mass in recent years, much less at the Notre Dame itself? Few I imagine.

 

[Aegon Spengler]

Sure but those terrorists were largely able to organize and succeed due to the regional instability caused by the WoT itself, mainly the invasion of Iraq. If anything the invasion of Iraq made the US, the Middle East, and Europe less safe rather than more safe.

So killing some terrorists in Syria that might've never become a problem had we not invaded Iraq is a small victory in my eyes. Say what you want about the Baathist regimes but they both had notoriously effective intelligence apparatuses so I believe that if Iraq was left in tact then ISIS would've never become a serious concern.

Idk, personally I think Christianity hasn't been a serious moral force in the West for some time now. Europeans still like the aesthetic of Christianity but not much beyond that. The French wept when the Notre Dame burned but how many who wept had attended mass in recent years, much less at the Notre Dame itself? Few I imagine.

Hmm. That is a fair point, in terms of the direct impact of the Church and the Vatican; but have you ever read up on some of the theory re: communism and social democracy being a “Catholic values” project? I have only skimmed the surface, I can’t name any authors off hand who take that stance-but I have heard this bandied about by different profs in interviews etc.

Apparently those “golden rule” and “good samaratian” type stories featured prominently in the old internationalism and union brotherhood that built the prosperity the middle class are able to enjoy in Europe.

The bible is also one of those books where three people can read it and each one of them will come out with totally different interpretations on what they read. So maybe it’s the nature of the religion to morph back and fourth from a state-sponsored force to a kind of background miasma

 

[Islam Imamate]

Hmm. That is a fair point, in terms of the direct impact of the Church and the Vatican; but have you ever read up on some of the theory re: communism and social democracy being a “Catholic values” project? I have only skimmed the surface, I can’t name any authors off hand who take that stance-but I have heard this bandied about by different profs in interviews etc.

Apparently those “golden rule” and “good samaratian” type stories featured prominently in the old internationalism and union brotherhood that built the prosperity the middle class are able to enjoy in Europe.

The bible is also one of those books where three people can read it and each one of them will come out with totally different interpretations on what they read. So maybe it’s the nature of the religion to morph back and fourth from a state-sponsored force to a kind of background miasma

Oh I definitely agree that Christianity is a powerful historical influence on Western culture, its just that by the 19th century Europe was well into the modern period and so the influence of Christianity was more indirect rather than a serious, independent moral force.

 

[danny23]

I would guess from these refugees a lot were Christians and other minorities from the Middle East, after Islamists took over lawless and war torn states. Majority of refugees were Muslim but proportionally Christians suffered the most.

Foreign intervention did harm to them because the regimes of Saddam and Assad protected minority rights and religions for Christians, Assyrians and others, and gave them representation in politics and arm forces. Once the US destabilized Iraq and Syria it gave Islamists free reign to target and displace them.
This is the US’ lasting legacy in the ME.
Almost as if there’s another country in the Levant that possess great disdain for Christians and all those around them, all this worked out great for them