mousey musings

A visual comparison of Science and Faith -- As the diagram shows, science is best for empirical predictions while faith is best when we need to feel secure about something. I choose science but often envy those whose faith comforts them.

posted by Jeffrey # 2/18/2007 03:25:00 AM

We're fighting four different wars in Iraq. How many of them can we win? -- This brief column really helped me systematize the information about Iraq that I read each day. It's a great summary of the current ststus of the wars there. I would classify al Qaeda as an intervenor in the Sunni-Shiite conflict, eliminating one of the four wars. I would also describe insurgency as an anti-US struggle, to distinguish insurgent resistance to the occupation from the similar attacks that make up much of the civil wars. That leaves an intra-Shiite civil war in the south, a Sunni-Shiite war in the center (in which al Qaeda and the US have effectively joined opposite sides), and countrywide resistance to US occupation. My prediction is that if the US withdraws, the Mahdi Army will win the intra-Shiite conflict just as Aoun won the intra-Christian conflict in Lebanon. The Mahdi Army will then turn its guns on the Sunnis and defeat them. I'd expect a death toll of perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 in the two phases of this post-withdrawal civil war -- most them them civilians killed in the second phase. Iraq would not be a democracy at the end of the bloodshed, and a follow-up Kurd-Shiite civil war is possible. Alas, I suspect that another few years of US intervention will roughly double the time and deaths needed to resolve the conflicts.

posted by Jeffrey # 2/12/2007 03:20:00 AM