Why is the Middle East in Flames? What is behind the hatred between Islam sects the Sunni and Shi'a?

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According to The New American Encyclopedic Dictionary, "An Exhaustive Dictionary of The English Language Practical and Comprehensive published by J. A. Hill & Company of New York in 1906, "bias" of things not material is defined as: "The state of mentally or morally inclining to one side; inclination of the mind, heart or will; that which causes such an inclination, leaning or tendency."

In Crabb: English Synonyms, Crabb thus distinguishes between bias, prepossession, and prejudice: "Bias marks the state of the mind; prepossession applies either to the general or particular state of the feelings, prejudice is employed only for opinions. Children may receive an early bias that influences their future character and destiny. Prepossessions spring from casualties; they do not exist in young minds. Prejudices are the fruits of a contracted education. A bias may be overpowered, a prepossession overcome, and a prejudice corrected or removed. We may be biased for or against; we are always prepossessed in favor, and mostly prejudiced against.

Is there is a bias in America based on suspicion of the intent of the Muslim people's of the world and is it based on the history and modern actions of the Muslim world, in particular the actions of the mainstream Muslim factions. The majority of Muslims belong to one of two denominations, the Sunni and the Shi'a.

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, in Muslim tradition, Muhammad is viewed as the last and the greatest in a series of prophets—as the man closest to perfection, the possessor of all virtues. For the last 22 years of his life, in 610 AD, beginning at age 40, Muhammad started receiving revelations from God. The content of these revelations, known as the Qur'an, was memorized and recorded by his companions. It has been 1400 years since Muhammad started receiving revelations from God.

Sunni Muslims are the largest denomination of Islam, comprising up to 90% or nine-tenths of the total Muslim population in the world. They are often referred to as Ahl as-Sunnah wa’l-Jamā‘h or Ahl as-Sunnah.

The word Sunni comes from the word sunnah, which means the teachings and actions or examples of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. Therefore, the term "Sunni" refers to those who follow or maintain the sunnah of the prophet Muhammad.

The Sunni believe that Muhammad did not specifically appoint a successor to lead the Muslim ummah (community) before his death, and after an initial period of confusion, a group of his most prominent companions gathered and elected Abu Bakr Siddique—Muhammad's close friend and a father-in-law—as the first caliph of Islam. Sunni Muslims regard the first four caliphs—Abu Bakr, `Umar ibn al-Khattāb, Uthman Ibn Affan and Ali ibn Abu Talib—as "al-Khulafā’ur-Rāshidūn" or "The Rightly Guided Caliphs." Sunnis also believe that the position of caliph may be democratically chosen, but after the Rashidun, the position turned into a hereditary dynastic rule. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, there has never been another caliph as widely recognized in the Muslim world.

Shia Islam (sometimes Shi'a or Shi'ite), is the second-largest denomination of Islam, comprising anywhere between 10% or one-tenth to 13% of the total Muslim population in the world. Shi'a Muslims—though a minority in the Muslim world—constitute the majority of the populations in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Iran, and Iraq, as well as a plurality in Lebanon and Yemen.

In addition to believing in the authority of the Qur'an and teachings of the Muhammad, Shi'a believe that his family—the Ahl al-Bayt (the People of the House), including his descendants known as Imams—have special spiritual and political rule over the community and believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, was the first of these Imams and was the rightful successor to Muhammad, and thus reject the legitimacy of the first three Rashidun caliphs.

The Shi'a Islamic faith is vast and inclusive of many different groups. There are various Shi'a theological beliefs, schools of jurisprudence, philosophical beliefs, and spiritual movements. The Shi'a identity emerged soon after the death of 'Umar Ibnil-Khattab—the second caliph—and Shi'a theology was formulated in the second century and the first Shi'a governments and societies were established by the end of the ninth century.

Kharijite (lit. "those who seceded") is a general term embracing a variety of Muslim sects which, while originally supporting the Caliphate of Ali, eventually seceded after his son Imam Hasan negotiated with Mu'awiya during the 7th Century Islamic civil war (First Fitna). Their complaint was that the Imam must be spiritually pure, and that Hasan's compromise with Mu'awiya was a compromise of his spiritual purity, and therefore of his legitimacy as Imam or Caliph. While there are few remaining Kharijite or Kharijite-related groups, the term is sometimes used to denote Muslims who refuse to compromise with those with whom they disagree.

Sufism is a mystical-ascetic form of Islam. By focusing on the more spiritual aspects of religion, Sufis strive to obtain direct experience of God by making use of "intuitive and emotional faculties" that one must be trained to use. Sufis usually considered Sufism to be complementary to orthodox Islam.

Once Muhammad lived and provided the Qur'an by 632 AD the various factions fought a 7th century civil war before undertaking 500 years of war against the Christians for control of the Western World. The initial Muslim conquest of Syria in the 7th century under the Rashidun Caliphs began the battle between the Christians and Muslims. After the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims the wars ended with Muslims in control of most Middle East nations and Christianity split between the Latin and Greek sects.

By the time Christianity reached about 1400 years of age the factions within Christianity forced the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries and the break up of Christianity into many independent denominations.

Ironically, the Muslim factions have now existed for 1400 years and in country after country they have turned on each other in brutal wars, suppression of competing sects, and acts of genocide that have left a sense of fear, distrust and anxiety in the Christian and Jewish worlds. Is it not surprising? If the Muslim sects can justify Holy Wars against each other in this modern age what is to stop wars with us? Just look at the tens of thousands of civilian Muslim deaths at the hands of radical Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is in the news every day.

History is a brutal lesson in fact over fiction. The origins of terrorism within the Muslim factions is no surprise as radical extremists with a religious foundation have been around for centuries. There is no single voice for the Muslim world and no central control of order to that world. Until those elements of the Muslim world can overcome their own hatred for each other and then their hatred for the Christian and Jewish so called infidels, bias will exist and caution is warranted.

Just as the Christians had to overcome the violence and bloodshed of the ill advised Crusades and the Protestant Reformation in order for Christianity to evolve, so to must the Muslim world overcome the bitter wars and rivalry of secular and non-secular violence and the offshoots of terrorism that attempt to destroy any perceived effort to threaten the single domination of one religious sect over any government in a multi-cultural and religiously diverse world.

Any bias of unease or misunderstanding on the part of Americans toward the Muslim world can be changed, if the Muslim world evolves as other religions have evolved. When radicalism and terrorism are set aside, and they exist in all cultures and religions, there are far more similarities between Christians and Muslims than differences and both share the same God or Allah.  Finally, within every culture or religion are good people.

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Obama's Whimsical Pollyanna approach to Foreign Policy failed - Now What???

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When President Obama was elected into office six long years ago we were promised everything under the sun and for the most part we have been struggling to find the light at the end of the tunnel of disappointments.

No where was it more true than in the area of foreign policy where the president promised to close Guantanamo prison, get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan, bring peace to the Israelis and Palestinians, stop Iran, stop North Korea, stop Russia, solve the Middle East peace problems, and, well you've all heard the litany of promises.

Back then it was heresy to say the newly elected Obama had no foreign policy experience, in fact no administrative experience either, but everyone gave him the benefit of the doubt.  For six years the liberal media has ignored, explained away or covered up the astounding failures of Obama and aided the president in blaming any problems on George Bush, as if that meant Obama didn't have to do anything because it was Bush's fault.

Even Franklin Roosevelt, the most effective of all Democrat liberal presidents, who was elected at the beginning of the Great Depression, the one that was still far worse than what Obama inherited, didn't spend the next six years blaming Hoover and the Republicans for the mess we were in.  In fact, he reached out to Hoover to help him put America back to work and then help with World War II preparations.

That would be like Obama asking Romney to help him fix the problems of America because Romney, like Hoover, was experienced, could manage and could create policy that worked.  Needless to say Obama would never stoop so low as to ask a Republican with a mind of his own to help America.  It was far more important to blame everything on the Republicans forever.

Rabid partisanship and inflammatory rhetoric were Obama's tools to deflect criticism and explain away failure and the media let him get away with it as did his own party.  So Obama spent the last six years with an almost disinterested approach to foreign policy.  I mean the one event in which he was personally involved and took an active role was the killing of Osama Bin Laden, the unarmed Bin Laden that is.

Have things changed?  Today his decision to pull troops out of Iraq has resulted in one of the worst blood baths since he took office.  Because of his policy failures we are going to be back in Iraq one way or the other just to help stabilize he Middle East.

So how does our cerebral and aloof president handle this world threatening crisis?  Well, he is out playing two rounds of golf today at a Democrat fundraiser.  Need I say more about his whimsical and Pollyanna approach to foreign policy?

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How to lose a war - Iraq again in flames 11 years after US Invasion

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This is not Obama's year for foreign policy successes nor is it the legacy former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted as the top Obama official when policy decisions were made to leave Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet today, with lightning speed, the Sunni Al-Qaeda's uprising as it sweeps across Iraq and recaptures the very areas lost in the war presents the dark dilemma that everything America did from spending $2 trillion over 11 years and having almost 4,400 Americans die in Iraq and over 32,000 wounded, was for naught.

Two and one half years after American troops left, the current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, a member of the Shia Muslim faction, wants the Americans to come back as his country crumbles around him.

The war has killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

When security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers were included, the war's death toll rose to an estimated 176,000 to 189,000, the study said.

The report, the work of about 30 academics and experts, was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

What can we expect if Iraq falls to the Sunni Al-Qaeda uprising?  Mass murders, even genocide as the Sunni take revenge from the Shia.  A return to strict human rights violations as women will be stripped of all rights and children will be raised to be terrorists if the past is any indication.

The radical Sunni and Al-Qaeda coalition will be forming the largest geographic Sunni controlled area in the Mideast to include Syria, Iran and Iraq, and will be a direct threat to destroy the remaining American allies in the Middle East.  The Sunni can also be expected to wage war on the Christians remaining in the region and to threaten to obliterate Israel.

Newspaper headlines from around the world say it all.

U.S. aid 'spawning new breed of jihadists'

Fighting in North Iraq to Delay Return of Region Oil Exports

Timeline - How al-Qaeda regained its hold in Iraq

A spent force five years ago, the Sunni militant group is now stronger than ever

After Mosul - If jihadists control Iraq, blame Nouri al-Maliki, not the United States.

Iraq on the brink of civil war

Iraq: Al-Qaida-inspired militants capture Tikrit; 500,000 flee Mosul

Al-Qaeda's uprising in northern Iraq comes five years after had been all but defeated as a result of the US troop "surge". Former Telegraph Iraq correspondent charts the key points in its rebirth

By Colin Freeman

2007-2008

After two years of Sunni-Shia civil war, US troops mount a "surge" designed to quell the violence. Among its strategies is turning Iraq's Sunni community against their former allies in al-Qaeda, with whom they had united to fight the US occupation and the US-backed, Shia-dominated Iraqi government. The strategy succeeds and al-Qaeda finds itself largely defeated in Iraq.

2010

New elections in Iraq sow the seeds of future disconent. Iraqiyya, a secular and religiously mixed bloc led by Ayad Allawi, a former British exile, win a narrow majority votes, but the Shia bloc run by current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, wins power after forming a governing coalitiion with Iranian help. Rather than handing key security positions to his opponents as promised, Mr Maliki concentrates power in his own hands, alienating the Sunni community.

December 2011

Mr Maliki issues an arrest warrant for Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq's Sunni vice-president, who flees abroad. The government claims Mr Hashemi has been using his bodyguards for terrorism campaigns, but Iraq's Sunnis see it as a sectarian smear campaign against his political rivals. Mr Maliki is also accused of replacing competent military leaders who had worked with the Americans with political cronies, undermining the military's strength at the very time when the US is pulling out its forces.

Autumn 2012

Belatedly inspired by the Arab Spring movements in neighbouring countries, Sunnis around Iraq begin a series of mass civil rights demonstrations, alleging that they are treated as second-class citizens by Mr Maliki's government. While their complaints get limited sympathy in the wider world - Sunnis, after all, enjoyed privileged lives during the reign of Saddam Hussein - Western diplomats in Baghdad concede that they have some grounds for complaint. In particular, the protesters allege harassment by the security forces and discrimination in getting government jobs.

December 2012

The arrest of Rafaie al-Esawi, a finance minister who is one of the last prominent Sunnis in government, galvanises the protests further. The growing sense of alienation with the government provides a ready source of new recruits to al-Qaeda, which has re-energised in western Iraq thanks to its campaign against President Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria. While many Sunnis do not share al-Qaeda's extreme religious vision, they are willing to help it fight Mr Maliki's government.

April 2013

Iraqi government forces antagonise the Sunni community further when they attack a protest camp in the town of Hawijah in northern Iraq, killing 53 people. While the Iraqi government claims that the camp had become a haven for al-Qaeda militants, who had fired on them first, the raid on the camp prompts fighting that spills across northern Iraq. Gunmen briefly sieze one town from police and declare it to be "liberated" from government rule.

July 2013

The new joint Syrian-Iraqi al-Qaeda offshoot, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al Shams (ISIS), gains a major coup when it breaks nearly 500 fellow militants from Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad, supposedly the most secure jail in the country. Many rejoin their comrades' campaign.

December 2013

Human Rights Watch issues a report criticising the Iraqi government over the scale of its use of the death penalty, often in cases where confessions have been extracted by torture. A disproportionate number of those on death row appear to be Sunni insurgents.

January 2014

ISIS sends gunmen into the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The Iraqi army surrounds both cities but does not go for an all-out assault for fear of large civilian casaulties that would alienate locals still further. Five months later, both cities remain outside of Iraqi security forces' control.

June 2014

ISIS takes over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, also threatening Baghdad. Five years from being all but vanquished, al-Qaeda's writ in Iraq is as strong, if not stronger, as it was before.

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The Games People Play Part 2 - Military Medical Care - Vets to Active Duty

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Oh the Games People Play Now

Every night and every day now

Never meaning what they say now

Never saying what they mean now

Once upon a time there was no higher honor in America than to be a member of the armed forces.  But little and long wars have a way of desensitizing people to the dangers, the deaths and the casualties of war.

I remember after World War II that we celebrated our veterans and their role in world peace every year and multiple times a year during holidays, parades, and the many air and military shows that were ever present.

As a kid of a veteran we grew up to know every battle in every war our parents had fought in and we were thrilled to go to the military air shows and parades where all the planes and equipment that protect our parents was on display.

Over time the Korean War stalemate seemed to dampen the enthusiasm for the military and by the time college came and brought Vietnam there seemed to be no sense in why we were fighting wars as 55,000 of our classmates died.

America had become split.  And the more and more we learned about the war the more the prestige of the military, the intelligence agencies and our federal government lost popularity.

Then came 9/11 and the World Trade Center destruction and suddenly the nation rallied around the military and the government once more.  Faulty intelligence led to the invasion of Iraq and God only knows what led to the invasion of Afghanistan and we were suddenly pinned down into two wars without logic, without purpose and without the support of the nation.

Most certainly the arms industry, what President Eisenhower warned about when he said the military-industrial complex could become our biggest enemy against peace, has profited from these and every other war the last few centuries.

So have the financial institutions and Wall Street.

But the endless wars seemed to sap the enthusiasm of the public and suck the money out of our economy that was desperately needed for some crucial services.  While we were spending billions of dollars every year fighting wars that could never be won back home our infrastructure like roads, bridges, sewer and water systems, power plants, even the schools where we sent our children, were falling apart by American standards.

When the budget is tight it seems greed always profits at the expense of the people.

Our twin wars brought out greed to a brazen degree never seen before as millions and even billions of dollars in military, foreign aid and intelligence spending disappeared somewhere between America, Iraq, Afghanistan and the pockets of the rich.

What was our reward?  A housing, banking, automobile and stock market crash in 2008 that nearly wiped out what little assets the middle class had to begin with.  So we were the victims of lousy government and the victims of unscrupulous hucksters in the housing, financial and banking industry.

What happens next?  Well us victims, thanks to the omnipotent wisdom of Washington, use our money to bail out the bankers, bail out the brokers, bail out the unethical auto people, bail out crooks and creeps of all manner of dress, status and income.

But all that is behind us now.  Except there is a problem with the very government leading us down the path of self-destruction.  Thank Divine Providence our leaders are so busy name calling and fighting that nothing happens in our Capitol since they are too busy stealing our capital to cause us more problems.

Then we find out the Veterans Administration, another of those agencies President Obama is responsible for until the buck is passed to him at which time he passes it back like a hot potato, well we find out the Obama Vet gang is killing our soldiers.

Seems the Veterans Administration has hospitals that created secret lists so they could improve their election year statistics.  Many of  those vets in need of life saving treatment are refused treatment by the hospital regardless of the seriousness of the condition and told to get on the primary physician care waiting list, thus there is no backlog of hospital cases.

In the Phoenix VA hospital alone it is alleged over 40 real people were refused emergency treatment by the hospital and moved to the secret list of those waiting to see VA primary care doctors.  They have now disappeared from the secret waiting list, allegedly, because the 40 have died waiting to be seen by doctors.

Seems a bunch of other VA hospitals might have done the same thing perhaps to make the Administration look good during the fall elections.  These actions, like a host of other acts swept under the rug by the Administration and the Administration press agency, the national news media, shed a disturbing light on the underbelly of the beast we call the US government.

You see, this is not just a policy dispute or a partisan blow up, this is criminal bordering on murder.  You can bet the spin doctors will be burning the midnight candle once again.

And speaking of doctors, stay tuned for one of my next articles, again trying to shed light on the lousy way we treat our military and vets, and my analysis of the health treatment of our veterans while in the service where they supposedly get the best medical help available yet it seems they are virtually lab rats rather than patients.

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Obama & Putin - Don't Let Politics & Egos Trigger Economic Chaos

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There is one thing our leaders seem to have forgotten in their war of words and brinkmanship, their clash of egos and their refusal to compromise and that is millions, maybe even billions of people will have to bear the brunt of the hardship for whatever they do.

Here in America we are still struggling to get over a terrorist attack on 9-11, two of the longest and most ill-conceived wars in our history and five years of Obama and his policy of intellectual constipation as a better alternative than truth.

Now that political partisanship as mastered by the president has effectively paralyzed our government and there is really very little more damage that can be done to the national reputation there is a danger of detachment by the two political leaders that spells danger to the millions they represent and the millions more they could harm.

We pretty much recognize that Putin is going to do whatever he thinks will contribute to the resurrection of a Russian Empire as that seems to be his destiny.  Whether such an Empire will embrace the brutal Communism of Lenin and Stalin remains to be seen.

Here in the colonies we seem to have forgotten a lot about the history of the world and I suppose when your own history is barely 500 years old, it would be hard to relate to people and places dating back 5,000 years or more.

Well consider this.  When the Soviet Union collapsed and we tried to impose our cherished system of Democracy on the people freed from the yoke of Communism did it ever occur to us we might be making a mistake?

Of course not.

Our Constitutional principles of individual freedom and equal opportunity should be enjoyed by everyone.  But can it be?  People fled to America to be free.  But what about the people who never left their homeland?  People like the Russians, Muslims, Asians and others.

I traveled to Russia during the conversion from Communism to chaos and it did not take me long to realize our freedoms and our opportunities were alien to a civilization that lived under the rule of Czars for over 1,000 years before the iron-fist control imposed by Communism.

None of the average Russians I reached out to had a clue what democracy meant and the thought of electing their leaders had never happened in thousands of years.  In fact, many of the people who grew up under Communism and were cared for from cradle to grave felt being cared for was far more important than how much wealth could be accumulated.

In other words, they didn't deny Americans to be who were are but seemed to be asking why can't you respect us for who we are.

We seem to forget it has taken us 500 years to master our own destiny.  The first half were spent under the same English, French or Spanish systems our ancestors fled and the last 238 years have been spent trying to figure out how to make democracy work.

Think about it, just 150 years ago we were ending the Civil War that threatened to destroy our fledgling experiment in democracy so we have really only been at it, the art of governing the people in peace, for 150 years.

When you think about the American wars, riots against wars, abuses by businesses, corruption by governments, lack of civil rights, etc., since the Civil War ended one wonders if we have even reached a state of maturity yet as far as our form of governing.

In truth, we don't really know what is best for ourselves, we are a work in progress, and we sure don't know what is best for the rest of the world.  If we do not recognize the history and respect the expectations of people in other countries then we should not impose our will and ways on them.

Of course every human being should enjoy individual freedom and have equal opportunity but that certainly does not happen overnight, not even over hundreds of years.  And that might not even be what the people want.

Obama and Putin are trying to impose on the Ukrainian and Crimean people what they see is best for those people.  I already wrote that Crimea was far more a part of Russia and the Ukraine more a part of Europe.

At the same time, Russia's most valuable asset, oil and gas, are dependent on a series of pipelines running across the Ukraine to the Black Sea and Europe.  They have a right to expect them to be protected just as we have protected our oil and gas interests in many countries in the Middle East.

No one's hands are clean and conscious is clear when it comes to wealth and power and those in power must be accommodated if anyone wants to share in their wealth.  Every time we try to change the balance of the world things get bad, economies are disrupted, people lose their jobs, savings and sanity and the rich, well they just keep getting richer.

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Kuwait and on and on are proof of the folly of wealth-driven foreign policy.  With the United States and Russia two of the most wealthy nations on Earth in terms of natural resources and economic wealth, maybe it is time to reconsider whether our foreign policy should be dictated by economic incentives or concerns for the needs of the people.

If so I expect a far different outcome than what we have today.                

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