PDA

View Full Version : Destroying Baghdad



Peter1469
02-11-2014, 05:45 PM
Destroying Baghdad (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/04/25/050425fa_fact4?currentPage=1)

This is a fairly long article that begins with an obscure quote from bin Laden concerning US action in Desert Storm. Basically he compared Cheney and Gen. Powell to Hulagu, Genghis Khan's great grandson.

The article really is about the rise and fall of Baghdad as the cultural capital of Sunni-Arab Islam. Long story short, Baghdad was founded in 762AD and was named Madinat as-Salaam, “the city of peace,” by Jaffar al-Mansour, of the Abbassid line of caliphs. al-Mansour deliberately picked the location for its remoteness from the other Islamic centers of violence.

And Baghdad was cosmopolitan before being cosmopolitan was cool. Scholars gathered there, most of the citizens were literate- could read and write.

But the location of Baghdad was its weakness and eventual downfall. It sat on a wide open river plain that was crossed by land and water trade routes.

Then the Mongols came. The same Mongols that created an empire from the Volga River to the Pacific and reportedly killed 18 million people in their conquests. The article describes how completely the Mongols destroyed Baghdad. Then it discusses the history of the city until the present day.

And oh yes, Cheney and Gen. Powell were no Mongols....

The Sage of Main Street
02-11-2014, 08:04 PM
In history, you always get three interpretations, depending on what kind of PC the historian labors under. First, that these are good people (Genghis Khan was actually played by John Wayne!); second, that they were no better or worse than anyone else of their era; and third, that they were unspeakably evil.

Not in tune with my times, I choose Box #3. These subhuman predators made Hitler look like Mother Teresa. Their goal in conquest was to kill everybody and remove all buildings that got in their way. Addicted to horseback riding, they wanted to turn the whole world into an empty racetrack.

Using logic, how is it possible that any ancient tribe would choose to settle in Outer Mongolia? The only answer could be that they were subhuman criminal fugitives moving to a No Man's Land (literally) where they could hide out. The same primate species spread east into America and the Pacific Islands and south into Southeast Asia. An earlier western movement gave us the Huns, the Afghans, and the other -Stan terrorist failed states. This Neanderthal-like species cheated evolution, which, if we were again allowed to use logic, doesn't happen overnight. More than the homo sapiens species survives in what we are told to call the present human race. Big Brotherhood Is Watching You!

One other fact about these predatory beasts. In the lands that they conquered and settled down in for awhile, they converted to Islam. That gangster creed makes most of its converts in America among hardened thugs in prisons.

Max Rockatansky
02-11-2014, 08:59 PM
Baghdad's fall to the Mongols was due to a lot more than it's geographical position as noted in the article. Great reading, btw. Thanks Peter1469 !


From deep in Mongolia Hulagu set out in 1253, marching westward at the head of a large force that included siege-engine experts of several nationalities. His trebuchets could hurl huge rocks, and smaller stones covered in flaming naphtha, and his arbalesters could shoot bolts dipped in burning pitch a distance of twenty-five hundred paces. Hulagu’s brother Mongke Khan told him to subdue the people he encountered as he continued all the way to Egypt, being kind to those who submitted and killing or enslaving the rest. The Mongols took eighteen months crossing Asia as far as Afghanistan. There and in the mountains of Persia they stopped to conquer the Assassins, an extreme Shiite sect that terrorized neighboring rulers by sending young men on suicide missions to kill them. The young men were drugged with hashish (source of the word “assassin”) and were told that when they died they would immediately go to Paradise, where women and other pleasures awaited. In no-quarter sieges, Hulagu battered the Assassins out of their mountain fortresses with his heavy weapons, and then destroyed them root and branch. Later historians agreed that in this, at least, he did the world a favor.

By 1257, Hulagu had reached western Persia. From there he sent emissaries to the caliph telling him to raze the walls of Baghdad and fill in the moat and come in person to make obeisance to Hulagu. The caliph replied that with all of Islam ready to defend him, he did not fear. He advised Hulagu to go back where he came from. The Mongol army had recently received reinforcements from other Mongol hordes, and a contingent of Christian cavalry from Georgia. Perhaps the Mongols had eight hundred and fifty thousand soldiers; certainly they had more than a hundred thousand. In November of 1257, they marched on toward Baghdad, dividing as they approached so that their forces would surround the city. The caliph sent an army to stop those approaching from the west, and repulsed them in an early battle. In the next encounter, the Mongols broke some dikes and flooded the ground behind the caliph’s army, and slaughtered or drowned them all.

Peter1469
02-11-2014, 09:09 PM
Baghdad's fall to the Mongols was due to a lot more than it's geographical position as noted in the article. Great reading, btw. Thanks @Peter1469 (http://thepoliticalforums.com/member.php?u=10) !

Except Hulagu asked the Caliph why he didn't use all of his wealth to build an army to oppose the Mongols.... :wink: And that is the lesson that I took from the story.

Max Rockatansky
02-11-2014, 09:19 PM
What I got out of it was the idiots surrendered to a bunch of mass murderers without a fight.

Peter1469
02-11-2014, 09:21 PM
What I got out of it was the idiots surrendered to a bunch of mass murderers without a fight.

He tried. His first army was cut off and slaughtered.

Max Rockatansky
02-11-2014, 09:28 PM
He tried. His first army was cut off and slaughtered.

They still had fight in them even if it was a losing battle.


The upshot was that the caliph and his retinue came out of the city, the remainder of his army followed, they laid down their arms, and the Mongols killed almost everybody.

Never give up, never say die, never surrender. Hard to do when there is an out, but when facing certain death? Better to go down fighting.

Everyone remembers the Alamo. Why doesn't everyone remember Goliad? Because the 342 Texans at Goliad didn't fight to the death like the Alamo defenders. They surrendered and were executed afterwards.

Ivan88
02-16-2014, 12:01 PM
Fannin and his gang were killers of civilians at Goliad, from what I read some years ago.
In effect, they were terrorists?

Billy Graham and the rest of the NeoCons destroyed the nation of Iraq and have tormented and killed millions of Iraqis up to the present day.

Billy taught that Iraq is the Biblical Babylon bad guys, and must be destroyed and de-populated.

Billy ignores that Christ said it was the city where He was crucified by bad guys, not Iraq or Baghad. Revelation 11:8

And it was destroyed by Christ and His Roman Army in 70 A.D. as promised.

BB-35
02-21-2014, 10:12 PM
Killers of civilians at Goliad?

They call it the Goliad Massacre for a reason......And NOT because civilians were executed.

Max Rockatansky
02-21-2014, 10:30 PM
Killers of civilians at Goliad?

They call it the Goliad Massacre for a reason......And NOT because civilians were executed.

Don't worry about it, BB. Those who want to know the truth can look it up and those who are deluded or don't want to know will do whatever the voices in their heads tell them.

waltky
09-27-2016, 10:31 PM
Triple bombing by ISIS in Baghdad Shia sector market area kills 17...
http://www.politicalforum.com/images/smilies/icon_omg.gif
Civilians shopping for grocery drop dead after packed Baghdad markets attacked, two other bombings rip through the city
Tuesday 27th September, 2016 - On Tuesday, civilians in Baghdad’s predominant Shi'ite Muslim districts were targeted by three separate bombing attacks, one of which was later claimed by the Islamic State Militant Group (ISIS).


The first attack took place in a packed marketplace in the Baghdad al-Jadida area, the eastern region of the Iraqi capital, with dozens of civilians thronging the streets for groceries and other things - when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest, killing nine people instantly and leaving 30 others injured. Soon after, another suicide bombing attack struck the busy area in western Baghdad’s Baiyaa district, killing six and injuring 22 others. A third attack, a roadside bomb exploded in western Baghdad’s al-Radhwaniya area, close to cattle herders and merchants, killing two people.


http://cdn.bignewsnetwork.com/cus1474978976.jpg

Soon after the attack, the hardline Sunni Muslim group, ISIS celebrated the attack in Baghdad al-Jadida, claiming the attack in an online statement. Several shops, vehicles and buildings were damaged in the first two attacks and medical officials fear the number of casualties might rise. The triple attack on Tuesday comes in the same weeks as the attacks in Iskan and in Tikrit both leaving at least 12 people dead and many others injured. The militant group, that has established a stronghold in many cities in the region since 2014 has off late been losing ground as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias continue to come down hard on the militant group.

However, ISIS has been conducting such smaller, scattered attacks in the region, including some big bombings that have left hundreds of people dead so far in 2016. In July this year, the group claimed a truck bombing that led to over 324 deaths in Baghdad’s Karrada shopping area. This attack came to be known as the “deadliest single attack in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, in 2003.” The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has said in a statement that a total of 691 Iraqis were killed and 1,016 wounded during August in terrorist acts, violence and armed conflicts across the country.

http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/248043065/civilians-shopping-for-grocery-drop-dead-after-packed-baghdad-markets-attacked-two-other-bombings-rip-through-the-city