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Originally Posted by WagnerX5
The number of extremist will increase REGARDLESS of a war.
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I don't believe that at all. Al-Sadr was not even considered an extremist prior to 2004. He originally welcomed the US invasion of Iraq. He only turned on us after we wore out our welcome.
Extremism is fueled by war and violence. Peace and prosperity causes extremism to disappear.
If you want evidence of this, you only have to look at American history between 1865-1875 in the Southern states during the "reconstruction" period. Things were very similar to what you currently have in Iraq. You had an "occupying" force (the union army), and you had a country that was destroyed and war-ravaged with most people having lost family members and friends to the war.
And during this period, you had constant violence, infighting between various groups (white abolitionists, former slave owners, former confederate soldiers, blacks), and you had the formation of extremists groups, the most popular being the Klu Klux Klan. And they were not some small fringe group back then. They had million of members, and were not so unlike Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. There were battles they had against union troops where the KKK assembled armies numbering in the thousands. You had riots in cities like New Orleans, Atlanta, and Memphis that resulted in thousands of deaths and cities being burned to the ground. I don't doubt that if IEDs were around then, they would most certainly have been used against union soldiers.
And if you study history, you will know that "reconstruction" was considered a total failure. In the end, the union army withdrew, and the southern states set up their Jim Crow laws and did things the way they wanted to. It wasn't until blacks decided to stick up for themselves that things changed.
You cannot force change on people. You must allow the change to happen on its own.