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Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

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  • #61
    Originally posted by rj1 View Post
    Since no one ever answered you, I'll give you the historical explanation I've always heard.

    Pretty much, western European society on an academic level declined when the Roman Empire died. When the Muslims took Jerusalem/Israel the first time, there was a call from the Pope for the Crusades to take back the Holy Land, which a lot of western European nobility answered, most out of a desire for personal fame and fortune. Part of the legacy of the Crusades were these nobles saw parts of society where Muslim society was more advanced and went back home and implemented these into their own fiefs.

    Why the Middle East (Arabian and Persian culture) declined/fell behind Europe, I'll leave that to xerxes or someone else. Once colonialism started though, the Middle East were at an inherent disadvantage, the same disadvantage as all European countries/cultures experienced that were not "Western European", the most obvious example being the Venetian Republic.

    The one advancement of human society I know most about that the Muslims did was mathematics. The numbers we all use, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, are called "Arabic numerals" because they were passed on to western Europeans in the 10th century during the Crusades. They did a lot with geometry and astronomy as well. There are a good number of stars that have Arab sounding names due to transliteration, the one I know is Betelgeuse.
    They're actually called Hindu-Arabic numerals and alot of the so called "Muslim Inventions" were actually invented in places like China and India. I don't understand why all the inventions of all the civilisations are rarely attributed to religion except for Islam.

    You don't call the Industrial Revolution as the "Christian Golden Era" do you? You don't call them Christian inventions? You rarely hear people calling the inventions of civilisations such as India or China as Hindu or Bhuddist/Taoist. That was always a pet peeve of mines.

    But anyway, carry on. Arabs have been attributed to many inventions for simply passing them on from South/East Asia to Western Europe

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    • #62
      Originally posted by Steezy View Post
      They're actually called Hindu-Arabic numerals and alot of the so called "Muslim Inventions" were actually invented in places like China and India. I don't understand why all the inventions of all the civilisations are rarely attributed to religion except for Islam.

      You don't call the Industrial Revolution as the "Christian Golden Era" do you? You don't call them Christian inventions? You rarely hear people calling the inventions of civilisations such as India or China as Hindu or Bhuddist/Taoist. That was always a pet peeve of mines.

      But anyway, carry on. Arabs have been attributed to many inventions for simply passing them on from South/East Asia to Western Europe
      You just did this - in the first line of your post!!

      There is nothing unusual about referring to civilizations at certain times by their religion, especially if they themselves did the same thing. It is often a useful way to refer to a single civilization that may be divided within itself into different kingdoms or other units. Keep in mind that the idea of the modern state based on one particular language/culture/ethnicity is very new.

      There was a lengthy period when the term 'Christendom' had significance. As Christianity itself became more fragmented & the idea of the nation-state arose this ceased to me a useful term. I'm not sure 'the West' or variants are any more accurate than 'islam', but we live with it.

      Describing Chinese civilization as 'Buddhist' would be silly because it never has been. Buddhism is one element of a complex religious & philosophical structure that involves Taoism & Confucianism. Chinese civilization is defined by culture, using a religious refence makes no sense.

      Hinduism is as much culture as religion. People will understand what you mean when you use it.

      Similarly the term 'Islamic world' has its uses. While I think people overuse it top describe the modern world, historically it can be useful shorthand.

      The key here is 'do people understand what I mean when...'. Somtimes the terms are useful, sometimes not.
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      • #63
        Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
        Did they get the lot from India, or just the concept of the zero?
        Arabic numerals - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

        The Arabic numerals are the ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). They are descended from Indian numerals and the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, by which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a whole number. The Indian numerals were adopted by the Persian mathematicians in India, and passed on to the Arabs further west. The numerals were modified in shape as they were passed along, and developed their European shapes by the time they reached North Africa. From there they were transmitted to Europe in the Middle Ages. The use of Arabic numerals spread around the world through European trade, books and colonialism. Today they are the most common symbolic representation of numbers in the world.

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        • #64
          You don't call the Industrial Revolution as the "Christian Golden Era" do you? You don't call them Christian inventions?
          Because the christian church was largely responsible for the dark ages when it came out and sat on western civilization, and all of this invention and discovery happened when it started to lose its power.

          As Christianity itself became more fragmented & the idea of the nation-state arose this ceased to me a useful term. I'm not sure 'the West' or variants are any more accurate than 'islam', but we live with it.
          yeah pretty much.
          Last edited by outcast; 20 Sep 09,, 12:51.

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          • #65
            Originally posted by osage18 View Post
            Because their Army was garbage, just like Iran.

            This war will only be remembered for it's brutality and futility. How can two armies slaughter each other for eight years and not gain one inch of ground?

            Only in the Middle East, man.
            Lets say Iran and Iraq had modern day (in the 1980's modern day) weapons, training, etc. and they weren't shit armies, they would've both still lost. World War I, US Marines, British Army, the French going up against the Germans and Austrians, who won? Nobody, it was a stalemate even though Germany was accused for the war. The similarities are that both fought in trenches, and no one is going to win in a Trench war.

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            • #66
              Originally posted by SenorPabloIII View Post
              Lets say Iran and Iraq had modern day (in the 1980's modern day) weapons, training, etc. and they weren't shit armies, they would've both still lost. World War I, US Marines, British Army, the French going up against the Germans and Austrians, who won? Nobody, it was a stalemate even though Germany was accused for the war. The similarities are that both fought in trenches, and no one is going to win in a Trench war.
              This of course is countered by the Cambrai and Hundred days offensive on the allied side, the Spring and Capparetto offensives on the German side, Brusilov's offensive for the Russians etc. The trench was not an unbeatable unmovable force of nature. Trench warfare is a condition which simply requires the proper mindset and then the proper tools to reduce it to the dust bin of history. The problem for all sides 14-late 17 was that the mindset remained wedded to the wrong mental construct. Once the shift away from cult of the offensive and power of the bayonet occurred, all sides found within their own means ways to break the trenches wide open.

              For the allies it was tanks and hurricane bombardments, for the Germans infiltration and hurricane bombardments, for the Russians hurricane bombardments and the mass of the bayonet.

              Lets also not forget, that the allies did win a trench war, and the US had won one earlier in the latter part of the ACW.

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              • #67
                Cambrai, Somme all good Tank Battles, but not against other Tanks at that stage.

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                • #68
                  Originally posted by Bigfella View Post
                  You just did this - in the first line of your post!!

                  There is nothing unusual about referring to civilizations at certain times by their religion, especially if they themselves did the same thing. It is often a useful way to refer to a single civilization that may be divided within itself into different kingdoms or other units. Keep in mind that the idea of the modern state based on one particular language/culture/ethnicity is very new.

                  There was a lengthy period when the term 'Christendom' had significance. As Christianity itself became more fragmented & the idea of the nation-state arose this ceased to me a useful term. I'm not sure 'the West' or variants are any more accurate than 'islam', but we live with it.

                  Describing Chinese civilization as 'Buddhist' would be silly because it never has been. Buddhism is one element of a complex religious & philosophical structure that involves Taoism & Confucianism. Chinese civilization is defined by culture, using a religious refence makes no sense.

                  Hinduism is as much culture as religion. People will understand what you mean when you use it.

                  Similarly the term 'Islamic world' has its uses. While I think people overuse it top describe the modern world, historically it can be useful shorthand.

                  The key here is 'do people understand what I mean when...'. Somtimes the terms are useful, sometimes not.
                  Even the term "Islamic" referring to civilization or a culture is a bit mixed one depending on the perception. I think for the West, it was the cultural and scientific exchange with the Arabs which are, rightly or wrongly termed as "Islamic" culture, but I guess it can be attributed to the fact that Islam is probably the one thing which actually made the Arabs a significant cultural entity. However, I think for the East, it was actually Persian culture which made the greatest impact, and ironically that too is clubbed as "Islamic", though Persians and Arabs had a totally different scale of cultural impact. The Persian culture was adopted by pretty much all the societies ranging from Turkey to the Central Asians including the Afghanis and was even adopted by the Mongols who then brought it to India. And the ironical part is that it was not the Persians themselves who spread out their culture, but their Turko-Mongol rulers who themselves embraced the Persian culture and religion.
                  Cow is the only animal that not only inhales oxygen, but also exhales it.
                  -Rekha Arya, Former Minister of Animal Husbandry

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                  • #69
                    Originally posted by Chaobam Armour View Post
                    Cambrai, Somme all good Tank Battles, but not against other Tanks at that stage.
                    The Germans actually didn't treat tanks seriously, CA, and only built twenty of them, perhaps because they weren't impressed by their premature use by the British at the Somme.

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                    • #70
                      You could be right, but after the war they must have seen the potential in them, hence the 'Blitz Krieg' in WWII.

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                      • #71
                        Well, after 1918, someone like Guderian was influenced more by British theorists like Fuller and Liddell Hart than the British themselves, and the Weimar Republic was able to do practical exercises with Russians like Tukhachevsky, getting around the Versailles Treaty banning them from having tanks.

                        At the time of the Iran-Iraq war, the philosophy of the Main Battle Tank ruled, but coming out of WW1 and going into WW2 the earlier strategy of nearly every nation facing fixed defences was to have one set of AFVs for achieving the breakthrough (infantry tanks) and another for the pursuit (cavalry tanks).

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                        • #72
                          What on Eart is a Cavalry Tank?

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                          • #73
                            Originally posted by Chaobam Armour View Post
                            What on Eart is a Cavalry Tank?
                            A cruiser tank

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                            • #74
                              Now if he had said Cruiser in the first I would have got it, never heard of the Cavalry Tank. Both the Infantry Tanks and the Cruiser concepts are now obsolete.

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                              • #75
                                They weren't obsolete concepts in WW2, though, Chobham. For manouevre warfare, cavalry style exploitation was what the Sherman, Pzkpfw III and T-34 were designed for. For positional warfare, breakthrough infantry tanks like the Matilda, Char B, M3 Grant, KV-1 and Pzkpfw IV were followed later on by the Tiger, Josef Stalin and Sherman Jumbo designs.

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