Fitzgerald: Our love affair with the Shi'a

HUGH: "It is simply not possible to imagine Shi'a being supported by Sunnis in putting down a Sunni group, or vice-versa. Nor can one imagine Kurdish soldiers willingly participating in an "Iraqi" army attempt to suppress the Kurds."

CORNELIUS: Though not probable, it certainly isn't impossible to imagine a regime led by the radical Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr, a man acceptable to many on both sides of the Shia/Sunni divide, emerging from the ashes of a defeated occupation to strike a blow for Allah and make common cause against the West.

And it isn't so hard to imagine Kurdish members of Ansar al Islam supporting such an entity against their own breathren. After all, Ansar fighters were killing their fellow Kurds with regularity in the run-up to the war, doing the bidding of both Saddam and Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Even the neophytes here at JW understand that in the Muslim world, Islam normally transcends ethnic loyalties.

You have many gifts Hugh, but when you use such phrases as "It is simply impossible to imagine..." you're revealing a surprisingly narrow field of vision.

Muslims are no less familiar with the old Maoist dictum, "My enemy's enemy is my friend" than anyone else. Secular Saddam was quite prepared to cosy up to the Islamists when it suited his purposes. And I understand that the high powered explosives being used for roadside bombs by the largely Sunni "insurgency" in Iraq are manufactured in Iran.

As for the notion that somehow Shias are less fanatical than Sunnis, just ask Ali Sina, or take a look at the photogallery on faithfreedom.org.

Every religious sect has its fanatics. The importance is just how rabid the underlying theology is, how large the denomination is and how high a percentage of the denomination is predisposed toward fanaticism. Looking at Iran since the Islamic revolution, it would appear that simply being Shia should definitely not be taken as prima facie evidence as to being moderate in one's belief.

Way i see it America has fulfilled its mission in that Saddam is gone. Iraq is not Germany, nor is it Japan. Having done their work in removing Saddam, the US should now leave.

What a mossie says:

He is aware that the world changed while he was behind bars but he shocked an Arab audience in Dubai recently by attacking Saddam and criticising anti-Americanism in the Middle East.

“I told them we must transcend the rhetoric of the crusades,” he said. “It is a ploy by authoritarian leaders and dictators to deflect attention from central issues like corruption by posing as champions of the Muslims so that their crimes against humanity are forgiven.

“I am opposed to the war in Iraq and I’ve told my American friends so. The best thing now would be a quick withdrawal and the arrival of a multinational force. That way you can still defuse this idea that America is against the Arabs, against the Muslims.”

http://www.malaysia-today.net/Blog-e/2005/10/voice-of-moderate-islam-wins-support.htm

Cornelius,

It is not so much about who can imagine more. Rather, it is about who, through logical analysis of accessible information, can offer most plausible prediction.

Hugh offers a picture quite consistent with what the rest of us know, or think we know. You are offering a picture which may be possible, but in your own admission is “not probable”. But if so why do you press it in?

Perhaps a phrase “it is simply impossible to imagine…” may not be strictly correct (since everything is almost per definition imaginable), but why do you chose to make that highly pliable expression the centre of your critique?

It, certainly, is true that things can turn out in a completely unexpected and contrary to all, however diverse, predictions way, but that hardly means that all forecasters “revealed a surprisingly narrow field of vision”. To claim so reveals a surprisingly ungenerous (and undisciplined) mode of criticism.

We have stepped into a large pile of shiite and somehow need to clean our shoe.

Thomas,

I press the issue because of the stakes involved. The policies Hugh advocates vis-a-vis Iraq would have far-reaching repercussions for global security.

I focus on the specificity of Hugh's wording because it is revealing. I consider holding someone accountable for what he/she writes to be neither ungenerous nor undisciplined.

As I pointed out, the Kurds of Ansar al Islam were killing fellow Kurds long before the Americans entered the country on behalf of Saddam. But Hugh states unambiguously that "No one can imagine" Kurds killing other Kurds for the Iraqi state. This "picture" might be "consistent with what the rest of [you] know," but it is not at all consistent with recent history.

As for the emergence of Muqtada Al Sadr as a potential leader of a radical regime acceptable to Sunni and Shia alike, I reiterate, though it's not probable, it is certainly possible. Other outcomes - such as the Civil War Hugh hopes to see - are equally unpalatable in terms of Western security. The PROBABLE result of such a war is either a radical Shia polity at the service of Iran or a fractured state where Sunni and Shia extremists rule over their respective fiefdoms...and using these fiefdoms as a base for global jihad.

The idea of abandoning Iraq to extremists in the hopes that the result will somehow ENHANCE the security of the West is in my 'umble opinion a terribly misguided premise. I refuse to apologize for my views.

Correction: As I pointed out, the Kurds of Ansar al Islam were killing fellow Kurds on behalf of Saddam long before the Americans entered the country.

If the coalitions does end up quitting Iraq then I hope they bring out the remaining Christians and Yazidis still residing there. I wouldn't want them to meet the same messy fate as the Algerian Harkis after the French pulled out in 62.
But of course that won't happen, the Iraqis who do flee will be of the Muslim secular sort and a generation from know they will doubtless sire radical children amongst us.

Two responses:

1) Ansar al-Islam is the only group, and a very tiny group, in Kurdistan that places loyalty to Islam above what, for now, is fervent loyalty to the idea of Kurdistan as an independent nation. To attack the predictions of others that have some relation to reality, by fantasizing about the power of such small groups as Ansar al-Islam, is curious. Kurdistan is full of people who are grateful for the American protection from 1991 on, and who know that if they are to have any hope of independence, it will not be out of the goodness of Arab hearts, or Turkish hearts, but rather through the diplomatic and military support (not direct, but equipment and training) from the United States. To think that Kurds would shift to supporting Ansar al-Islam is the fantasy.

2) Predictions as to the takeover of Iraq by Moqtada al-Sadr, whose appeal is only to the poor and least educated and most primitive of urban Shi'a, whose forces committed every sort of atrocity on other Shi'a in Najaf, who is hated -- perhaps despised even more than hated -- by the Shi'a notables, both the clergy and the civilians, from the secular Allawi, to those such as al-Hakim (in SCIRI) and al-Jaafari (in the Dawa Party) -- hardly earns one the right to lecture others on either their being too imaginative (i.e., guilty of "fantasy" as was charged in a previous post) or not imaginative enough, not enough to consider the possibility that things need not necessarily go according to what the predicter had predicted.

But the poster above continues to pretend I insisted on something I never insisted on. Did I ever claim that so-and-so would emerge as the strongman or ruler? Did I even predict as to whether the outcome would be a victory by Shi'a or by Sunni, or what in the end would happen if they fought to a standstill, or how long it would take to come to that standstill? No, I did none of those things. I simply have noted that the fissures between Sunni and Shi'a are not recent, not to be ignored but rather to be exploited, and the best way to exploit them is for the American troops to leave. They have done some training -- traiing of Kurds and Shi'a -- and that is enough. The longer they stay, the more training they will give the Kurds and the Shi'a, and in the latter case, there is no need -- the advantage in numbers is so large, over the Sunnis, and co-religionists in Iran so near (with Iranian agents already in Iraq), that it there is no need to worry about how the Shi'a will perform. All I predicted was a Sunni-Shi'a split. I did not say if it would be a hot war lasting a month, a year, ten years, or go on forever. I merely stated that the longer it went on, the more men (including basiji volunteers from Iran), the more war materiel, the more money, the more attention it used up, both from the Shi'a (Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shi'a in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Pakistan, and elsewhere) and from the Sunni (Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia) sides, the better for Infidels.

We do count, don't we -- we Infidels? We do have our own interests that do not necessarily correspond to those even of the nicest, sweetest, most seemingly sensible Iraqis, don't we? We do need to worry about American morale, military and civilian, about the willingness to gird for a very long and various and multitudinous counter-Jihad, with all sorts of instruments needing to be employed -- don't we?

There may be fantasy here. But it is not mine.

Cornelius,

I see that Hugh addressed in a compelling and exhaustive way the two major points you are raising and it would be redundant for me to try add anything on that matter.

Otherwise, and this is MY major point, you said; ”I consider holding someone accountable for what he/she writes to be neither ungenerous nor undisciplined.” Absolutely.
And you should be held accountable for it when you write that someone’s refusal to seriously consider an extremely improbable scenario reveals his “surprisingly narrow field of vision”. It wouldn’t have to necessarily be true even if you had succeeded in demonstrating that the scenario is indeed likely.
But, with all respect, you haven’t.

Hugh,

The predictions I made were my own. I never implied they were yours. I only wrote - accurately - that your goal was Civil War.

As far as Ansar, yes they are tiny. But they exist. And they could be augmented by Iran should that country wish to assert itself in the post-occupation vaccuum (a very likely prospect).

And for Muqtada, I agree his emergence as a leader is unlikely...but the chances are more than just infantesimal. He is the ONE Shiite leader palatable to the Sunnis. Dynamics in a Civil War develop rapidly. Al Sadr might very well be the compromise that pulls everybody back from the brink. Pointing this out is hardly "fantasy."

In the end, our disagreement is based upon what Iraq will become in the face of a precipitous Coalition withdrawal. My contention is that it will be a qualdron of jihadism,...Sunni, Shia or both, threatening the region and the world.

We'll be leaving behind a mess we'll most likely need to go back in to fix. Why not get it right (as as close as we can to right) now?

"We'll be leaving behind a mess we'll most likely need to go back in to fix."
-- from a posting above

Why do we need to "fix" anything"? Surely you are not a believer in the idiotic Tom-Friedman school of "you broke it -- you own it." We did not "break" Iraq. It was horrible under Saddam Hussein. It was only slightly less horrible during the period since the 1958 coup of Qassem, and then the counter-coups. It was not pleasant for Jews in 1948, when they began to be dispossessed and leave in large numbers Baghdad, a city that in 1920 had been 1/3 Jewish. It was not pleasant for the Assyrians or the Chaldeans (I have right on my desk the magazine "Nineveh" with some touching accounts), not ever, and certainly not during the massacres of the early 1930s. It was not pleasant when Gertrude Bell wrote of the impossible Iraqis (though she had a real soft spot for Faisal), who noted the resentment of Shi'a tribes at the imposition of Sunni rule. Iraq has been a violent and unpleasant place, as has much of the Muslim Middle East, for a long time;

We didn't break it. It was in complete disrepair. We did what we could. We did what we could under the illusion that hospitals, schools, power-grids, water-treatment plants, soccer balls and toys, would make things better, and might even win friends. We were under the illusion that large numbers, not tiny numbers, of Iraqis might turn out to be genuinely grateful to the Americans who rescued them from the murderous despot. We were under the illusion that there was a place called iraq, and that the reason the Shi'a voted was becuase they had suddenly become converted to democracy, and not merely supported voting because they knew they constituted 60% of the population and would gain power that way when they could not, at the moment, gain it through open warfare. We were under the illusion that the transfer of power from Sunni to Shi'a would mean nothing to Sunni Arab states, and that they would be delighted to learn all about democracy and suchlike from this Iraq-the-Model we were so expensively, and wastefully, creating, while the numbers of people willing to sign up to risk their lives in support of this fantasy drops, drops, drops, and the $300 billion spent, as any fool can see, would have been far better spent on energy programs, nuclear and solar and wind, and on conservation -- any fool, except the fools now insistent on clinging to the rubble in Iraq. For if you do not see that the money that the rich Arab and Muslim states take in is one of the three main components in furthering the Jihad (the other two are: the Muslim populations behind enemy lines, especially in timid and confused Western Europe, led by a ruling class unequal to the task, and the advances in technology that make the spreading of the message of Islam far more effective, through audiocassettes, videocassettes, satellite channels, the Internet), so that the lukewarm, unobservant pious Muslims of yore, largely indifferent to the outside world, and to those distant, nearly mythical Infidels, are more and more becoming -- to our great danger and dismay -- more and more fervent as the full malevolent message of Islam is broadcast hither and yon.

The fixation on the word "fix" is itself telling. Should we "fix" Saudi Arabia? Should we "fix" Egypt? Should we "fix" Algeria and the Muslim terrorism and state response there? What about "fixing" Yemen while we are at it, or Syria, where we would have to go in and push aside the Alawite military caste that runs the place, if "democracy" is to be On the March, and at the same time we would discover that that dictatorship of, by, and for the Alawites is, alas, the only mild protection the local Christians have against local "real" (i.e., non-Alaw2ite) Muslims?

Let's not "fix" anything. Let's not give more jizyah. Let's have as little as possible to do with the Muslim world. Let's end Muslim migration, and work to reverse it. Let's make our countries not Muslim-friendly, so that Da'wa and demands for changes in Infidel societies are not made easier, but rather Muslim-hostile, so that the conduct of Da'wa is monitored, and countered, in prisons, in schools, in immigrant communities. This can be done, but only if the enemy is properly identified -- even if that still must be done in a slightly oblique fashion.

But Iraq?

No one in his right political mind can possibly believe that in the next presidential election, the candidate who must forceully argues for leaving Iraq will not win. Of course such a candidate will win. Does the Bush Administration have any sense of the future? Does it realize that a great many people who have correctly identified the enemy, find the policy in Iraq silly and incoherent, and will not be blackmailed into silence because the prescription they offer seems, outwardly, to corresoond to those of the unseemly and unacceptable Left.

Politically tone-deaf, they fail to realize that in a year or two they will have to leave Iraq, if there is to be any chance of a candidate winning who, at the very least, sees the need to confront and check the Jihad.

Perhaps they think geopolitics can be conducted in a political vacuum. Perhaps they think that the officers and men returning from Iraq, once they leave the service, will keep parroting the party line, and not reveal how silly and self-defeating they think that party line about Iraq-the-Model really is.

That will be the Soldiers' Revenge: telling the awful truth, about the awful Iraqis. And about the crazed policy of squandering lives, money, and materiel, for a goal that they still are unable to explain coherently, for of course they cannot. There was a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, and it is this: any Muslim state, Iraq or any other, that acquires certain kinds of weaponry, becomes by virtue of being Muslim, by virtue of being inhabited by Muslims, the possible source of weaponry for terrorist groups. That can happen because the regime itself sympathizes with terrorism, or because individuals in that regime's armed forces do so, or because a regime that may overturn the one currently in place may do so, or because terrorist groups may simply be able to acquire those weapons through sympathizers in the govenrment or close to it. For all of these raesons, not one of which the Bush Administration dared to offer (because to say, bluntly, that no Muslim state can be allowed to acquire such weapons if they have not done so already, while perfectly true, is one more of those obvious remarks that cannot be stated).

So give the Admiinistration this: there is that Al-Qaeda-Iraq connection, one that unites all Muslims.

And take away from the Adminsitration this: that there is a connnection between head-counting (the elections) in Iraq, and a change in the Mulsim attitudes that Muslims in Iraq exhibit. The chador is back in imposed fashion all over southern Iraq and in much of Baghdad; Christians are killed both north and south and east. The dislike or hatred of the Americans runs unabated in the populace; some of the leaders want the Americans to stay, for those American soldiers are useful in fighting, and dying, for the non-existent Iraq, and the Shi'a and Kurds are glad to have them do so, while the Sunnis realize that the more training those Shi'a and Kurds receive from the Americnas, the more difficult it will be to subdue them (that is what to the Sunnis, as well as to the Shi'a and Kurds, but not to the Bush Administration, "training the Iraqi army and police" really means -- and those Kurds, Shi'a and Sunni have it right).

The Administration has, at most, little more than a year to pull out of Iraq, to stop sending more jizyah to the "
Palestinians," stop pressuring Cyprus, and Austria, and others in Europe to welcome, rather than oppose, the entry of Turkey into the E.U., a year to begin to support, and work cleverly toward, a Kurdish state whose leaders will have to promise not to make territorial demands on Turkey and to set up a Christian corridor, a proposed map of which can be seen at the Assyrian magazine "Nineveh," Vol. 27, No. 3, p. 28, and which the Americans should insist be created, and be protected by Kurdish and possibly international troops from Muslims who mean them harm.

The counter-Jihad requires more =than merely military means. The United States, and all Infidels concerned about Islam, would certainly benefit from an end of the squandering of so much in Iraq, based on a refusal to see Islam as the problem, and on the ways in which Iraq presents, almost uniquely, a place not to create an implausible or rather, impossible Model for Sunni Arab states (why would the transformation of Iraq from a Sunni despotism to a Shi'a-run country, be welcomed or emulated by any Sunni Arab people or country?). By leaving the Americans would allow the people in Iraq -not the "Iraqi" people, to sink or swim. Infidels may differ on which, for them, would be preferable. But removing the Americans from either side of the equation would allow natural fissures to deepen and widen -- the fissures that divide non-Arab from Arab Muslim (the Kurds's resentment of Arab supremacist ideology within Islam could find an echo in the bosoms of Berbers, and Iranians, and even Afghanis and Indonesians), and the Sunni-Shi'a split, which is some 1300 years old, now acted out within Iraq, is likely to have repercussions for Sunni-Shi'a relations in Saudi Arabia (al-Hasa, where the oil is), in Pakistan (where Shi'a are already subject to intermittent attack), in Yemen (where Sunnis and Shi'a are almost evenly divided), in Bahrain (where the latest anti-Israel fatwas by both Sunni and Shi'a clerics was a clear response to worries about such sectarian splits, being papered over with anti-Israel denunciations), and even in Lebanon, where one devoutly hopes at least some of Hezbollah's black-balaclavad fighters will go bravely off to defend fellow Shi'a in Iraq, and not return -- an outcome that Maronites, Greek Orthodox, Druse, and even Sunni Muslims in Lebanon would relish.

The policy now makes no sense, if Islam and Iraq are both rightly understood. It is based only on hype and hope, or rather hype, and the wan hope of a wrong hope.

Hugh,

I like to think we can all agree that we were forced to "fix" Afghanistan after that country was used as a base to attack us on 9-11. The "fix" entailed removing the then-existing government harboring our enemies and installing a new one.

By cutting and running (or any other way one might want to put it), there is a very real possibility - in fact, a probability, that Iraq will become a base for jihadis to train, plan and attack us much the way Afghanistan was. Unless we are prepared to look the other way to future terrorist attacks on America plotted and facilitated from Iraq, then we'll have to "fix" it the way we did Afghanistan. Why not just stay the course there, for as long as the course is viable...which it most certainly is at the present time.

Furthermore, you claim for yourself the expertise on all things Islamic that to your mind the Bush Administration entirely lacks. Might I submit that looking at the Muslim world through the prism of the Shia-Sunni divide...to the detriment of so many other considerations, is precisely the kind of myopia that typifies the Western befuddlement with the "other"...even among so-called experts.

"It is simply not possible to imagine Shi'a being supported by Sunnis in putting down a Sunni group, or vice-versa."

This statement is not worthy of you Hugh. As you wrote earlier, Shiites were fighting each other in Najaf very recently. Local Sunni tribes near Qaim recently battled Zarqawi's group. This is a culture as sublime as anything a Westerner has ever dealt with. A common enemy, money, even the promise of a bride...can transform loyalties overnight in the tribal culture of the Sunni heartland.

Neither one of us has any idea how things will play out if the US walks away from Iraq. I don't want to bet my country's security on a Machiavellian hope.

I agree that the Sunni-Shia divide is real and should be exploited when possible, for example in enlisting Sunni diplomatic support in isolating Iran over that country's pursuit of nuclear weapons. But using Iraq as a laboratory to exploit this schism at this moment in history is simply not logical...at least in my opinion.

There is too great a chance for either an unsatisfactory resolution to the Civil War (an Iran-Iraq condominium or conversely, an Al Qaeda triumph) or more likely, the implosion of Iraq into a failed state where jihadism finds an uncontested home in the various fiefdoms. I don't know why it's so hard for you to acknowledge this possibility.

Though our differences are real, this is not personal Hugh. I really do like you and I admire your intellect. I'm trying to give your position every consideration. I think your strongest point is the effect of the Iraq War on America and how it is becoming an impediment to the marshalling of our energies and resources for the larger struggle against Islam. I just happen to believe Iraq is THE battleground for that larger struggle.

I hope you can reciprocate; that your pride will allow you to at least examine the POSSIBILITY that abandoning Iraq to extremists could be a strategic mistake. This is NOT Vietnam; it's not a fight for national liberation. Hell, Zarqawi is not even Iraqi. This is jihad. Why walk away from it? Why not see it beaten back? The conditions are actually favorable. We've got 80% of the country with us.

I'm tired buddy. I'll let you have the last word.

Cornelius,

I tend to agree with Hugh here. The only way to "fix" Iraq and Afghanistan (and the rest of the Muslim world) is brutally. But, given the PC gas which has infected the White House and Congress, that kind of fixin' ain't gonna happen. In lieu of a rationally brutal fix, Hugh's proposal is sound, and slightly more realistic; though, given the aforementioned gas, not likely to happen either.

"This is jihad. Why walk away from it?"
-- from a posting above

1) The people the American soldiers are now fighting are almost entirely the Sunnis in Anbar, Salahaddin, and a third province whose name I forget. Yes, the los-de-abajo voice of the Shi'a underclass, brimming with resentment that of course, among Muslims, is given a Muslim caste and vocabulary, that of Moqtada al-Sadr, is really his claim against the Shi'a establishment that despises him, and he will do whatever he has to to press that claim for himself, his own importance. But what, other than for himself, does he represent? A kind of class warfare intra-Shi'a, with noises made against the Americans to show that he is the real fighter against the Infidels, and the occasional rhetorical support offered to the Sunnis because they fight the Americans.

But in the end this "Jihad" of which you speak is not primarily directed at the Americans, except insofar as their removal of Saddam Hussein, and attempt to build what the Amerians may dreamily describe as an "Iraqi" democracy but what remains for Sunnis, convinced as they are that they constitute at least 42% of the population (and nothing will convince them of the true figures), and believing further that their experience with the responsibilities of rule, or as officers in the army, the ease with which they are accepted in the standard Arab corridors of power, such as the Arab League while Shi'a will always be under some disability, some unease, some feeling that they are not quite "our sort" but in an even more damaging way than that in which an old member of a London club -- White's, Boodle's, or Kit-and-Caboodle's -- might belittle a new one.

After having held power, sometimes less and sometimes more ruthlessly, for the entire history of modern Iraq, the Sunnis are conducting "Jihad" not so much against the Americans as against all those who would wish to deny themn their rightful place in the Iraqi sun -- as rulers, not as those to be ruled or to passively share rule with despised non-Sunnis and even more despised non-Arabs. The Americans in Iraq claim, in turn, to be puzzled by the "motivation" of those they call the "bad guys" (a phrase expressive both of self-censorship, and of the same kind of infantilism that one finds, for example, when people refer like nursery-school children tattling on one other, to "the 'N' word").

Sunnis come in two types. The locals, who want to retain power, and those from outside, or those from inside Iraq influenced by those who have come from outside, and are there for the same goal -- to keep any American attempt to bring about "democracy" which, in turn, would lead to rule by the Shi'a and the Kurds, from succeeding. But that very opposition to the Shi'a (and the Kurds) is exactly what makes this an unusual "Jihad" and one best fought by the Americans by -- not fighting.

It is an opportunity to exploit. It is an opportunity at the same time to remove troops, to rebuild the morale of those troops, and to possibly cause those who are not, in droves, enlisting in the Reserves and National Guard not because they are cowards, but because they rightly sense that this is now a stupid campaign, continued only because of the maddening and obstanate failure to grasp the nature of Islam, to grasp the nature of the divisions within Islam that might be exploited, to analyze all the ways in which, at this point, the Americans have far more to gain, in every area, by leaving rather than staying -- in money that would best be used for alternative energy and conservation programs, in rebuilding military equipment, in making military service more attractive for the many occasions to come that will undoubtedly arise, here and there on the Jihadist map (the Sudan comes swimmingly to mind). When Condoleeza Rice dares to offer such ridiculous comparisons as insisting that "the occupation of Iraq" is just like the post-war "occupation of Germany and Japan" which were "also predicted not to work either," she simply invites, and gets, ridicule. For it only takes a minute to see the differences in the condition of completely levelled Berlin and Tokoyo, the total defeat and demoralization of a two countries and their ideologies, with Iraq, where the ideology of Islam simply cannot be "defeated" from without, but only from within, by Muslims themselves, individually and collectively, beginning to collect the dots of their own awful existences and polities with Islam itself. This connection is now being made in Iran, chiefly among the most morally and intellectually advanced, but the Iranians have a leg up on Arabs, for they can always present Islam as not a gift, but a poisoned chalice, brought by Arab invaders who were primitive Bedouin, and whose influence on Persian civilization can without much difficulty be deplored.

The Sunnis, or many of them, do not see the Shi'a as full-fledged Muslims. They see them as, and al-Zarqawi calls them repeatedly, as "Rafidite dogs" -- essentially Infidels as bad as, or even worse than, the Americans. Those Sunnis who, maddened by loss of power, and worried (as they should be) about how they will now be treated by the ruling Shi'a-Kurdish govenrment, and who never thought of the Shi'a as close to Infidels, may have those ideas brought to the surface by the foreigners now among them.

Or they may not. They may all settle down and live happily ever after.

But the point is: we don't help ourselves by remaining in Iraq. We don't help divide or demoralize Islam. And if we don't do that, it is pointless. Remaining in Iraq needlessly wastes lives, degrades equipment, diverts the attention of the public and the government, lowers military morale and enlistment rates in the Reserves and National Guard (and even in the regular army), squanders huge sums of money that might best be spent on energy projects to diminish Jihad-supporting revenues. Instead of dividing and demoralizing Islam, and Muslims, the Administration -- locked into a course that it seems unwilling even to consider changing, repeating ever more unconvincingly the same silly phrases, and now daring to add some dim recognition that the problem is connected to Islam but still not comprehending why that is exactly the reason to get out of Iraq, and to focus on such matters as the islamization of Western Europe through demographic conquest, constant Muslim demands and pressures, and the hideous stupidity and pusillanimity of those who are supposed to instruct and protect the citizens of the countries they rule.

Bush appears to be hopeless. Anyone, Republican or Democart, who is smarter, more articulate, willing to study, willing to make sense of things, willing to be more cunning and less sentimental about "one of the world's great religions" anywhere in the offing?

Speriamo. Let's hope.

Hugh:
The Sunni Arabs are dominant in Salahadin, Anbar, and Baghdad. They are also have a large presence in the Nineveh (around Mousel) and Babylon (around Hilah) provinces. And they are significant minority in the at-Ta'mim province (around Kirkuk) and different regions.

The Sunnis are far more educated, connected, centrally located, and supported by regional neighbors than either the Kurds who no one likes in the neighborhood or the Shiites who have only Iran. Most former Iraqi officers and generals, all Sunnis, have advanced degrees and many were educated abroad. I think that Sadam’s stupidity, micromanagement and failure of judgment was what was holding them back. The entire officer and general officers core is still intact, active, communicating, and well supported from abroad. Since both the Shiites and the Kurds do not have either Air forces or Heavy Armor, the Sunnis should hold their own very well if a full fledge civil war erupts. The Shiites if not for the American trained and armed brigades and their ad-hoc militias would be defenseless. I think a civil war that will bring the entire Middle East in a proxy no-hold-bar fight would use resources and manpower that would be directed against the West. The smart thing is for America to cut its losses and run before Iraq bankrupts America financially and weaken the American people’s morale.

President Talabani is a Kurd, with an American passport. His prime minister is a British-subject Shia pysician. And many in his government hold two passports, which is not allowed in Australia, one of the multinational forces, to take part in politics. They lived overseas, in exile or inevitably until the United States and Britain recruited them to get rid of Saddam Hussein. They have no legal or political reason to speak on behalf of Iraq, which would be even more of a mess than it is today once the mulinational force leaves. The thinking at home, in Britain and the United States, is that they do soon. The question of their departure is when, not if, despite what President Talabani said in London yesterday.

http://mggpillai.com/sections.php3?op=viewarticle&artid=12094

The sunni/shiite areas can be left to the `multinational task force` which will be later seen by the shiites as a `sunni occupation force` unless the iranians are included. The shiites have no intention of repeating their karbala etc losses thousand over years ago. This would be an opportunity for them to prove they are the true islam.

The shiites are not a meek people. There`s this lovely festival where they flagellate themselves with swords etc.
To this end the shiites and sunnis express with great vigour and gusto in Pakistan. Central Asian Republics are mainly shiite. It is wrong to imagine that in asserting control over islam the shiites will lose out to the sunnis.

If it can be portrayed effectively that this is the battle to determine `which is the true islam` then the sillover of the violence can be contained.
The west should remain neutral or at least create that impression and maintain it. They can concentrate on their homebred terrorists, and even push them into the ME conflagration.

Divide the mossies and let them sort out which the true islam is as this would be in line with Mo`s prophesy that out of 73 sects only the true one would survive.
And the West should make it abundantly clear that they (West) are in line with Mo`s teachings.

The absurd logic behind the `make them happy and they will leave us alone` is what will destroy the West and make Eurabia a reality.

`The suicide bombers who attacked three restaurants on Bali island were part of a 'new generation' of terrorists, and were likely recruited only recently, the officer in charge of the investigation said Friday.

http://www.interestalert.com/story/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/10060000aaa0106b.ap&Sys=petra&Type=News&Filter=World%20News&Fid=WORLDNEW

To those islamic converts with `OCD` symptoms in the US, the ME is only an `excuse` to go on a jihad to convert the `najis`(unclean) infidel.
Ibrahim Hooper (with CAIR) for e.g. is already half-way there.

Re the Shi'ah situation, the Islamic world, like any other civilization, has its own internal politics and shifting alliances (even within its own denominations and sects). Even among the Iranian clergy itself, the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini has welcomed the American invasion of Iraq and its implicit challenge to the Khomeini-ite mullah-ocracy. While Muhammad Riza Shah Pahalvi ruled Iran, the Shi'ites of southern Lebanon cooperated with Israel against the Palestinians; and probably no-one in Afghanistan is as bitter towards the Taliban than the Ithna-ashariyya Shi'ah Hazara or the Ismaili Shi'ah who live in parts of northern Afghanistan. For a parallel situation, how many Presbyterians in America raise (or have raised) money to support their co-religionist gunmen in Northern Ireland? Perhaps Washington's own "love affair" with the Shi'ah is itself a mere reflection of "the enemy of my enemy, etc."

The crude propaganda emanating from Washington and the media about Shi'ism is an odd reverse from the received unwisdom that dominated the 1980's and '90's. Back then, the aptly-named Foggy Bottom could declare that "Islamic fundamentalism" was a Shi'ite disease to which Sunni were supposedly immune. I saw this in a "think piece" from the State Department's Bureau of Intel and Research re Islam in China, in which it was soberly held that Islamic "fundamentalism" wasn't in the works for China (Sunni orientation, government control of the mosques)--and this at a time when both Eastern Turkistan and the Sinophone Hui were boiling with religiously-inspired dissidence!