The arrests "[seem] to confirm what many people have suspected - that the security forces are susceptible to infiltration by insurgents or are just not up to the job."
"Police arrested over Iraq bombing," from BBC News, October 29:
Iraq has arrested more than 60 security force members, including 11 senior officers over Sunday's twin suicide bombing in the capital Baghdad.
Those arrested include the commanders of 15 checkpoints near to where the attacks took place.
The attack in which more than 150 people were killed and 500 injured was the deadliest in Baghdad for two years.
Correspondents say the scale of the bombings raised new questions over the competence of Iraqi security forces.
The BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse in Baghdad says it is not clear whether those arrested are accused of negligence or collusion.
However, he added, it seems to confirm what many people have suspected - that the security forces are susceptible to infiltration by insurgents or are just not up to the job.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in a BBC interview that he wanted the UN to investigate external interference, accusing Syria of providing a safe haven for the bombers, which Damascus has denied.
A militant group linked to al-Qaeda, Islamic State of Iraq, said on Tuesday that it had carried out the attacks in a claim that could not be independently verified....
Can they arrest the Qur'an as well?
"Correspondents say the scale of the bombings raised new questions over the competence of Iraqi security forces."
New questions? I never had any questions about the competence of the Iraqi security forces. They are true believers, after all.
Can't the American government get it into its thick skull, that what is happening in Iraq was perfectly predictable, and was perfectly predicted. Iraq will seek its own level. The inability of the various forces to compromise, the view of the universe as one of Victor and Vanquished, the amazing readiness to believe all sorts of conspiracy theories, the inability of more than a handful to grasp the nature of citizenship, its duties and rights, in a modern nation-state, the view of government as a prize to be won and the sole source of loot to be distributed to a successful warlord's followers, the atmosphere of menace and threat, the readinesss, even eagernees, to resort to violence and aggression at a moment's notice -- all of these are features of peoples raised in societies or states suffused with Islam. Iraq is such a state.
Let's remind ourselves of what should always have been clear:
To wit:
1. The removal of Saddam Hussein, and the destruction of his regime (Hussein captured, Uday and Qusay killed, the game of 52 Pick-Up brought to a successful conclusion)guaranteed that, no matter what else happened, inevitably power had passed from the Sunni Arabs who had always ruled modern Iraq (most recently, behind the facade of Ba'athism "open to all" including not only some Shi'a, but the odd Kurd or even Christian too), to the Shi'a Arabs, who are about 65% of the population, more than three times that of the Sunni Arabs (about 19%).
2. The Shi'a have no intention of ever giving up that newly-acquired (thanks to the American military) power. They will not give up control of the oil wealth, and do not have to, since none of that wealth is in the Sunni areas of Iraq. They think: we suffered under the Sunnis, why should we now, when we hold all the cards, give into them.
3. The Sunnis, on the other hand, will never accept, will never acquiesce, in their diminished role, not to the inferior Shi'a, who are held in contempt by many Sunnis, in and outside Iraq.
How do the Sunnis hope to carry on, when the regions they control have no oil, and when the Sunni population of Baghdad has been so systematically reduced, by Shi'a attacks and pressure, over the past few years?
Oh, they hope to do so because they are more ferocious than the Shi'a, or have been so traditionally. They hope to attack and attack, until the Shi'a give them what they want, but what they really want -- a return to the power and wealth that comes with it (wealth in the Arab oil states comes to those who control of the government and the distribution of oil and other revenues, including Infidel foreign aid).
They hope to do so because to their west, they have allies all over the place in the Arab countries -- and even in other Muslim countries farther away. The hatred of the Shi'a is for many Iraqi Sunnis not quite as virulent as that expresed by Al-Zarqawi and other members of Al-Qaeda in the Land of the Two Rivers, who ranted about the Shi'a as "rafidite dogs." But in the world of Islam, an under-the-surface hostility can be whipped up, or manufactured, quite easily into something stronger. Consider the position of the Shi'a, who are a majority only in Iran, and in Iraq, in the greater world of Islam. In Pakistan the Sunnis of Sipah-e-Sahaba routinely attack Shi'a professionals. In Saudi Arabia they are subject to humiliation and marginalization -- and the Shi'a happen to be found mainly in the Eastern Province, al-Hasa, where all the major oilfields are located. They are effectively deprived of political rights in Bahrain, with a Sunni ruler presiding over a population that is 70% Shi'a and "restive"), and in Kuwait (where one-quarter of the population -- possibly the more advanced one-quarter -- is Shi'a). In Lebanon the Shi'a, the traditional underclass, have -- not only through Hezbollah -- been demanding more power, and while one would expect the Christians and Druse to be worried, worried too are the Sunni merchants who traditionally, among the Muslims of crazy-quilt Lebanon, held power. In Sunni Egypt they are regarded with both contempt and fear, and the government keeps whipping up hostility -- not hard to do -- to the Shi'a who supposedly are engaged in, among other things, proselytizing efforts. In Yemen, the defiance of the central government by northern, Shi'a tribesmen (Houthis, or Zaidis), has now erupted in open warfare. This war has taken on a Shi'a-Sunni cast(unlike the other war, the one being threatened in the southwest, around Aden, who regret the merger of the two Yemens and want to be free of the central government).
Is the calculation of the Sunnis in Iraq, that by causing disruption, by making normal life impossible, by receiving money and military aid from Sunni Arabs abroad, wrong? Are we sure? And if Iraq should continue to simmer away, with a bombing every few days, and constant turmmoil, would that be a bad thing for the Americans? Would it be a bad thing if Iran sent in "volunteers" and money, to the Shi'a Arabs? Would it be a bad thing if Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, sent "volunteers" or money or weapons, to support the Sunnis?
Of course this is painted in bright colors on a large canvas. Of course there are the enlightened Iraqis, the ones who, using the world "secular," betray their own awareness that there is something dangerous about those who put too much emphasis on religion, if that religiion is any form of Islam, and who sense, obscurely, that Islam has to be reined in. But just as there never was nor could be an Arab Wilberforce, there can never be an Arab Ataturk, for the Arab ethnic identity is too wrapped up in, connected to, part of, Islam, that no Arab leader could ever dare to systematically constrain Islam as much as Ataturk did, and make it stick. The closest we have to it is the regime of Ben Ali, following that of Bourguiba, in Tunisia. And there a police state -- a police state of which we can mostly approve -- keeps the "secular" forces, such as they are, on top.
Was the Iran-Iraq War, from our point of view, a Bad Thing, or a Good Thing?
I'll take "good thing" for $50 Hugh..
BTW - ditto this in Afghanistan - no way to know if "security" forces have been infiltrated. The idea that we can train completely corrupt and Islamized peoples to be professional and loyal to a secular government (or even to an insufficiently jihadist Islamic regime) is laughable. Sure - there are some among them who are or would be sympathetic to normal human civilized behavior, but these are few and far between and taquiyya means that this attitude can be easily faked. Just ask Anwar Sadat.
Hugh - as usual, you are spot on. In a nutshell, Arabs in general ("racist" generalization alert!!) and Muslim Arabs in particular are completely politicized, by which I mean that the ONLY consideration in deciding a course of action is - will it benefit me and can I get away with it???? Any consideration outside those bounds is just useless philosophy, per their world view.
Hugh - from your marvelous essay - "In Saudi Arabia they are subject to humiliation and marginalization -- "
In some cases I have read about, Shi'as in the Saudi Kingdom are even tried as apostates to Islam. (Which, when you think about it, is perfectly normal as both Shi'a and Sunni think of the other as heretics.)
The ranks of the "insurgents" in Iraq and elsewhere throughout the Middle East are near-endlessly replenishable from a pool of pious, willing Muslims. These people will reject any and all western, non-Islamic intrusions on their backwards desire for Islam to control all things and all people.
Better that they keep themselves occupied by in-fighting each other, as Reagan so cleverly accommodated during his two terms.
Iraq is becoming what it is as foretold by Hugh. Afghanistan will be no different in the end.
I am grateful that we seem to be seeing an increase in arrests of ISI members and arrests like this in Iraq.
Of course the security forces have been and will continue to be infused by Islamists. However, this is an encouraging news story in that at least some of the rotten eggs are being arrested. The BBC doesn't mention it, but presumably the arrests were made by the Iraqi security forces themselves.
Apparently, the Sunni's were more afraid of Saddam than they were of all the Iranians combined.It must have always been Allah's will that Saddam would swing by a Rope, or he would have taken his money and run.
As for getting rid of Saddam being good? It depends what one's definition of good is. Good sometimes takes a while to show itself. We should not expect to see "good" every time we look at a conflict already 1400 years old.
If our long term goal was to position ourselves to deal with Iran, then getting rid of a Hostile Iraq was a necessity.
... And so yet another thread is being pulled from the cloth we so carelessly wove.
Americans, Congress included, paid no attention when 9/11 POTUS, with terrorists as allies, told lies after lies to Americans:
- Iraq / 9/11: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0314/p02s01-woiq.html
- Terror / Saddam: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/07/bush.iraq/index.html
- WMDs: http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/WMDlies.html
Same POTUS/Commander-in-chief parrots Wahhabi propaganda:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/gwbush911islamispeace.htm
Without realizing that in a democratic system of government, vital decisions become ever more critical and dangerous, Americans re-elected their 9/11 POTUS and, unable to see/accept their failure to bringing their 9/11 POTUS to account, reality, they continue to deny reality and pay the price.