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Fitzgerald: The Pentagon scores a goal for the opposing team

May 2, 2008 3:55 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

Four years of Pentagon financial support made the fatwa [prohibiting Muslims from killing fellow Muslims] possible, White said.

The Pentagon paid for the meetings in various locations, spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He said White “believes he is very close to getting Sunni and (Shiite) religious leaders to sign on to this fatwa. It has the potential to be very positive.” Monday, Jerry Jones, a special assistant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, called the draft fatwa a “tour de force.”… — from this article

Prior to the invasion of Iraq, or perhaps early on in the invasion, according to Woodward’s book, President Bush is said to have replied, when someone in his presence mentioned “the Sunnis” and “the Shi’a” — “I thought they were all Muslims.” Something of the same level of ignorance was displayed by Paul Wolfowitz, who said that there was no “internal conflict” in Iraq between groups that need be worried about, once Saddam Hussein had been removed (see my article “Paul Wolfowitz: After Such Ignorance, What Forgiveness?”).

And then there was the inimitable Condoleezza Rice, who a year or two ago said of the Sunni-Shi’a clash that “they would just have to overcome that.” It was, as she saw it, just that simple.

So progress, of a sort, has been made. Over the past several years, our Pentagon experts have worked tirelessly, spared no expense, in Iraq to prevent the Sunnis from killing the Shi’a, and vice-versa. And now we learn that Islam of course has nothing to do with any of the killing that goes on by Muslims of Infidels, anywhere in the world. To make that perfectly clear to Infidels and Muslims alike, Rice has sent out a memorandum prohibiting use of the word “Jihad” and other words, such as “muhajideen,” that are formed from the same root, so that no one gets any ideas that the promptings of Islam are involved.
However, we also have just learned from the article linked above that all this time the Pentagon has realized that when Sunnis kill Shi’a, or Shi’a kill Sunnis, then the promptings of Islam, of Islamic rules, of “fatwa” issued by clerics, are of course absolutely indispensable. And that is why the American government has spent the past four years, apparently, trying to see if fatwas might be issued to ban Muslim-on-Muslim violence.

And this makes sense, if you think it makes sense for the American government to spend 2-3 trillion dollars, and 4,000 dead, and tens of thousands of seriously wounded, in order to bring “freedom” to “ordinary moms and dads” in the Middle East –“ordinary moms and dads” who want such “freedom” in our good old American sense so desperately, with such ardor. And they also want, of coursem toys and good things to eat — all paid for, apparently, by the Americans, to the tune so far of fifty billion dollars in “reconstruction” money, while the Iraqi government, despite the price of oil now double what it was a year or two ago, simply cannot afford to pony up a cent. Why should it, when the Infidels can be taken for every cent they’ve got?

Yes, it is quite an achievement to have Sunni lions and Shi’a lions lie down with each other. If achieved, just think: it could have consequences not only in Iraq, but in Pakistan, where for decades a Sunni terrorist group, Sipah-e-Sahaba, has been attacking Shi’a professionals. It could bring peace to the Yemen, where Sunnis and Shi’a tribes have been, and now are, fighting with each other. It could bring calm to the oil-bearing Eastern Province (al-Hasa) of Saudi Arabia, where that country’s disaffected and ill-treated Shi’a minority lives. It could ease the worries of the Sunni ruler of Bahrain, who lords it over a population that is 70-75% Shi’a. It could relieve the Sunni rulers of Kuwait, with a similarly disaffected Shi’a group that constitutes 25% of the population. It could do wonders in Lebanon, where Hizballah threatens not only Israel across the border, and not only the Christians and Druze within Lebanon, but also the Sunni merchant class.

What could be better?

What could be more idiotic an achievement, akin to scoring a goal for the opposite team?

The Americans who are currently in charge of policy lack the wit, lack the knowledge, lack the imagination, and certainly lack the necessary ruthlessness that they should possess, to think of ways — every day, every waking hour — to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islamic Jihad. Abba Eban — missing the point of Jihad — famously described the “Palestinian” Arabs as “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

In Iraq, the pre-existing fissures — sectarian and ethnic — provide the surest way, at present, to divide and demoralize, and thereby weaken, the Camp of Islamic Jihad. The ethnic split — Kurds resentful of their long mistreatment by Arabs — could, if it led to full Kurdish autonomy, inspire other non-Arab Muslims not only to throw off the Arab yoke, but also to think more deeply about Islam as a vehicle for Arab linguistic, cultural, economic, and political imperialism. Given that 80% of the world’s Muslims are not Arabs, this realization has powerful possible appeal in weakening the hold of Islam on non-Arabs, whose ethnic identity does not reinforce, but rather works against, Islam. And this may be particularly important, not only among the Kurds in Iraq, and Berbers in North Africa, but also with sub-Saharan blacks (see Darfur), and with the Iranians, who having experienced Islam under the Islamic Republic of Iran, may in large numbers find something, anything — Christianity, freethinking, Baha’iism, even a return to Zoroastrianism as the pre-Islamic Persian state religion — more acceptable than Islam, especially an Islam clearly, accurately painted as a vehicle for Arab imperialism.

But Gates, Rice, Bush and all their brilliant “strategic” thinkers are having none of it. They want to make sure that peace reigns over the world, the camp, of Islam and hence the camp of Jihad. They want to bring stability, even an unheard-of unity, and a shared prosperity, to Iraq. Why? Because such unity and such prosperity will inevitably lead to a better situation for Infidels worldwide. Why? Oh, because. Just because.

Stop asking. We’re in the Pentagon. We’re in the State Department. We know what we’re talking about. Just shut up. Know your place.

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