Condoleezza Rice said it in January 2007: “There’s still a tendency to see these things in Sunni-Shia terms. But the Middle East is going to have to overcome that.” Five years and counting, Dr. Rice. But why listen to the likes of those who offer “amateurish, ideologically motivated scholarship” and who warned all along that Sunni/Shi’ite hostility would doom the Western, secular republic you thought you would establish in Iraq? Clearly you learned analysts know so much better!
“Sunni leaders shun Arab talks in Iraq,” by Lara Jakes and Hamza Hendawi for The Associated Press, May 9 (thanks to Twostellas):
BAGHDAD — Sunni Muslim rulers largely shunned an Arab League summit hosted by Shiite-led Iraq on Thursday, illustrating how powerfully the sectarian split and the rivalry with Iran define Middle Eastern politics in the era of the Arab Spring.
The crisis in Syria is the epicenter of those divisions. The one-day summit closed with a joint call on Syrian President Bashar Assad to stop his bloody crackdown on an uprising seeking his ouster. But the final statement barely papered over the differences among the Arab nations over how to deal with the longest-running regional revolt.
“What disturbs the breeze of our Arab Spring and fills our hearts with sadness is the scenes of slaughter and torture committed by the Syrian regime against our brothers and sisters in Syria,” said Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, leader of Libya’s National Transitional Council….