April 8, 2004
WE WIN:
When fear turns to anger (Nir Rosen, 4/08/04, Asia Times)
Though Shi'ite and Sunni leaders hastened to mouth professions of unity following the attacks in Karbala and Kadhimiya last month that killed scores of mostly Shi'ites, and their militias have joined forces to fight the Americans this week, they hate each other. Sunnis view Shi'ites the way that many white South Africans viewed blacks, and now feel disenfranchised, seeing the "barbaric heathens" threatening to rule their country. Many Sunnis cling to the fiction that they are in fact the majority. Even alJazeera broadcasts from Sunni Qatar claim that Shi'ites are only 53 percent of the population, rather than the 65 percent that they probably are.Other Sunnis fear a Shi'ite takeover of Iraq if anything resembling a democratic election takes place. Shi'ites do not fear the Sunnis, they dislike them. Shi'ites also hate the Kurds now, blaming them for attempting to divide the country with their calls for federalism and autonomy. Arab Shi'ites have already started supporting Turkmen in the north, who are often Shi'ite as well, in their bloody clashes with Kurds. A war of words has begun in the newspapers belonging to the religious parties. Sunni papers insist that Sunnis are a majority and warn of the "Persians" who are coming in by the millions to claim citizenship. For successive Sunni governments, the Shi'ite Arabs of Iraq have been Persians, and the leading Sunni clerics of Iraq continue that tradition. Shi'ite newspapers warn of the "crimes of the Wahhabis" and remember the Wahhabi assaults from Arabia that threatened Iraq's Shi'ites in the 19th century.
This war has been escalating with increasingly brazen critiques of the rival communities that were not seen even two months ago. The only things they agree on are the need for an Islamic government (though they disagree on what it will look like) and their insistence that the Jews and Americans are to blame for all their woes.
Sunni Arabs no longer threaten the Shi'ites, who know Iraq is theirs now. Only America stands in the way of the long suppressed Shi'ite hope to control Iraq and establish a theocracy.
Suppose we concede for the sake of argument that Islam is evil in and of itself and that Sunni and Shi'a Islam are both totailtarian, murderous, and bent on world domination. How then is a Civil War within Islam not in our best interest? Why stop Hitler and Stalin? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 8, 2004 4:33 PM
If Islam really is hopelessly evil and bent on world domination, then a nuke attack on the US is inevitable at some port. Which would very quickly lead to a nuclear exchange with the Islamic countries in a tit-for-tat cycle rapidly esclating upward to genocide of Muslim civilization, and consequently our own moral destruction as a nation.
The Three Conjectures is the worst case scenario. The whole point our being in the Middle East is not hunting for WMDs. We are really doing is trying to keep the Muslim world from committing suicide-by-cop (with the US playing the cop role). The only way to do this is to foster democracy in the Middle East and hope and pray that at some point Islam reforms itself from within.
The stakes couldn't be higher.
Posted by: Gideon at April 8, 2004 5:38 PMOops, here is the correct link for The Three Conjectures (open in another window and scroll down).
Gives me a friggin' nightmare.
Posted by: Gideon at April 8, 2004 5:42 PMBecause it gives too many hostages to fortune.
Given my views about Christianity, it might be supposed that I would have welcomed the civil war among the Christians in 1618, but in hindsight, it was a bad deal, even for the atheists.
Harry:
Why? They slogged it ouit until they got tired of killing each other and then took over the globe. Islam could do the same.
Posted by: oj at April 8, 2004 11:07 PMEuropeans took over the world WHILE killing each other. Islamicists can't spill over into other lands in the same way because the natives are much better armed now.
Posted by: brian at April 8, 2004 11:29 PM