GOOD GOLEM:

Golems of violence (Mark LeVine, 1/13/05, Asia Times)

While the above discussion explains why Bush has been re-elected despite an invasion gone terribly awry - legally, politically and economically - it shouldn't blind us to the fact that an equally disturbing rebranding of Islam in Iraq and across the Muslim world has enabled an equally disastrous decision by the highest levels of Iraq's Sunni establishment to use mass violence rather than mass civil protest to confront the US-sponsored occupation. As one of the country's most senior religious figures blithely explained to me during my travels through Arab Iraq last spring, the Sunnis would "kill the infidels" without question or remorse in order to defeat the occupation. The blood of the occupation would be answered by the blood of the insurgency, with little consideration of the implications of unleashing such a wave of violence across a country that had already lived through "35 years of death", as a young Shi'ite religious leader explained to me exasperatedly in describing his despair at the turn to violence by his Sunni colleagues and compatriots.

Of course, Iraqi Shi'ites have their own militants. Not just Muqtada al-Sadr, but numerous higher-level Shi'ite religious figures, including ayatollahs such as Ahmed al-Baghdadi (whose message to America when I interviewed him in Najaf was even more extreme than that of his Sunni counterparts in Baghdad) also are prepared for jihad to rid Iraq of the occupation. But such views are clearly outweighed by the more pragmatic and largely non-violent strategy of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and his disciples, young and old, who realize that their majority status, coupled with their belief that the United States cannot sustain an occupation for very long at the current costs in dollars and soldiers, has led them to bide their time and strip the US of power and authority one election, and one redrafted law, at a time.

But the Sunni establishment by and large does not have this view. Part of the reason is, of course, that their minority status leaves them naturally frightened of any new political system that might marginalize or even oppress them, as the country's Shi'ites have been oppressed for centuries. As important, according to several Iraqi students of the country's religious establishment, is that the past decade plus of sanctions succeeded in isolating the country's Sunni establishment from the outside world, and especially more modern and even progressive currents within Islam, whereas their Shi'ite counterparts spent these years either in exile (and thus more open to outside influences) or at least in close touch with the outside world via Iran.

Viewed broadly, then, it would seem that a combination of ignorance about the other side and arrogance about its own power and righteousness of its goals has led conservative, even extremist American and Sunni Iraqi leaders alike to create what we could refer to as twin golems of violence to protect and advance their opposing interests. But like the monster in the old Jewish folk tale, while originally created to protect and serve its community, the Sunni and US golems quickly became uncontrollable, instigating more violence than either side could have done on its own.

In Jewish folklore, the golem is either forced to flee the town by its inhabitants or is destroyed by its creator. Sadly, in real life, it seems that neither the Bush administration nor the Sunni leadership of Iraq is capable of or interested in taking on its golem. This reality - a combination of pride and moral cowardliness on both sides - has left elections as perhaps Iraq's only hope for an end to the violence. But this will only happen if the Iraqi people surprise the world and use the elections to run both golems - and with them, the insurgents and the occupation forces alike - out of town.

Given that his own analysis suggests the main barrier to a peaceful and stable Iraq is the Sunni leadership, why assume the summoning of a Shi'a reaction is not either intentional or at least desirable?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2005 8:36 AM