December 22, 2006

It’s Not A “Civil War” In Iraq, It’s The Wrap-Up Of The Same War We Initiated When We Toppled Saddam

In Iraq, the suicide bombers and IED bombs, are used by Sunnis; the death squads are Shia. This helps one to follow the news from Iraq. Via StrategyPage:

While 68 percent of the attacks are against American and other foreign troops, the most casualties are caused by attacks  (19 percent of them) on Iraqi security forces, and Iraqi civilians (18 percent). The attacks on Iraqis result in 96 percent of the deaths. The larger number of attacks on foreign troops is largely driven by the Sunni Arab belief that all their problems are due to the presence of foreign troops. But the Sunni Arabs have long since discovered that attacks on foreign troops, particularly Americans, is suicidal. So most of those attacks are remote control ones, using roadside bombs. This satisfies "honor," so to speak, but is expensive (all those bomb builders and placers have to get paid). It's much easier to launch suicide bomb attacks against Iraqi civilians, and this is what accounts for the largest number of dead. But it also results in a lot of retaliation attacks on Sunni Arab civilians by Shia Arab death squads.

As noted here previously:

• The Sunnis are 20% of the population of Iraq; under Saddam they'd been torturing, killing and oppressing everybody else.
• The initial terrorism in post-Saddam Iraq was done by Sunnis who wanted to destroy the free Iraq government and get back to a situation in which they could continue torturing, killing, and oppressing everybody else.
• The Shias got fed up and are now killing the hell out of the Sunnis.

While everybody is fretting that Sunni-on-Shia violence means we aren't winning in Iraq, the contrary point of view is perfectly reasonable. The Shia are wiping out the Sunni leaders of sectarian violence. Per StategyPage (same link as above), it appears to be working:

A major source of loss for the Sunni Arabs is migration to foreign countries. About 100,000 are fleeing each month, joining nearly two million already in exile. Many Kurds and Shia Arabs make no secret of their desire to drive all Sunni Arabs from Iraq. They are well on their way to achieving this goal, with over a third of the Sunni Arabs gone already. At the current rate of migration, all Sunni Arabs will be gone from Iraq within four years. 

The Sunni Arabs see no other viable alternative to their terror campaign. Negotiations with the Shia dominated government have not resulted in the degree of amnesty  desired. Several hundred thousand Sunni Arabs were directly responsible for the killing and terrorizing of Kurds and Shia Arabs during the decades of Saddams rule. These men are at the core of the Sunni Arab terror campaign, and demand amnesty. If they can't get amnesty, and can't, or won't, flee the country, they will fight to the death.

The point is, it's not a "civil war", it's the wrap-up of the same war we initiated when we toppled Saddam and threw out his Sunni government. The Sunnis wouldn't go along with the new Democratic government. They decided to keep fighting via suicide bombing of civilians and IEDs used against U.S. troops. And now they're getting clobbered. And Iraqis who back the Shia-led government are doing most of the clobbering, which is what the U.S. wants - i.e. to turn control of the country and responsibility for security over to Iraqi forces.

The mantra of the MSM - that Iraq is involved in a "civil war," both sides of which are against a Democratic government - is nonsense.

I'll conclude with the sentence StrategyPage leads off with:

For all the reports of violence in Iraq, most Iraqis feel safe.

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