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With all the civilian casualties in Iraq, it's easy to forget that:
StrategyPage provides the scorecard by which to tell the players apart:
...the 2003 invasion put the ruling class, largely composed of Sunni Arabs, out of power. The Kurds had been free for over a decade, protected by British and American air power. The Kurds still had corruption and a shortage of skills, but they had been able to develop a peacefulness and prosperity that was in sharp contrast to the rest of Iraq. However, down south, the Shia Arabs, who have been locked out of the government, not to mention the education system and many economic opportunities, for generations, suddenly had to come up with replacements for the unemployed Sunni Arab bureaucrats and military commanders. Suggestions that the Sunni Arab civil servants and military officers be kept on the job ignored the fact that this was how Sunni Arabs took over in the first place. The Sunni Arab domination of the government and economy IS the problem. Saddam's main job was to see that it stayed that way. So, since 2003, the Shia Arab replacements have been climbing a steep learning curve. It has not been pretty, especially when you throw in all the corruption.
Then there's the Sunni Arab intransigence. Most of the violence initially came from Sunni Arabs, led by military officers and secret police officials who wanted their jobs, and privileges, back. The Sunni Arabs have a high opinion of themselves, which is somewhat justified by their high educational and skill levels. The Sunni Arabs also realize that the majority of Iraqis (60 percent of the population is Shia and 20 percent Kurdish) hate them. That majority is also hungry for revenge. Saddam's thugs (the word fits very well here) got increasingly sadistic and brutal during Saddam's 30 year reign. But Saddam rarely wiped out families, so all those victims have kin keen on killing Sunni Arabs in return. Blood feuds are not unique to the Middle East, but the sheer size of the problem in Iraq is one for the record books. Until recently, the mass media ignored this motive, and called the Sunni Arab terrorists "insurgents." But now that Saddam's victims are well armed and organized, the terrorists have become the terrorized.
...recent opinion surveys indicate that more Sunni than Shia want the American troops to stay. Why? Because the Shia want to slaughter the Sunni Arabs and drive the survivors out of the country. Only the presence of U.S. troops prevents that. The Shia politicians don't want this mass murder to take place, even if most of the people who elected them do.
To summarize:
So here's an original, though brutal, analysis: this is a problem that's going to take care of itself. Far from being a prospect of unending civil war, it's a prospect of the Sunnis getting what they begged for - devastation at the hands of those they tortured for decades. The Sunnis had a chance to make themselves welcome in a new Iraq, but they blew that opportunity by initiating the terrorism against their countrymen.
Charles Krauthammer suggests a strategy that works well with this approach:
The U.S. should be giving Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a clear ultimatum: If he does not come up with a political solution in two months or cede power to a new coalition that will, the U.S. will abandon the Green Zone, retire to its bases, move much of its personnel to Kurdistan where we are welcome and safe, and let the civil war take its course.
However, I don't see the need to throw out al-Maliki. Put pressure on him to make a political solution happen, sure; but the Sunnis initiated the "civil war" and now it's theirs to lose. What I particularly like about Krauthammer's suggestion is the plan of moving our troops, not out of Iraq - but out of the way. They'll still be nearby, in Iraqi Kurdistan, to protect the free Iraqi government if need be.
Krauthammer suggests pressuring al-Maliki; but it's likely to be more effective to pressure the Sunnis. As noted in the above quote from StategyPage, "more Sunni than Shia want the American troops to stay. Why? Because the Shia want to slaughter the Sunni Arabs and drive the survivors out of the country. Only the presence of U.S. troops prevents that."
So the U.S. can pressure the Sunnis to unequivocally surrender to the Shia, renounce violence, and dedicate themselves to a free Iraq. If the Sunnis refuse, the U.S. can move personnel to Kurdistan and let the Sunnis lie in the bed they made for themselves.
It would be inopportune to pull our troops all the way out of Iraq yet, because that would invite Iran to conquer Iraq outright by military invasion.
Now, here's the wheel within the wheel. Last week I reported on a talk given by Nonie Darwish. As a former Muslim born in Gaza, she has great insights into the region. She stated that the Muslim world is split between Shia and Sunni, who hate each other - and that the Muslim world is using Iraq as a battleground between these two subsets of the religion of peace. She stated that Iran is mostly Shia, and is backing the Iraqi Shia.
So the danger is that a Shia-led free Iraq would unite with Iran against the West.
But it appears possible that a Democratic, capitalistic, free Iraq, would be incompatible with Iran.
In yesterday's LA Times, an op-ed piece appeared by Azar Nafisi, author of "Reading Lolita in Tehran." (For some reason I don't see a link to it on the LA Times web site at the moment.) Per Nafisi:
Western analysts might doubt the subversive influence of books, wondering how William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," Sadegh Hedayats "The Blind Owl," Iraj Pezeshkzad's "My Uncle Napoleon," Tracy Chevalier's "Girl With a Pearl Earring" or even Dan Brown's blockbuster, "The Da Vinci Code," could influence the turn of politics in Iran. But the Iranian regime is well aware of the danger of works of imagination and thought, restricting these books and others, in the words of its minister of culture and Islamic guidance, to prevent the publishers from "serving a poisoned dish to the young generation."
...The pioneers of modern Iranian literature at the start of the last century, such as Iraj Mirza -- writing in a most sexually explicit language -- exposed with biting satire the hypocrisy and corruption of the religious hierarchy. Sadegh Hedayat, the father of modern Iranian fiction, wrote against superstition and the dangers of Orthodox religion and created the most important masterpiece of modern Persian fiction in his profane novella, "The Blind Owl."
A capitalistic, free Iraq, would sell any books that people want to buy. There would likely be no rapprochement between Iraq and Iran. On the contrary, a free, capitalist Iraq, would be destabilizing to the mullahs of Iran.
#2On the contrary, a free, capitalist Iraq, would be destabilizing to the mullahs of Iran.
Well would that happy event not depend almost entirely on guys like Al-Sadr suddenly waking up DEAD one morning in the very near future?
As long as that low-rent theocrat is running things on the ground, there is every likelihood that Iraq will instead very much resemble its backward neighbour to the East. Complete with the usual persecutions of everyone not sufficiently 'devout'.
I agree, however, that the US should stand aside effective immediately and let the Sunnis deal with the results of their self-generated Stupidity. But the chances of anything 'progressive' happening in Iraq are unhappily somewhere between slim and none ,with slim about to leave town. But looking at the collection of leading 'characters' revealed by the 'invasion', it really is hard to summon up much sympathy for any of the protagonists, most especially the Sunnis. They really are way overdue for the 'wages of sin'. How can one group be so effortlessly clueless ?
Krauthammer must have read my post from August 2006.