Article

2006-12-23 Iraq

NYT: District by District, Shiites Make Baghdad Their Own

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Posted by .com 2006-12-23 05:12|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [14 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 a protracted regional war, precisely the outcome that Americans most fear.

Fear is a strong word here. Perhaps "would feel bad about" or "would be disappointed to see" would be more like it. We'd like the Iraqis to live in peace with their brothers and semi-coreligionists, and Lord knows we've given them every opportunity to demonstrate the grandeur of Arab civilization, and while peace would surely be in America's interest, it's not quite right to say Americans fear a regional war. The protracted regional war in the Balkins was grotesque and appalling but I don't recall feeling afraid. I was much more worried about Saddam putting an exotic bomb in a shipping container or anthrax in a diplomatic pouch than I am about whether Shiites and Sunnis achieve the harmony of Allah.

So where does the NYT get its declaration that Americans fear "precisely" this outcome? They made it up. The reporter is alarmed, so Americans must be alarmed. Eventually, after considerable bloodshed and American intervention, the Balkans sorted out the business of becoming independent states with more or less palatable political cultures. Maybe a real war in which armed groups confront each other instead of blowing up kids and grannies as ethnic proxies would lead to a reorganization of a dysfunctional nation system in the Arab world. I'm not advocaing violence, just saying that I'm less afraid of Arabs killing each other to establish a political order acceptable to more of them than I am of Arabs sublimating their problems onto the Western world and trying to kill us for publishing cartoons and not hating Jews as much as they do. All of which is just my way of saying I think the NYT is wrong.

Posted by Baba Tutu 2006-12-23 06:03|| 2006-12-23 06:03|| Front Page Top

#2 Awww, the poor Sunis, payback's a bitch isn't it?

Posted by Redneck Jim 2006-12-23 07:56|| 2006-12-23 07:56|| Front Page Top

#3 How much of the Shiite advance is due to Sunnis relocating to unmixed commuminities or going into exile en masse?

Posted by trailing wife 2006-12-23 08:17|| 2006-12-23 08:17|| Front Page Top

#4 Baba Tutu -- I think the NYT is referring to State Dept "fears" -- which of course speaks for all of us. Me, I kinda like the idea of ethnic cleansing, but how can you clean crap w/ vomit?

Posted by regular joe 2006-12-23 08:24|| 2006-12-23 08:24|| Front Page Top

#5 And the Kurds are pushing the Sunni out of Kirkuk too. Payback's a b*tch.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2006-12-23 08:25|| 2006-12-23 08:25|| Front Page Top

#6 Bah. my heart bleeds not a drop, no, not a corpuscle, for these people. Redneck Jim's remark is pertinent: there is nothing in the Koran forbidding revenge. There is not a verse counseling any kind consideration of their enemies. Jesus said to love your enemies. The Mosaic law required that you help the overburdened pack animal of your enemy, and return lost livestock to him. Anything like that in the Koran? In the hadiths?

This is the way they settle things between themselves in Islam, and we should be PC enough in this case to let them go to it.

The NYT represents a minority that claws its way to power by hook or by crook. To them, the whold world is a morality play in which they are the stars, the script writer, and the director. A power-hungry minority getting their just desserts from those they terrorized, suppressed, and oppressed is not in THEIR script! They rightly fear a play of that script here, when the suppressed majority in our country may just well decide to rise up and put these elitists where they belong.

Posted by Ptah">Ptah 2006-12-23 08:31|| http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org]">[http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org] 2006-12-23 08:31|| Front Page Top

#7 This goes to the "worst case scenario", which is basically, "Sunnis lose. Sunnis leave." Not what I would call a major dilemma for the West.

In fact, it would be a major boon to Jordan, in which the native bedouin Jordanians are far outnumbered by the Palestinians. The Iraqi Sunnis would help balance out Jordan and support the government.

Even Iraqi Sunnis heading to Saudi is not necessarily a bad thing. The Iraqis are "urbane and sophisticated" compared to the Saudi goat herders in the rural areas, and would do a lot to liberalize the politics of the country.

Posted by Anonymoose 2006-12-23 08:50|| 2006-12-23 08:50|| Front Page Top

#8 This goes to the "worst case scenario", which is basically, "Sunnis lose. Sunnis leave." Not what I would call a major dilemma for the West.

The cleansing of Silesia and the Sudetenland of Germans in 1945-7 wasn't a dilemma for the West either. They lost. They left. So why care now except to play petty games of power?

Posted by Ominemp Cholumble9642 2006-12-23 09:02|| 2006-12-23 09:02|| Front Page Top

#9 Ptah - good call. I hadn't thought of it that way. Another RB "that's it!" moment

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-12-23 09:15|| 2006-12-23 09:15|| Front Page Top

#10 To them, the whold world is a morality play in which they are the stars, the script writer, and the director.

Hear! Hear! Ptah!

Posted by Shipman 2006-12-23 09:31|| 2006-12-23 09:31|| Front Page Top

#11 And a quick question. If the sunnis are forced to leave Iraq by force of arms will they go to the merry kingdom and setup refugee camps and commence to seethe for the next 50 years or so? And who pays?

Posted by Shipman 2006-12-23 09:33|| 2006-12-23 09:33|| Front Page Top

#12 No group stays in "refugee" camps for 50 years unless they're forced to.

Posted by Parabellum 2006-12-23 09:39|| 2006-12-23 09:39|| Front Page Top

#13 If Baghdad goes Shiite, then Ayatollah puppets will have no Sunni opposition to the control of the Delta and border oil patch. Further, the huge Kurd oil pocket will be held in Shiite - If not Iranian - captivity.

I would expect that Shiites would leave most of the Sunni Triangle in tact, having secured control of Iraq's national wealth. Resource leverage would force Sunnis to sue for peace. Rich Shiites - and Shiites breed like flies - would join Iran in putting pressure on the Saud oil patch, most of which is in Shiite majority lands.

If President Bush resists - and I do not believe he will - Israeli pressure to destroy Shiite power, then Americans are being set up for a future ICBM threat to the US Homeland.

I do not believe reports that the President is going to "stay the course" and support the sham Shiite "democracy" in Iraq, in order to save face. The President didn't face an Iranian threat to US interests when he declared "pre-emption" to be US security doctrine, in his May 2002 speech at West Point. Fact: the US has had mutually beneficial relations with fundamentalist Sunni regimes in the Middle East; the US has never has good relations with a Shiite cleric based regime.

One ethnic group in Iraq must dominate. As the map attachment reveals, unless Shiite aggression is halted in Baghdad, the US will suffer a catastrophic foreign policy defeat. Salt in the wounds of said catastrophe, will be the fact that: it was preventable.

Either you want Islamofascists to vote, or you want them to die. The Middle East Democratic Initiative did not work because it is a projection of Western values onto a savage people. Let's try something else.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7155/257/1600/baghdad-updates-nov27.7.jpg

Posted by Sneaze Shaiting3550 2006-12-23 10:11|| 2006-12-23 10:11|| Front Page Top

#14 How Jimmy Carter sold out Iran to "saint" Khomeini:

http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/cIarter.htm

Posted by Sneaze Shaiting3550 2006-12-23 10:15|| 2006-12-23 10:15|| Front Page Top

#15 The protracted regional war in the Balkins was grotesque and appalling but I don't recall feeling afraid.

Only when Republicans are in charge are we supposed to be afraid.

Posted by Raj 2006-12-23 11:01|| 2006-12-23 11:01|| Front Page Top

#16 Excellent comments here, stealing most of what would have been my thunder (except for the de rigeur worries about Shi'ite domination, Iranian control, blah blah blah - which are not in touch with Iranian or Iraqi reality, in the least).

One telling point that no one's commented on, but which is critical and which I've emphasized to some college classes I've spoken to - with sometimes dramatic results - is the article's framing of the Shi'a offensive as a response, after years of Sunni attacks. This is of course exactly what's been going on. The US (when it was opening its mouth at all, which has been scandalously rare) and the media have never to my knowledge described things this way - that is, accurately in a way that explains what Iraqis are thinking and going through - until this oblique reference.

Literally years of barbarous terrorism against Shi'a, either committed, tolerate, or abetted by Sunnis in Iraq along with their foreign guests, was the story. It is the key failing of MNF-I and CENTCOM, Casey and Abizaid. They and much (though not all) of their commands somehow believed that ponderously working through a slow transition/training process, while securing a few landmark electoral events, was an adequate response to the relelentless terror war launched against Shi'a (and "the American enterprise in Iraq"). Astounding. And this isn't hindsight. Exactly these sentiments were expressed, sometimes directly to MNF-I staff officers, over the past two years. Response: usually some flustered and arrogant dismissal, with comments about not understanding counter-insurgency.

Like the other RB'ers here, I'm not that afraid of an intensified sectarian conflict (though I even doubt the chances of regionalization - beyond what is already going on - are that great). But I'm sick about what seems an utter lack of realism among key military officers (and of course their civilian overlords, who've been lapping up this obviously bad soup for years now) about what's been needed in Iraq.

What keen insight into Iraqi society, or "counter-insurgency" (I use sneer quotes because I think the whole concept and field of study are 90% b.s.) did it take to realize that a relentless war of barbarous terrorism against one side (which had already been long-suffering in the previous historical era) would, EVENTUALLY, lead to a reaction? The Shi'a, with Sistani's help, showed near-Herculean forebearance for the longest time. The oxygen that Tater's boys and kindred groups survive on - aside from the usual mix of local gangster dynamics, illicit businesses, and young male bravado - is precisely the need for protection from the Sunni rampage that MNF-I never stooped to shut down.

Let's see - travel restrictions, moving populations, harsh offensive actions - yep, exactly the sort of thing that's worked in, oh, every single war ever fought by humans on Earth. But WE had a better idea. You know, integrated actions, creating employment, sipping tea with sheikhs. MNF-I has placed the horse firmly behind the cart on this stuff - while thinking that they were placing them alongside one another (another arrangement that wouldn't work!).

Funny, the old nostrums seem to apply to Iraq as well - wars have consequences, and they only end with someone loses.

Posted by Verlaine 2006-12-23 12:12|| 2006-12-23 12:12|| Front Page Top

#17 This is not worst case. Worst case would be a night of the long knives, a Rwanda massacre, in which all the Sunnis to the smallest babe in arms would be murdered by those they'd helped Saddam Hussein oppress for two generations. I'm not crying over this, either.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-12-23 12:29|| 2006-12-23 12:29|| Front Page Top

#18 Verlaine,
That's a great post. And explains things accurately. Everytime Rice opens her stupid trap about all people wanting to live happily in a free democratic society makes me want to upchuck. It demonstates the abject stupidity and lack of grasp of the historical perspective of this area and its"peoples". I use peoples advisedly, because this group really doesn't function like any other group of logical humans. Everything in their life existence is geared to revenge, no matter that it means their own death. Our typical understanding simply does not fathom this. I also believe, however, that some in DC did comprehend this, but blew it aside in the very desperate bid to get Iraq oil production ratcheted up so that other players in the region could be properly dealt with. And, they were/are perfectly happy to spend the blood and treasure of fellow Americans to accomplish this.

Posted by SpecOp35 2006-12-23 13:18|| 2006-12-23 13:18|| Front Page Top

#19 a protracted regional war, precisely the outcome that Americans most fear.

There are many kinds of American.

Posted by gromgoru 2006-12-23 14:17|| 2006-12-23 14:17|| Front Page Top

#20 In part, the problem here is that people are working from a deep ignorance of history or an invented Marxist inspired history.

Ethnic cleansing was instrumental in creating large parts of the modern world. In particular, it was instrumental in creating nation states out of the Ottoman empire. In Greece and Bulgaria (and too a large extent Turkey itself) it happened in the 1910/20s when several million people were moved including a million 'Greeks' from Turkey. In other parts of the Ottoman empire like Kosovo (and parts of the AH empire) it had to wait till the 1990s. In Iraq it's happening in the 2000s.

Ethnic cleansing is not only inevitable, it's a good thing, because it's the only route to stable succesful (and democratic) nation states.

BTW, the League of Nations and the Liberal establishment at the time indulged in much hand-wringing at the Greece/Turkey ethnic cleansing in the 1920s.

Posted by phil_b 2006-12-23 15:22|| 2006-12-23 15:22|| Front Page Top

#21 A power-hungry minority getting their just desserts from those they terrorized, suppressed, and oppressed is not in THEIR script! They rightly fear a play of that script here, when the suppressed majority in our country may just well decide to rise up and put these elitists where they belong.

Which, in an odd way, was what I was trying to explain over in the Bashir thread about why world leaders have such a phobia about offing other figureheads and heads of state, like Mugabe or Bashir.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2006-12-23 16:31|| 2006-12-23 16:31|| Front Page Top

#22 While Clinton was mau-mauing about "ethnic cleansing" by Serbs, Bosnian and Kosovan Muslims were prepping for their own cleansing. A couple of days into the Clinton war against Serbs, a Serb neighbor - an electrical engineer - told me: "Clinton talks about ethnic cleansing; if the Muslims take over Kosovo, they will push out Serbs and destroy monasteries that are part of Serb culture." What happened? All the monasteries have been either destroyed, wrecked or turned over to Muslim use. NATO sat by and watched this while standing between the dwindling Serb population and the over-breeding Muslim hordes. Church construction is outlawed in both Kosovo and Bosnia (where several hundred US troops assist nation-building savagery).

If there was a shred of evidence that the Koranimals could be domocratized, then I might support that. Rather, they use democracies to put aggressive warlords into office. Let's kill terrorists first, then think of phase 2.

Posted by Sneaze Shaiting3550 2006-12-23 19:20|| 2006-12-23 19:20|| Front Page Top

#23 page by page, NY Slimes proves its irrelevance

Posted by Captain America 2006-12-23 20:17|| 2006-12-23 20:17|| Front Page Top

14:44 ltlejew
23:59 Zenster
23:57 trailing wife
23:57 .com
23:49 trailing wife
23:46 Shipman
23:44 Zenster
23:36 .com
23:31 Shipman
23:31 .com
23:26 .com
23:15 trailing wife
23:11 Shipman
23:09 trailing wife
23:02 trailing wife
22:54 Zenster
22:47 Barbara Skolaut
22:46 Anguper Hupomosing9418
22:40 FBI guy
22:38 Frank G
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22:36 Frank G
22:33 Jackal
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