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Shi’ite-Sunni savage war in Iraq
I recommend to everyone a story in Friday’s New York Times, the lead story in fact, “Up to 130 Killed in Iraq, Drawing a Shiite Warning.” It’s worth reading carefully and taking it all in. Two separate suicide bombings, each killing over 60 people within 40 minutes. In Israel there was never a suicide bombing that killed more than 30 people, now Iraq has two bombings twice that size in one day. The first one was in Karbala, the Shi’ite holy city where the Shi’ites were having one of their pilgrimages. Now think about that. The Palestinians are willing to kill themselves in order to mass-kill Israelis. This is monstrous, but I understand it. They are driving out the harbi oppressor. The Al Qaeda people in Iraq are willing to kill themselves in order to mass-kill Iraqi collaborators of the Americans as well as Americans themselves when they can get one. This is monstrous, but I understand it. They are driving out the harbi oppressor and punishing his allies. But the idea that Al Qaeda people are willing to kill themselves in order to mass-kill ordinary Shi’ite Muslims on pilgrimage—what could be the reason for this? Suicide mass killings only started 12 years ago in Israel, with Arabs killing Israelis in buses and restaurants and markets. And now Muslims are doing this on a far greater scale to other Muslims. Why would an Al Qaeda member think that it’s so important to kill Shi’ites that he would blow himself up to do it? What is the precedent for this? Has bin Laden in any of his various fartwas said that one of his main gripes justifying terrorism, along with the presence of 5,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, was the EXISTENCE OF SHI’ITE MUSLIMS IN IRAQ? So why is Al Qaeda doing this now? Yes, we know there is a Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian war going on in Iraq. But that’s not the concern of the Al Qaeda killers, foreigners who have come to Iraq specifically to kill Americans along with Iraqis cooperating with them. We know that Al Qaeda doesn’t like Shi’ites. But they weren’t mass-killing them before. But what put ordinary Shi’ite pilgrims in Karbala at the top of Al Qaeda’s death list? That’s what I’d like to know. Also, this suicide mass murder of ordinary Shi’ite Iraqis disproves the theory of Robert Pape, discussed here, that suicide bombings by Muslims are solely the result of occupation of Muslim lands by non-Muslims. The second bombing, 40 minutes later, was where men were gathering to apply for jobs as policemen. Now, HOW MANY TIMES since April 2003 has the exact same thing occurred, men lining up to apply to be policemen, and getting blown up? At least twenty times, right? Haven’t the Iraqis learned by now that gathering in a big crowd outside a police station to apply for work instantly shortens your life expectancy by 40 years? Why haven’t the authorities and the people learned from this? Why don’t they have the applicants gather in a less crowded way, or in a more secure place? Talk about the Darwin Award! And by the way, has anyone seen any story giving the number of Iraqis wounded, maimed, and disfigured by the terrorist bombings since April ‘03? It must be in the thousands. How are they being cared for? Does Iraq have a fraction of the medical facilities and resources to take care of all these horrible injuries? Another topic in the Times story is the growing war between the Shi’ite dominated security forces and Sunnis. It seems the Shi’ites have been too aggressive, abusing Sunni prisoners, so now the U.S. people are reining in the Shi’ites. Now think about that. For years, what has been the end of the rainbow for us in Iraq? It was the hope that the army and security forces would be able to defend public order without U.S. assistance, right? And now that these security forces are finally up and running, they’re running amok.
So either they’re incompetent and lacking in aggression, or they’re competent and too aggressive. And we’re the ones responsible to make this work? We’re the ones who are supposed to fine-tune the Iraqi security forces so that they are competent and brave, while, in the middle of a civil war, staying exquisitely within the confines of what we regard as correct police behavior? Do people grasp the insanity of this? Email entry |