WE STILL DONT GET IT!

Looking back for a moment, our mistake going into Viet Nam was due to two major misconceptions:
1) We thought communism was monolithic, and a communist V. N. would be an extension of communist China, hence the erroneous "domino theory." It was based on ignorance of the 2,000 year history of V. N. resistance to Chinese efforts to dominate and control them. Viet Nam is closer to us today than they are to China.
2) We misjudged the Vietnamese people, their nationalism and determination, and the value
in guerrilla warfare of our technological superiority.

We made two similar mistakes going into Iraq:
1) As in V. N., we misjudged the Iraqi willingness and determination to fight occupation with unrelenting fury and ingenuity. They too are not as impressed with our technological superiority as we are.
2) We were totally misinformed on the significance and implications of the Shia/Sunni split. We were unprepared for the way that split could and would be exploited to incite civil war.

That second point requires further explanation, because we still don't get it. In a previous blog I referred to Vali Nasr, an Iranian (Shiite) American who speaks all of the Middle Eastern languages, and visits there regularly. He has written a dynamite book, The Shia Revival, which
explains better than anything I have found, the history and decisive significance not only for Iraq, but for the whole Middle East, of the resurgence of the Shiias. All quotations here will be from that source.

We are still arming and training an essentially Shia army and police in Iraq. (Very few Sunnis enlist, and they are harassed and hounded by both sides when they do.) This Shia army, when
battle-ready, will be under Shia (religious) leadership, not a "national unity government" which
doesn't (and won't) exist. These are the facts of life that we are presently in denial on.

To explain why a unified government is unlikely, if not impossible, let's take an analogy from our own post-civil war experience. When the feds forced Southern whites (SW) to allow former slaves to vote and hold public office, SWs rebelled, refusing to have blacks hold positions of authority over them. The whole rationale for slavery had been not only that blacks were grossly inferior, but were actually sub-human! Many Sunni Arabs regard Shia in a similar light. They will willingly die before they let Shia rule them.

In Lebanon popular lore has it that Shias have tales (like monkeys), breed like rabbits, and are loud and repulsive in expressing their religious zeal. They are regarded as low-class, tasteless, and vulgar in all their ways. In Saudi Arabia it is said that Shia spit in the food. (This is to discourage social interaction, like eating together.) Of all the Sunnis, the Arab Sunnis are the most discriminatory and contemptous toward the Shia,

This enmity goes back a ways: The great caliph Mansour (d. 762) had to suspend the contstruction of Baghdad twice in order to put down Shia revolts. The Abbasids (750-1258) who ruled the Arab world from Baghdad, imprisoned and killed Shia religious leaders as a regular activity to keep down or avoid revolts. Saddam followed that policy for the same reason, to control a Shia majority hostile to him.

In 1802 Wahhabi armies (Sunni) invaded Karbala (in Iraq) and desecrated the Shrine of Imam
Husayn (the grandson of Muhammed), an event that has left an indelible mark on Shia historical memory. In 1926 as the present S. Arabia was being formed by uniting various tribes under Wahhabism, large numbers of Shia were killed, the rest marginalized, stripped of any public roles, and tolerated but not accepted. They were the undesirable and heathen minority (to the
Wahhabis).

In modern times, "These nations (Iraq, Pakistan, S. Arabia, Lebanon) solidified Sunni rule and Shia marginality and, worse yet, gave impetus to sectarianism. The founding ideas of these nations, despite a certain surface rhetoric of inclusiveness, never truly encompassed the Shia. Nor did they make provisions to include the economically disadvantaged classes, who often were predominantly Shia (as in Iraq and Lebanon). Marginality continued to dog the Shia as they faced institutionalized discrimination, persecution, and vicious prejudice in their every day lives." See the similarity with blacks in the U. S.?

"The most important outcome of war in Iraq has been that one of the three most important Arab-majority countries officially became the first state in history in the Arab world to be ruled by a democratically empowered Shia majority. . . Although ruling regimes in Riyadh, Amman, and Kuwait stand opposed to Sunni extremism and support the U. S. led war on terror, their interests in Iraq are aligned with the insurgency and its goals of wrecking a new, Shia-led Iraqi state." (p. 242, V. Nasr, op. cit.) And that, sports fans, is why a workable unifed government is
unlikely. But we still haven't gotten it!

Respond if you must, to jgoodwin004@centurytel.net