A comment of mine on a good diary this evening about our friend Riverbend in Baghdad grew to be longer than I expected, and I’d like to post it here again as a diary. I’m curious what you all think. We all think we know so much about all of this, and yet so much is opaque.
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Who would profit from an all-out war between the Sunnis and Shias in Iraq?
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The Persians? It seems inconceivable that the clerics who rule Iran would bomb Shia mosques. But do they have a Machiavellian wing?
The Saudis? Inconceivable.
The Jordanians? Nope.
The Syrians? Seems inconceivable, they’re so outnumbered.
The Turks? I can imagine some spook tale scenarios involving control of Kirkuk. But it seems inconceivable.
Al Qaeda? Obvious culprit. Chaos creates hellhole for Americans, etc. But I don’t think this makes sense.
The Americans? Improbable, but not inconceivable.
The Chinese and the Russians? Now we’re cooking with gas.
The Chinese and the Russians kick the Americans out of the Middle East, destabilize the Saudis, and strengthen their ties with Iran. That makes sense. I’ll bet that’s what she’s talking about.
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Of course, it may just be an out-of-control escalation of tit-for-tat atrocities between two groups (Sunnis and Shias) who have hated each other for centuries. The Sunnis in Iraq beat the hell out of the Shias for decades. Now the Shias, with their Interior Ministry death squads, have been retaliating. And so forth.
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My own take on things: I suspect the Ba’athist Party of Syria (Iraq and Syria were the only two countries dominated by that totalitarian party, which was built on the model of the Nazis and the Italian Fascists during the 1930s and 1940s), which is vindictive, evil, secular (and wouldn’t mind blowing up mosques), and is driven above all else by the desire to knock the Americans out of Iraq.