I thought by writing about Iraq last night I could aboid writing about it this morning, but unfortunately Iraq is the monster that won’t stop advancing. For a breakdown of all the horrible news go read Juan Cole’s round-up. It gets really tiring trying to explain the sectarian issues over and over and over. Pay especial attention to his treatment of the millenial nature of the Sadrists version of Shi’a Islam. And I have very bad news to report.
CBS/AP report that an angry crowd of Sunni Arab demonstrators in the northern city of Samarra, protesting Saddam’s execution, broke “broke the locks off the badly damaged Shiite Golden Dome mosque and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the executed former leader.”
Folks, this is very bad news. The Askariyah Shrine (it isn’t just a mosque) is associated with the Hidden Twelfth Imam, who is expected by Shiites to appear at the end of time to restore the world to justice. (For them, the Imam Mahdi is sort of like the second coming of Christ for Christians). The Muqtada al-Sadr movement is millenarian and believes he will reveal himself at any moment.
The centrality of the cult of the Twelfth Imam, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad who is said to have vanished in 873 AD, helps explain why the bombing of the Golden Dome on February 21 of 2006 set off a frenzy of Shiite, Sadrist attacks on Sunni Arabs.
The execution of Saddam was handled very badly. There were many errors, but allowing footage of the executioners yelling ‘Moqtada, Moqtada, Moqtada’ was perhaps the worst mistake. The Sunni response, breaking into the Samarra shrine and parading around a faux-coffin of Saddam the martyr-hero, is about the worst sacrilege imaginable. Imagine a bunch Protestants blowing the dome off of St. Peter’s cathedral. Then imagine them breaking into the church and parading around pictures of Hitler and Mussolini. There is not going to be any end in the cycle of sectarian violence.
Cole makes the understatement of the new year:
For Sunni Arabs to parade a symbolic coffin of Saddam through the ruins of the Askariya shrine won’t be exactly good for social peace in Iraq. Can’t that site be properly guarded or something?
The New York Times has a rather pathetic recap of how the administration’s plan went south during 2006. Hint: it all went south because of the Samarra bombing, which unleashed the Shi’ites. The article blames the bombing on al-Qaeda. I am not so sure. I’d like to have a talk with John McLaughlin, under oath. If we did do it, it’s probably best that it never comes out. It would have made a compelling kind of short-term sense, but we can see that the mid-term results have been catastrophic.
But the President is undaunted.
Visiting the Pentagon a few weeks ago for a classified briefing on Iraq with his generals, Mr. Bush made it clear that he was not interested in any ideas that would simply allow American forces to stabilize the violence. Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine commandant, later told marines about the president’s message.
“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”
Can we agree he needs to removed from office yet?
…handled incompetently, one thing the Bush administration has proven is that he and his administration will be sure to do so. They are truly
not just corrupt, but also one of the most incompetent bunch of buffoons ever allowed to mishandle this nation’s foreign affairs.
heh–no point in posting my take from Orange since you covered my points so well…..
great minds, right Booman?
yeah. Although I hadn’t picked up on the differing accounts of how they gained entry.
I would have missed it myself if I didn’t open up 3 or 4 different stories just to pull pieces out of each.
The Yahoo one was the 2nd that I saw, then I saw the NY Times one and when I saw that all 3 were “AP” articles, I really started scratching my head.
And it wasn’t because of dandruff or anything 😉
The manner of the “Execution gives Saddam a martyr’s crown.”–The Telegraph, UK
But we’re not innocent bystanders as this Op-ed concludes, We are in charge of Iraq, ‘the government is a facade’
I’m okay iwth that — and the sooner the better!
Yeah, but look at his replacement, we would need to impeach them both…W and Dick.
I’m dpwn with impeaching Cheney, too!
After reading Cole during lunch, my sunny disposition has about disappeared. This is grim in ways we can’t think of in this country.
I’d expect, after the debacle of the museum in Baghdad, that the administration would have sat down and listed the places that absolutely had to be guarded from attack, desecration, destruction, etc – and I don’t mean the oil-related facilities! Given that Bush and Cheney probably couldn’t list any such places in this country that they give a flying leap about, were they found to have oil or other exploitable resources in them, they obviously didn’t think about this, nor have any underling think in this way, either. Or at least not successfully.
The small snarkmonster whispering in my ear says it’s a wonder that blowing up the moon wasn’t part of the plan as a way to obliterate the crescent moon image from the view of the infidels.
We can’t trust them to know the difference between Sunnis and Shias. How are we going to trust them to know what needs to be protected unless it says O-I-L on it in letters thirty feet high?
“What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win,” he quoted the president as warning his commanders, “not how we’re going to leave.”
This is the kind of statement that I expect from my 8 year old. Winning and losing, a black and white view of the world. To him (and my 8 year old), there is no room for gray areas. The days of westerns with black hats/white hats are over, and have been for some time.
Your analogy seems rather ahistoric, Boo. I suppose it would be closer to imagine somebody blowing a hole in the most important Russian Orthodox cathedral and parading statues of Stalin or Lenin. Or defacing the Vietnam memorial in DC with images of Ho Chi Minh.
Aside from that, I think the execution and the manner of it managed to blow off the last small chance for some begining of reconciliation in Iraq. We and our puppets have managed to turn an anti-Islamist, secularist, dictator into an Islamist martyr. Just amazing. Can it really be incompetence at that level, or are we completely misreading the true intentions of the neocons?
I have to wonder what would have happened if the Iraqi “government” had insisted that the trial continue so that the Kurdish massacre could be examined, and at the real end tried to bring Iraqis together by acknowledging that all factions — Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and more– had been betrayed and violated by Saddam’s regime. That the death of Saddam could never begin to expiate his crimes, but would simply feed the cycle of violence. “The evil we have all endured now lies uncovered before Iraq and the world. Let the killing stop here and now as we turn together to rebuild a free and prosperous nation from the ashes we have inherited.”
Probably wouldn’t have made any difference, but it sure wouldn’t have been a recipe for further, final, damage the way the hasty execution will be.
I’ve been surprised at the relative lack of triumphalism in the US reaction to the killing of Saddam. Even the Chicago Tribune had a big front page head to the effect of “Was Justice Too Hasty?”. There seems to be a sense of revulsion and letdown here and around the world, including Iraq. Whatever this judicial murder was supposed to accomplish turned out to be, like all of Bush’s efforts, a net loss for peace, for justice, for Iraq, for America.
BooMan, can you be more explicit about your conspiracy theory? Even from an a priori perspective, I don’t see any potential short-term gain. Are you thinking that the shrine bombing might have united an otherwise fractious Shiite constituency, and caused them to increase their support for the nascent government? I just absolutely don’t see this, even if I try to place myself inside the dangerously limited thinking of the bad actors in the US administration.
There can be no doubt that the CIA has supported terrorist activities in the world, and will do so in the future. This is horrible and represensible. But terrorism is destabilizing and can only be a means to increasing violence, not decreasing it. If the Russian government supported the apartment bombings, it was in order to garner support for escalating violence in Chechnya. In Iraq, US interests in early 2006 were clearly aligned with decreasing violence, not increasing it.
Apologies if I am misreading — if so, please do clarify. Thanks.
Yes, from the article (emphasis added):
In early 2006 we were looking for ways to destroy the Sunni insurgency, that was our focus. And we were failing. I began considering if we might be able to defeat the insurgency by fostering sectarian war. I began to grow suspicious that the continuous car bombs in Shi’a markets might be an American operation. It seemed to make short-term strategic sense as a way to take the pressure off our troops. Then came Samarra. I had already been contemplating just such an act for all the compelling reasons facing us at the time.
The immediate result was that the Sunnis had to stop fighting us and start protecting themselves. Our casualty rates plummeted, while Iraqi bodies began piling up by the dozens.
But, now, only 10 months later we are back to pre-Samarra casualty rates. And we are now on the wrong side of a regional sectarian war.
OK, I see your point — the motivation would be, how can we get the Shia to help us out with these Sunni troublemakers and take some pressure off our troops?
Well, who knows. Even now it seems hard to imagine the level of bureaucratic psychosis that would be required for this to be an “official” dirty trick. But it’s not so hard to imagine some Ollie North type of US-sponsored actor, acting on some overly vague mandate, being involved.
One thing is certain, though. We’ll never know for sure.
I don’t find it hard to imagine at all. In fact, I don’t know what else they could have done that would have done more to crush the Sunni insurgency. If you give me a short term goal and ask me to solve it, that is what I would have (and did) come up with.
But I also would have advised them that the strategy was too risky if discovered and that it would backfire dramatically if it created a momentum that could not be stopped (another unacceptable risk).
War involves killing people and setting your enemies against each other. It would be foolish to think moral qualms alone would preclude such a strategy. Risk of detection would be a more likely deterrent.
So that would mean another “mission Accomplished.”
Do we really still think that GW’s gang, and the CIA and all and any other players really wants there to be a peaceful solution or outcome to all of this?
The Neo-con puppeteers have intended from the beginning for this to be the “Long War” without end. They want forever control of the oil resources in the Middle East and they do not care how they get it. We were supposed to build those 20-30 permanent military bases and have everyone cheering us on for our eternal occupation.
They have no conscience and they don’t care how they gain control of things. . .I just do think that they had hoped to position the UN to support us and demand that we stay there to keep things “under control.” My tin-foil hat gets bigger every day. . .
Yes, it’s another end-times delusion, complete with war and Jesus:
Apparently, this idea is embedded in both Shia and Sunni beliefs. Note the name of the “Mahdi Army” created by Muqtada al-Sadr. Meanwhile, in Iran: