Sistani Issues Impassioned Plea
48 Dead in Civil War Violence Thursday
Two bombings, in Baghdad and north of Beiji, killed 10 persons on Thursday. In addition, 38 corpses showed up on the streets of Baghdad, victims of faith-based reprisal killings.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued his strongest plea yet for Iraqis to cease their faith-based reprisal killings, which have been taking the lives of 100 persons a day.
Unfortunately, the time when Sistani could control these sectarian passions has passed. The word is that the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr is "boiling," in large part over the Israel assault on the Shiites of Lebanon. The Sadrists do not generally give their allegiance to Sistani. And, of course, the Sunni Arabs mostly despise him as a Shiite Iranian.
US military officials admitted that the average daily number of attacks in the Baghdad area is up 40%.
But, get this-- John Negroponte is accused by some of keeping CIA analysts from using the phrase "civil war" about Iraq. What does Sistani know that Negroponte does not?
Violence is surging in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, contested by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. This according to the International Crisis Group.
Radical Sunnis and extremist Shiites don't have much in common, really. Except they really, really dislike the US and Israel. Actually, they mostly disliked the US because of Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians, until the Americans invaded and occupied Iraq. Now there are two policy issues that they deeply dislike.
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/21/2006 12:24:00 AM
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2 Comments:
Prof. Cole,
I follow regularly several Iraqi blogs and I admit a partiality to their view of the benefits and drawbacksof the US invasion. But I have not found any of them initiating much less responding to the trail of responsiblity for the militia violence up within the religous community leadership both Sunni and Shia. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I feel an active avoidance of the issue. What is you take from your position?
The word is that the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr is "boiling," in large part over the Israel assault on the Shiites of Lebanon.
The neocons are taking the Death As A Way Of Life page straight out of the Israeli play book and purposely doing their best to create the "clash of civilizations" that will guarantee the perpetual state of war, this time world-wide that they require to maintain power in the United States of America.
The human race is not what it's cracked up to be. All of us who walk the planet on two legs have the capacity for limitless brutality.
The challenge is to recognize that and to overcome it.
The neocons choose to recognize that and to play upon it.
Both the US and Israel embrace our national myths as "exceptional" peoples. We in the US have accepted a picture of ourselves as the world's instructors in democracy (hah!). The Israelis are "god's chosen people". These are arguments from the "essence" of our respective nations.
In the political sphere we humans struggle with actions. We are what we do, not what we believe ourselves to be in our pipe dreams. Right now both our nations are as far away as it is possible to get from our respective imagined selves.
If we are truly to act exceptionally we will acknowledge our war crimes before we are defeated, we will arrest our wrong actions, we will atone with the earth's peoples, we will try to right as best we can the wrongs we have done.
We will humbly accept responsibility for our wrong actions and slowly, deliberately, putting one foot in front of the other, walk back from the edge of the abyss, and rejoin the larger, better-acting portion of humanity.
Just as we should have done after 9/11.
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