Posted on 04/02/2006 9:35:58 PM PDT by RWR8189
The Shiites of Iraq who want representative government, and who look to the resolutely moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani for religious and political guidance, have endured Baathists, Sunni supremacists and holy warriors. They have seen the shrine of Samarra--the most purely Shiite shrine in the country, which has been for ages the responsibility of Sunnis to protect--horribly scarred. If the Shiite center collapses--if radicals like Muqtada al Sadr and some within the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) and the Dawa Party can depict themselves as more effective guardians of the faithful--then massive internecine violence, Kurdish secession and a Shiite dictatorship seem likely.
Contrary to what so many in the Bush administration hoped, Iraq's salvation still rides with the two forces that few had foreseen: the religious Shiites, who recognize Ayatollah Sistani as moral guide, not the secularists in whom U.S. officials placed such store; and the U.S. military, which remains the only effective counterinsurgency force capable of diminishing sectarian strife and staunching Sunni-led violence. Together, they can corner the militants in their midst; if either falters, Iraq will probably descend into hell.
Contrary to what the former U.S.-appointed Prime Minister Ayad Allawi recently asserted, Iraq isn't yet in a civil war if one uses that term to describe an irreversibly cataclysmic struggle. Just make a comparison to Algeria in the early 1990s, where failed, arid, brutal secularism and savage Islamic radicalism ripped the country apart, leaving entire neighborhoods and villages slaughtered. It shouldn't be too hard to see that things in Iraq--the only country in the Middle East whose violent past can rival Algeria's--could become much worse. After the bombing at Samarra, the U.S. military and the Iraqi army, which didn't fall apart, practically shut down the country to ensure raw emotions didn't flash into massive
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Shiites are 60% of the population of Iraq.
They allowed US Marines to pulversize Najaf up to the gates of the Shrine of Ali (the holiest shrine in Shia Islam) in order to crush Sadr's goons.
"The resolutely moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani" has called for all homosexuals to be killed in a most painful way. That doesn't affect me, but I thought the American left might want to ponder this.
Please post a list of all Ayatollah's who favor gay rights. . . . .
Right. There are none. The Old Testament isn't too hot on homosexuality either.
Despite his prehistoric social conventions, Sistani is a Godsend. Without him the Shiite would have already hit the fan.
Millions of lives might have been saved if FDR had pre-emptively deposed Hitler in 1936. A "messy" Germany would have been preferable to millions of deaths.
Most people here miss the point of the article. He's saying unless the US secures Baghdad, its all over. I tend to agree
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