At a reception in New York a few evenings ago, I asked two of the most respected Middle East experts what the U.S. and those Iraqis who attain government influence could do to end the huge combination of religious rallies and political riots now taking place in Iraq. They could destroy any hope for Iraqi democracy and amity. "Force," one expert replied.
The conversation made it clear he thought the U.S. would have to organize the anti-riot operation and take some part in it. The other expert said U.S. force would not be necessary, and Iraqis and time would end these demonstrations where the U.S. is denounced as harshly as Saddam Hussein.
The mass rallies grow out of a 7th century schism in the Muslim interpretation of their religion. The schism was based on the feud over the successor to the Prophet Muhammed. The passionate difference is between the Shiites, who are the 60% majority in Iraq, and the Sunnis, who have been able to gather together governmental, military and economic power for centuries.
Shiites feel persecuted and deprived of some of their mosques and religious ceremonies, including a yearly observation that ends in a pilgrimage on foot and self-flagellation. This year, the pilgrimage ended in fierce Shiite denunciations not only of Saddam, but also of the U.S., and demands for rule only by Islamic fundamentalist law.
Saddam Hussein was not ever religious. When it was useful, he insisted he was a pious Muslim, and death to those who denied or snickered at the idea. He used religion as a sword or a poison gas canister, to slaughter his enemies, Muslim or not, at home or in neighboring counties. When Saddam was destroyed by the U.S. and Britain, Shiites felt that their own centuries of domination of Iraq had at last arrived and that only their clerics should and could rule the country. They want a totally Islamist country where only Islamic law would be recognized and enforced with the full range of punishments, which include amputation and public execution.
The Shiites and all other Iraqis owe their freedom from Saddam and his brigades of torturers to American military power. But in the rallies and riots of Shiites across the country, the participants scream for the U.S. to get out of Iraq.
Shiites and Sunnis feel their story will fascinate and move the world. So do both sides in most religious or ethnic splits. Listen to Jewish Orthodox rabbis lecture on the Jewish Reform movement, or vice versa. But they don't slaughter each other. And they do not have the gall to demand that the world's major power, militarily and philosophically, get out of the country to leave them free to torture all who try to wander from their vision of a state.
Islamists in Iraq and other countries try to create an iron maiden of a state where only Islamic law exists and is enforced. But the leaders of the U.S. and Britain did not lead their countries into war, and their men and women fighting in Iraq did not face the danger of daily wounds or death, to allow their victory to be twisted into chains for the very people they rescued.
Nobody can tell now exactly what kind of government will rule Iraq as the years go by. But even an effort to turn the new Iraq into an image of the old Iraq will be a terrible betrayal of the soldiers, Marines, fighters in the air and fighters on the sea who fought so bravely and victoriously.
If ever there were a case of would-be leaders running to the head of the line and pretending it's a parade, these demonstrations in Karbala were it.