In a galactically stupid, venal and venomous editorial this morning, the NY Times said this:
The problem is not Mr. Maliki’s narrow-mindedness or incompetence. He is the logical product of the system the United States created, one that deliberately empowered the long-persecuted Shiite majority and deliberately marginalized the long-dominant Sunni Arab minority.
If the NY Times can imagine a way that a minority in the United States comprising about 20-25% of the population could outvote the majority and call it just, proper and wise, I'd like to hear it.
But because the vote was granted in Iraq by the force of arms of the USA, and under a republican, no matter that their post victory tactical policies were remarkably stupid, the Times cannot HELP THEMSELVES but blame the FACT of a Shia majority in another nation on Bush.
We make not LIKE what Maliki is doing, but Maliki was chosen by others just as Chirac was chosen. That this fairly elected government in fact IS enabling Shia dominated sectarian violence may be our problem, but it is not our fault.
That nation must find IT'S way to nationhood or, like India and Pakistan do what must be done, but in the end, that MUST be up to them.
The Times then warps history ...
The real lesson of Vietnam for Iraq is clear enough. America lost that war because a succession of changes in South Vietnamese leadership, many of them inspired by Washington, never produced an effective government in Saigon. None of those changes, beginning with the American-sponsored coup that led to the murder of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963, changed the underlying reality of a South Vietnamese government and army that never won the loyalty and support of large sections of the Vietnamese population.
The short-term sequels of American withdrawal from Indochina were brutal, as the immediate sequels of America’s withdrawal from Iraq will surely be. But the American people rightly concluded that with no way to win a military victory, there could be no justification for allowing thousands more United States troops to die in Vietnam.
We'll never know that since Congress, with NO AMERICAN FIGHTING IN VIETNAM cut off all aid to South Vietnam, AFTER AMERICAN COMBAT FORCES WENT HOME.
ALL AID.
The NY Times well understands the REAL ISSUE.
A repeat of the scene at 22 Gia Long Street in April 1975, will mean a generation of Republican dominance AGAIN.
3 comments:
Rarely do I disagree with you, Epa, but I do think the fact that the Shia-dominated government of Iraq allows Shia-inspired sectarian violence is, INDEED, our fault.
We allowed them to write that stupid consitution. We allowed openly Islamist parties to run for elections, and we allowed al-Sadr to live when we should have killed him and all his people.
So, it's our fault.
We did not allow Germany and Japan to write their own constitutions unaided after WWII.
Right?
That is correct.
But neither had a majority, or a third minority (Kurds), repressed, oppressed, and victims of genocide, destruction of their way of life (Marsh arabs- shia), or had their religious leaders picked off across two generations.
Imagine if Germany was a majority jewish nation, or Poland. 1946 rolls around and the jews vote. Suddenly what happened in 1092-1192 when every crusade passed thru German towns gets remembered, let alone the genocide of their families. While it might be hard to imagine .. that's the situation in Iraq and in a culture where I couldn't convince them that WW2 was not an act of 'revenge' for Pearl Harbor. That's their prime understandable motivation for non religious violence.
We could never have a majority rule nation in which the Shia did not rule, and the Shia ruling MUST do this shit.
Therefore it has to be India and Pakistan in 1947. 3 nations, population exchanges. There is no such place as Iraq. It's British Foreign office convenience and dream from 1921.
Ok, at least you are making rational sense.
You actually know about it in more detail than I, and you understand its historical context better than I do also.
Here's something else I want to point out, though:
Many of the political parties in the Iraqi Parliament which are not openly Islamist are Communist parties.
The situation within the Iraqi government is completely untenable. I have no idea how we are going to work this shit through. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And yet, I don't want to see a genocide.
Any ideas?
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