Posted on 02/19/2007 1:42:30 PM PST by neverdem
"See how the Christians love each other!" This used to be the secular response to the fratricide between Catholics and Protestants, let alone the schisms within the Catholic Church and the vicious quarrels between different schools of Calvinism. (When the Baptists of Danbury, Conn., wrote to Thomas Jefferson, asking for his assurance against persecution and generating his famous "wall of separation" response, it was the Congregationalists of Connecticut of whose intolerance they were apprehensive.)
Within Islam, these lines of division are many times more acute. Ahmadi Muslims are considered impossibly heretical by most other followers of the Prophet, and Ismaili Muslims are looked upon askance in many quarters as well, but the rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites (which also conceals numerous poisonous rifts between different interpretations and leaderships in both camps) has become one of the most toxic phenomena in the world today. On Web sites that offer...
--snip--
I wrote last week that Congress passed the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act on the initiative of the Clinton administration. Though this is true to some extent—the sponsor of the bill in the House, Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., introduced the legislation (which passed by 360 votes to 38) by saying that he had worked with the White House on its terms and that the administration did not oppose the measure—it would have been as accurate to credit those, from Sens. Kerrey and Lott to Sens. Lieberman and McCain, who argued for the law as a means of making the Clinton administration live up to its public rhetoric. In signing the bill into law (after its unanimous passage by the Senate), President Bill Clinton spoke as if he was serious on the point. Those who wish to repudiate their past votes, therefore, should probably start by revisiting the view they took in 1998.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Let them murder each other for a while.
-bflr-
I'm not sure a rift between the Shiites and Sunnis is really such a "toxic phenomena", I actually see benefits in them battling each other because it keeps them occupied.
Its not terribly dangerous if you're not either a Shiite or a Sunni.
If Iraq could be isolated from outside influences, the Sunnis and Shiites could murder each other until one side wipes out the other. Then, and probably only then, will Iraq have a chance at a new future. That religion has been the focus of so much hatred and so much killing is, to my mind, evidence that the West is dealing with mentalities that were seriously arrested by the 8th century and may not be able to find a place in the 21st century.
Saves on ammunition.........................
"Its not terribly dangerous if you're not either a Shiite or a Sunni."
Unless you get caught in the crossfire - -like the non-Muslims in the Middle East and other "boundary" areas where Muslims of various types are vying for leadership of the local jihad....
It's true that more Muslims are being killed as they kill each other over sectarian and ethnic hatreds, but their cultural values make life toxic for non-Muslim in the vicinity too, like our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the central Asian former republics of the USSR.
There is the warning.
I hope we're not too late.
"Those who wish to repudiate their past votes, therefore, should probably start by revisiting the view they took in 1998."
Are we really going to finally be serious about this? I won't hold my breath. THIS IS CLINTON'S WAR; Bush was the guy who had the guts to do something about it after everyone had laughed out load about the joke called the UN and taken that oil-for-food money.
Heck, I hope we're too late and they waste all their resources killing each other.
Sure, we'll get collateral damage.
But collateral damage is a lot better than direct assault by these nutjobs.
Heck, out of the ruins, maybe a real society will emerge.
Mark for later reading.
"Those who wish to repudiate their past votes, therefore, should probably start by revisiting the view they took in 1998."
This is the real zinger in this story - - - getting all the "Bush Lied, Kids Died" brayers in Congress who were around at that time to have their noses rubbed in their public positions during the pre-Bush debates on Iraq, when there was no questions raised about the intelligence data on Saddam Hussein's covert efforts to support attacks on the US.
As would I.
What are you worried about? Islam is a peaceful religion. I'm sure they can work out their differences.
That's why I included it in the excerpt, and why I like Hitchens, despite his regretable beliefs.
Well, this idiotic masochism has to be dropped. There may have been a handful of ugly incidents, provoked by lumpen elements, after certain episodes of Muslim terrorism. But no true secularist or even Christian has been involved in anything like the torching of a mosque. (The last time that such a thing did happen on any scale—in Bosnia—the United States and Britain intervened militarily to put a stop to it. We also overthrew the Taliban, which was slaughtering the Hazara Shiite minority in Afghanistan.) But where are the denunciations from centers of Sunni and Shiite authority of the daily murder and torture of Islamic co-religionists? Of the regular desecration of holy sites and holy books? Of the paranoid insults thrown so carelessly and callously by one Muslim group at another? This mounting ghastliness is a bit more worthy of condemnation, surely, than a few Danish cartoons or a false rumor about a profaned copy of the Quran in Guantanamo. The civilized world—yes I do mean to say that—should find its own voice and state firmly to Muslim leaders and citizens that respect is something to be earned and not demanded with menace. A short way of phrasing this would be to say, "See how the Muslims respect each other!"
We will learn how to respond to their intimidation. More and more we will find our voice in this War of Ideas.
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