Word: sunni
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...violence now, but remember how we got to sectarian violence: al Qaeda. That was their strategy to launch attacks against the Shi'as, to kill Shi'as until they could generate some kind of a response. And there's no question but what there's sectarian Shi'as-on-Sunni violence today. But just because it's tough doesn't mean it's not worth doing...
...beaten down during Saddam's years in power, especially the Shi'as, who are the majority -- roughly 60 percent of the population, who are clearly very heavily engaged now in the new government, but who were denied their role all those years Saddam was in power, governed by a Sunni minority, if you will -- and so beaten down, especially after the '91 episode where they rose up against the regime and then were slaughtered in large numbers that it has been hard, I think, for them in some cases to step forward and take on responsibility. But now they...
...interaction with reason. Yesterday, Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein published an excellent piece in The New York Times relating his troubling experience asking every government employee he could—FBI agents, congressmen, and State Department employees alike—if they understood the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. The results are dismaying, if predictable—few of the officials who should know the differences actually do. If we had our druthers, every Harvard graduate and civil servant would have understood immediately the importance of the bombing of the al-Askari shrine this past February...
...would be able to go to school without fear of bombs going off in the street, or kidnapping gangs lurking at every corner. They are a Shi'ite family, and would be among the majority in Balad. It didn't seem to matter that the town is ringed by Sunni districts. Just seven days ago, Balad had seemed so much safer than Baghdad...
...without ways to check their victory, even as we might exit Iraq. We have allies at the ready (the Kurds, the Saudis, the Turks, the Jordanians, etc.) who fear the jihadis as much as we do and potential allies (the Baathists and the Sunni tribal leaders) who want to rule their own piece of Iraq and also fear and despise the jihadis. As we gradually withdraw, we and others could provide Baathists the wherewithal to crush the terrorists. Without a large U.S. military presence, they probably would do a better...