Clowns to the Left of Me
Silvestre Reyes may know the difference between Iraq and Iran, but he’s shaky on who is in Hezbollah and al Qaeda. And despite his Vietnam experience, he wants to send 20K-odd more non-Arabic speakers with guns and no local knowledge to speak of to finish sorting out our Iraq problems.
Rare is the military unit with an American soldier who can read a captured document or interrogate a prisoner, my own sources tell me.
It was that way in Vietnam, too, Reyes says, which “haunts us.â€
“If you substitute Arabization for Vietnamization, if you substitute . . . our guys going in and taking over a place then leaving it and the bad guys come back in. . . .â€
He trails off, despairing.
“I could draw many more analogies.â€
Yet Reyes says he favors sending more troops there.
“If it’s going to target the militias and eliminate them, I think that’s a worthwhile investment,†he said.
It’s hard to find anybody in Iraq who thinks the U.S. can do that.
Comment by Nell —
December 9, 2006 @ 11:38 pm
I hold my head.
It’s not too late to put in Rush Holt!
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
December 10, 2006 @ 8:51 am
Didn’t Bush just respond to the proposal that the U.S. talk to Syria and Iran that they were supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan? Admittedly, that was only one absurd and glaring error in a list of more plausible sins. Still, I thought it was troubling.
Comment by diana —
December 10, 2006 @ 3:27 pm
Not to excuse Reyes, but until quite recently I had not appreciated the profound split between the Sunni and the Shia.
Of course, I’m not in Congress, but I wonder if even some people who “should” have appreciated this (and I’m not talking about Reyes), didn’t also. I’m talking about people like Bernard Lewis, whose focus on the Ottoman Empire might have led him to gloss over the issue. It could also be that the Sunni/Shia split, while always important, didn’t become glaringly obvious until modern times due to demography and modern communications, which allowed previously isolated Shia groups to communicate & form a sense of transnational solidarity.
Comment by TCO —
December 10, 2006 @ 7:13 pm
You can’t read the intro to the most basic book on Islam without getting this basic concept. It’s like not knowing Martin Luther or the Pope. I can see not knowing this prior to 9-11. Post 9-11 if you are at all involved with policy and the wars we are fighting, to not know something this basic is just shocking. It’s a dereliction of duty. The stupid SHOULD be punished.
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
December 11, 2006 @ 7:34 am
The reason the U.S. didn’t overthrow Saddam during the first gulf war is that Sunni allies, like Saudi Arabia, insisted that the result would be an Iran-dominated Iraq. Why? Because Iran is a Shia theocracy and Iraq is majority Shia.
In fact, one of the greatest “threats” of the Iranian revolution of the late seventies was that the Sunni monarchies ruling the western Persian gulf could be subverted by Shia-Republican revolutionaries–destroying the U.S. long cultivated relationship with the oil-rich sheiks.
Simiarly, U.S. cooperation with Iraq occured after the successful Iranian counter-attacks in the course of Saddam’s war of agression. Why? Because the threat of the spread of Shia fundamentalism in the western Persian gulf.
Iran aided the “government” of Afganhistatn against the Taliban regime. (Russia and Inda did the same, while Al Quaeda and Pakistan supported the Taliban’s nearly complete defeat of the internationally recognized government of Afghanistan.) Why did Iran fight their fellow Islamists? Because Iran is Shia and the Taliban Sunni.
I am in no sense an “expert” on Islam or the middle east, but following key U.S.-relevant foreign policy issues for the last 30 years threw up the distinction between Shia and Sunni several times.
I admit, however, that I didn’t always understand much about about the theological differences between the two groups, or the patterns of regional dominance over the centuries.
But how could Bush have been ignorant of this matter on the eve of his invasion of Iraq?
Comment by BruceR —
December 11, 2006 @ 10:13 am
TCO, I think your comment was a non-useful, if unintentional rejoinder to Diana’s.
Knowing about the split, and its historic implications, is one thing. Being able to assess its impact ahead of time on a country like Iraq is another.
There were a lot of intelligent, well-informed scholars who looked at things like, for instance, the degree of prewar Sunni-Shia intermarriage in Iraq and concluded that, with a determined nation-building effort, the Iraqi Arabs could still reconcile, post-Saddam.
The universal is that under extreme stress, societies fracture on the handiest sectoral line available. There was, pre-1990s, very little visible cultural/societal difference between (Catholic) Croats and (Orthodox) Serbs, as well. Given that they otherwise shared the same language and culture, one could have forgiven a, say, Hindu observer for concluding that the European religious wars had returned. It would have only gotten them part way to the truth of the matter, however.
Comment by Nell —
December 11, 2006 @ 10:35 am
Bill W.: The reason the U.S. didn’t overthrow Saddam during the first gulf war is that Sunni allies, like Saudi Arabia, insisted that the result would be an Iran-dominated Iraq. Why? Because Iran is a Shia theocracy and Iraq is majority Shia.
So what changed Dick Cheney’s mind? The Chalabi option? And when the puppet president ruled out the install-Chalabi option (if you believe James Risen), why did he not see that there had to be an alternative plan to avoid Iranian dominance?
Comment by diana —
December 11, 2006 @ 7:30 pm
“You can’t read the intro to the most basic book on Islam without getting this basic concept.”
Yes, of course, but in 1958, who could have foretold that the Shia community of Lebanon might once rule the place? At the time, the French model of a Christian ruled Arab country seemed like a great idea. And like all great ideas, it lasts forever? That’s a joke, in case you didn’t get it. Theoretical or even very real differences can exist, and depending on circumstances, they get acted out, or glossed over.
That’s about it.
A lot of smart people knew that there were Shia and there were Sunni in Iraq. But they didn’t know what it meant. They never imagined that they would slaughter each other. Some people should remember their own history. I would suggest beginning with a book about bloody Kansas.
Comment by John —
December 12, 2006 @ 3:18 am
I keep hoping this is some sort of early April Fools joke. This is very scary to think he might head the House intel committee. He should resign from the intel committee ASAP. Their is no excuse for not having that knowledge, short of a stroke. Seriously, is anyone running the “Ship” anymore. I think America is doomed if this type of incompentcy continues in our government. Reminds me of GWB’s Geo Political knowledge from the 2000 Campaign. And we all know what the result of that was.