Iraqi Civil War May Actually Be On The Horizon

Bad moon on the rise:

More than 130 people, including dozens who joined a demonstration against sectarian violence, were killed in bloodshed across Iraq despite calls for calm on Thursday from leaders fearful of civil war. A day after a suspected al Qaeda bomb destroyed a major Shi'ite shrine, Iraq canceled all leave for the police and army and minority Sunni political leaders pulled out of U.S.-backed talks on forming a national unity government, accusing the ruling Shi'ites of fomenting dozens of attacks on Sunni mosques.

Washington, which wants stability in Iraq to help it extract around 130,000 U.S. troops, has also called for restraint, reflecting international fears that the oil-exporting country of 27 million may be slipping closer to all-out sectarian war.

The main Sunni religious authority made an extraordinary public criticism of the Shi'ites' most revered clerical leader, accusing him of fuelling the violence by calling for protests.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, pressed ahead despite the Sunni boycott with a meeting that he had called to avert a descent toward a civil war. After discussions with Shi'ites, Kurds and leaders of a smaller Sunni group, he told a televised news conference that if all-out war came "no one will be safe."

Least of all the Sunnis.

It's a scary prospect, but for three years we, and the Iraqi majority, have been handling this as if it's largely a police matter -- yes, police with tanks and guns and helicopters, but still the paradigm of just rounding up the criminals holds.

It's actually a war and it always has been. The Sunnis are determined to continue the bloodletting, and they've been protected, thusfar, from the same viciousness being visited upon them by the US, which restrains the Kurds and especially the Shi'ites.

I would obviously like a peaceful Iraq. But I don't know if that's possible until the Sunnis are threatened, and perhaps more than threatened, with bloody retaliation.

I wonder if Bush's insticts regarding the Palestinians aren't applicable here. A people won't make peace until they want to make peace, and very often they won't want to make peace until they've suffered through the horror of war. Making peace with despised enemies seems, to the Sunnis, the worst of all possible choices... but then, they haven't experienced the actual worst choice yet.

posted by Ace at 12:53 PM

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