Politics: Keeps Your Shi'ites to Yourself
The United States has warned Iran that it will not tolerate Iran sending agents over to organize the Shia majority in Iraq. According to Agence France Presse, Ari Fleischer wouldn't directly address a New York Times report that US officials had confirmed infiltration by Irani agents into the Shi'ite population in Iraq, which may explain the remarkable organized activities by those groups.
What none of it explains is how any of this comes as a surprise to war-planners or war-mongers or "liberation-mongers," as they may wish to be called. For decades, the Shi'ite population in Iraq has been brutalized, degraded, terrorized and attacked under the Iraqi regime. Their lifetimes of horror can represent nothing but a coiled spring, bring crushed down further and further with each inhuman act, each incident of mass killing, each loved one disappeared forever.
Now, that spring is a huge mass of kinetic energy. Only once before was any of this energy ever released, when the Kurds and Shia rebelled with American encouragement during the first Gulf War before being abandoned to slaughter. And that mass of kinetic energy is exploding all over Iraq, whether our soldiers are there or not.
We claimed to bring liberation to the people of Iraq, but we're forbidding them from talking to their neighbors. We're barring Shia who have been oppressed for decades from dealing directly with other Shia for the first time in many of their lives.
I'm not claiming that Iran should have free rein to foment rebellion and lay the groundwork for a theologic state in Iraq. But it does appear in case after case that there is a limit to the type of liberation we are interested in bringing to the people of Iraq. Liberated people should be allowed to talk to whomever they want, even if we don't agree with the conversations.
The United States has warned Iran that it will not tolerate Iran sending agents over to organize the Shia majority in Iraq. According to Agence France Presse, Ari Fleischer wouldn't directly address a New York Times report that US officials had confirmed infiltration by Irani agents into the Shi'ite population in Iraq, which may explain the remarkable organized activities by those groups.
What none of it explains is how any of this comes as a surprise to war-planners or war-mongers or "liberation-mongers," as they may wish to be called. For decades, the Shi'ite population in Iraq has been brutalized, degraded, terrorized and attacked under the Iraqi regime. Their lifetimes of horror can represent nothing but a coiled spring, bring crushed down further and further with each inhuman act, each incident of mass killing, each loved one disappeared forever.
Now, that spring is a huge mass of kinetic energy. Only once before was any of this energy ever released, when the Kurds and Shia rebelled with American encouragement during the first Gulf War before being abandoned to slaughter. And that mass of kinetic energy is exploding all over Iraq, whether our soldiers are there or not.
We claimed to bring liberation to the people of Iraq, but we're forbidding them from talking to their neighbors. We're barring Shia who have been oppressed for decades from dealing directly with other Shia for the first time in many of their lives.
I'm not claiming that Iran should have free rein to foment rebellion and lay the groundwork for a theologic state in Iraq. But it does appear in case after case that there is a limit to the type of liberation we are interested in bringing to the people of Iraq. Liberated people should be allowed to talk to whomever they want, even if we don't agree with the conversations.
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