Friday, October 14, 2005

When the Iraqis stand up, Sunnis will die

From a sergeant major in the heavily Shi'ite Iraqi Army: "Your country had to have a civil war... It will be the same here. Everything in this world has its price. In Iraq the price for peace will be blood."

3 comments:

Blue said...

So true.

I think we have to wake up and realize the price for failure in Iraq is simple: Genocide on the Sunni's. Not OBL in charge of Baghdad (laughable), or whether or not some mythical wave of democratization will work (it won't, not now). But rather the deaths of several million people, most of whom we're as innocent as anyone could be in a fallen world.

Put in that perspective, i think most liberals would be less eager about wanting to pull out now (I know I am), and most manichean conservatives would find less qualms.

Neil Sinhababu said...

I don't know if this stuff makes me any less eager to pull out. We have a de facto alliance with the Shi'ites, and we're backing them up against the Sunnis. It's essential that the terms of our withdrawal be used strategically to make people play as nice as possible -- I think the way we withdraw may actually be the most powerful card left in our hand.

Blue said...

The Shi'ites are not committing genocide now. If we pulled out now, the worst possible circumstance is that they would. Not chaos, not dictatorship, but the elimination of several millions. I don't know if our presence there is only delaying that, but it's the one aspect that makes me not fall in Matt's "it couldn't be any worse without us there anyway".

Otherwise I'd just say leave now.