U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites (washingtonpost.com): As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country. The burst of Shiite power -- as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala yesterday -- has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein. As the administration plotted to overthrow Hussein's government, U.S. officials said this week, it failed to fully appreciate the force of Shiite aspirations and is now concerned that those sentiments could coalesce into a fundamentalist government. Some administration officials were dazzled by Ahmed Chalabi, the prominent Iraqi exile who is a Shiite and an advocate of a secular democracy. Others were more focused on the overriding goal of defeating Hussein and paid little attention to the dynamics of religion and politics in the region.
And in other news, dog bites man.
I don't even vaguely understand how they could have missed that, especially when everyone else in the world was saying, "You do realize that this will happen, right?" I mean, simple geography would have led any reasonable person to that assumption; Iraq is essentially surrounded by fundamentalist Muslim states.
Frankly, any reasonable person -- assuming that they were plotting Hussein's overthrow in the first place -- would be fools not to try to align themselves with major religious figures if possible. It might not have worked, but at least the attempt should have been made. To have thought that Iraq would remain secular after having had its religions so severely suppressed, when all about it are fundamentalist Muslims of various stripes ... that's beyond foolishness.
Of course, we have a government of fools.
Posted by iain at April 23, 2003 04:24 PM
