For several years, I've foolishly expected them to get a clue and stop killing the Shias and Kurds who outnumber them by four or five-to-one odds. I thought they'd accept a diminished status in a democratic Iraq rather than fight futilely for their former neck-stomping dominance.
I wrote in January 2005, commenting on a Strategypage report that said the war was going to get very ugly due to Sunni Arab brutality:
The Baathists, having chosen to take this chance to be stupid when they could have prospered, will be eradicated. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people, in my opinion.
Brace yourselves. The Baathists and their jihadi friends have guaranteed that this will be an ugly fight. Sadly, the Iraqi government won't get the benefit of the doubt that the beheaders and car bombers presently get in our press.
Silly me. Faced with Shias angry for centuries of oppression and decades of seeing friends and families slaughtered in addition to the routine indignities of being despised by their Sunni Arab rulers, the Sunnis are going for broke (tip to Belmont Club). Iraq's Sunnis have their own television station:
"Chase the Shias from neighbourhood to neighbourhood," it urges. "Eat them for lunch before they eat you for dinner. Defend your houses by killing them."
So goes another broadcast on Al Zahraa, a satellite television channel catering to what is arguably one of the most unfashionable minorities in programming history – Iraq's Sunni Muslim community.
Nothing like telling the former victims who now run the government and outnumber you by about 4:1 odds that you consider them your enemy. Win or die, it seems.
But our press will have more sympathy for the educated English-speaking Baathists who will dominate the airwaves than the press ever had for the Shia bumpkins who have the nerve to be upset about being murdered by their social betters.
As I said before, as the Shias have started killing Sunnis in large numbers since the February Samarra bombing, we may not get our democracy embraced by Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis. But the Sunni Arabs won't be sitting in the palaces after the fight is over. The Sunnis are heading for the big dirt nap and they have only themselves to blame.
Has a community on this planet been more stupid and self destructive than Iraq's Sunni Arabs?
UPDATE: Obviously, I mean other than the Palestinians. Put them in the mix and nobody else can come close. That's hardly fair to aspiring Sunni Arab fools in Iraq who want to have their pure dream state in lovely Anbar province. Sand. No oil. Yep, quite the dream future for them. And they're just determined enough to get that.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Washington Post recounts the Shia extremist terror campaign. Not to defend the Sadr thugs, but note how the English-speaking Sunnis are portrayed as victims. No mention of years of suicide bombings by Sunni terrorists that were largely overlooked by the Shias until February 2006. No mention of the decades of Saddam's rule where Sunni Baathists murdered Shias and Kurds in large numbers and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves. No mention of centuries of Sunni Arab rule over Shias and Kurds that kept Shias and Kurds distinctly second-class citizens.
The writer does note this very real development:
Just as the Shiites turn to the militias for protection, he now views the Sunni Arab insurgents as his family's guardians.
But the writer doesn't explain that this is exactly why the Sunni Arab terrorists have been targetting Shias--to provoke a response that will drive Sunni Arabs to support the terrorists as their only defense against Shia death squads. For years these Sunnis refused to turn on the terrorists in large numbers. Now they are paying for their support for the terrorists or neutrality.
Iraq's Sunni Arabs may be stupid in their choices, but they will continue to get a sympathetic Western press eager to portray them as victims.
