Amazingly (via Real Clear Politics), some of our press sympathize with this view (and I first noticed this back in May 2003 in one article):
Outside the Green Zone, any hopes for a better future in post-Saddam Iraq were dashed a long time ago. As early as the summer of 2003, Sunnis had been sufficiently alienated to long for their halcyon days under the Baathists, and since then the situation has deteriorated catastrophically. With Shia death squads torturing and executing Sunnis, Sunni insurgents killing Shia, criminal gangs running rampant and a vicious civil war raging, people frequently ask me: are things worse for Iraqis now than they were under the man who now stands in the dock? I don't know the answer to that question. But the very fact that it can legitimately be asked is horrifying.
I don't think this can be legitimately asked. And I'm horrified--but not surprised--that a writer could think this.
And I am really horrified that after thirty years of Baathist depravity and four centuries of ruling Shias and Kurds (Ah! "halycon" days indeed for the neck stompers! Sunnis feasted while Shias starved; gassed Kurds; and stole all the wealth. Yep. Good times. Good times ...), that the Sunnis of Iraq can be called "alienated" because a scant few months after we ended government-sponsored Sunni brutality and Sunni privilege, the Shias and Kurds were still angry with their long experience of being under the boots of Sunnis! How unreasonable! Hey, who can blame the Sunnis for being mad about the Crusades? But let the Shias be upset with their unfortunate lot and whoa fellahs, check your anger! Just turn to the Sunnis and say, "Tough luck, chaps! Your run is over. Some tea, perhaps?"
And the Shias and Kurds have the nerve to still be mad as some Sunnis continue to kill as best they can without the machinery of state power to do it quietly and efficiently.
Things are worse for Sunnis--no doubt. They were the slavemasters. But they are getting a chance to join the new Iraq if they renounce violence and turn over the worst criminals in their midst. Under Sunni rules established by four centuries of their running things, this is pretty generous.
Next week: Salon proposes a group hug for some Nazis!
