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Many people write as if the sectarian warfare in Iraq was caused by coalition intervention. But it is surely obvious that the struggle for mastery has been going on for some time and was only masked by the apparently iron unity imposed under Baathist rule. That rule was itself the dictatorship of a tribal Tikriti minority of the Sunni minority and constituted a veneer over the divisions beneath, as well as an incitement to their perpetuation.

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See? Sectarian warfare WASN'T caused by the invasion, it was already going on, but, you know, in "masked" form. So, the US invasion just CLARIFIED things!

Not only that, but it was, like, inevitable anyway!

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The Kurds had already withdrawn themselves from this divide-and-rule system by the time the coalition forces arrived, while Shiite grievances against the state were decades old and had been hugely intensified by Saddam's cruelty. Nothing was going to stop their explosion,

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In other words, if you see a landmine, knowing that it contains explosive power, you should step on it, because, eventually, that baby is gonna BLOW! (Well, don't YOU step on it. Send others.)

http://www.slate.com/id/2155721/

[ 19 December 2006: Message edited by: jeff house ]

Anyway, this all sounds like the infamous Freudian "kettle logic". Incidentally, Zizek wrote a piece about just this phenomenon a couple of years ago: The Iraqi Borrowed Kettle.

[ 19 December 2006: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

Actually, Rabble forums and the thread titles does a beautiful job of describing this thread:

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Christopher Hitchens Invents... (Noise)

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[ 19 December 2006: Message edited by: Noise ]

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If it was so predictable, Mr. Hitchens, why wasn't it spoken of by proponents of the war, let alone planned for?

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There were definitely ethnic divisions between Iraqi Arabs and Kurds and Turkmen, and others who live across much of Iraq's northern frontier. But Shi'ites and Sunnis are both Arabs. They inter-married and shared neighbourhoods, and they eat the same food. Sectarianism wasn't a problem until the US was obviously losing the war and then it got underway with spectacular explosions at Shi'ite mosques. It was as though someone wanted to stir up sectarian rivalries. Someone who would benefit from civil war. Who?

Racism and sectarianism are favoured tools of imperialists. Where ever one finds an imperial colonial power one will find deep ethnic and religious rivalries. Is it only a coincidence civil war is being stoked in every place where Arabs have threatened a viable resistance to imperial powers: Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon? Hardly.

Arabs killing Arabs is the surest road to victory for the swine of war, Bush, Blair and Olmert.

[ 19 December 2006: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]