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Originally posted by Darius871
I wasn't defending Spec's asinine comment, just its underlying logic that the violence we see today is merely another manifestation of ancient cleavages.
I wasn't defending Spec's asinine comment, just its underlying logic that the violence we see today is merely another manifestation of ancient cleavages.
Sure, it's true that Sunnis and Shia have been distinct groups for a long time. It'salso true that there has often been antagonism between the two parties. To blame that fissure for the violence, however, is misleading; Sunni and Shia have lived in peace for many of those 1,400 or so years. Even in Iraq now, they are known to intermarry. To say that the root of the conflict lies in Shia-Sunni relations is like saying that the Northern Ireland conflict was an expression of ancient hatreds between Catholics and Protestants - if that were true, Ireland would presumably not be the only locus of Catholic-Protestant violence in Europe.
It was a specific set of circumstances - Saddam's favoritism and atrocities, United States intervention and policy, the disbanding of the largely Sunni army, the presence of certain radical religious elements in the region - that led to the present civil war, not simply an expression of ancient grievances by a bunch of dubious natives whose apparent lack of rationality we are able to critique and shake our heads at from afar. To blame the conflict on such things is essentialization at its very worst and most ignorant.
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