There's an interesting analogy to be made between the current situation in Iraq and the Reconstruction Era in the American South after the Civil War. In both cases, an outside armed force overthrew the established, traditional power structure and attempted to install a new arrangement under which the formerly oppressed people would exercise freedom.
There are many points on which the analogy does not work, but there's no question that the officers of the Confederate Army were white, and the officers of the old Iraqi Army were primarily Sunnis. People who are accustomed to military leadership are easily persuaded that the interests of their people require them to crush the aspirations of the those formerly oppressed. I'm sure the Sunnis, just like the Southern whites, consider their fight a noble one.
Whether it is or not isn't relevant. We're talking about practical matters, and just as blacks in the South could not hold their own against the militarily trained and economically advantaged whites, so is it unlikely that the Shiites, even with a greater preponderance of the population, will ever defeat the Sunnis militarily. Our policy, which has been to back the Sunnis into a corner and convince them that they couldn't prevail, is based on a fallacy. Which is that the 20% of the population that the Sunni Arabs represent cannot defeat the 60% Shiites. Time will tell, but in a war, I'd still bet on the Sunnis.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Rob,
It is well to remember that the Shiites enjoy the support of elements outside the borders of Iraq.
Frankly, at this point, I wouldn't bet on the Sunnis or Shiites, because a regional war triggered in Iraq threatens to make everyone in the Middle East a loser.
SWA
Florence
Rob,
I tutor in the evenings and one of my students is taking a US history course at a local high school here that uses Holt, Rinehart & Winston materials. Currently they are on Reconstruction and the materials they are using a set of "source documents".
Most of the ones I read tonight with my student being excerpts from letters by both Southern Whites and Blacks. They were from all over the South and border states. Louisiana, Kentucky, Virginia, what have you. The group that kept coming up was these bands rebel soldiers who had refused to disband and who were terrorizing freed slaves and interlopers in all areas outside the "garrisoned towns". The whole situation was really complex. Many Whites thought that while slavery was bad for society, they felt that it should have been done away with gradually rather than all at once - as this had caused enormous social upheaval both for the formerly enslaved and for the enslavers, much as one hears South Koreans talk about gradual reunification as being preferable to the sudden "emancipation" of the North. The Blacks complain that as the troops withdraw or where they have never been, the only recourse they have is to federal courts, and that the remedies are few and hard to come by seeing as how local state laws remain largely unchanged or out of compliance. Schools in Louisiana were burned, and both students and teachers harassed. You had other Whites fearing that the Blacks would rise up and slaughter the Whites in a Rwanda-style genocide and that they must prepare for if not pre-empt this. I imagine there is much, much more....
I think using the KKK as an analogy here is a little too telegraphic a way of talking about this. I think a better approach would be to say that Reconstruction in the US South is chock full of lessons for any American who would try to understand Iraq or a whole host of "hot zones" around the world. We've been there and done that - badly - and any way you'd like to slice it as we were on all sides of that one - the foreign invaders, the locals, the oppressors and the oppressed - we played all the roles.
Phil
Post a Comment