Everyone knows that Shiites are fighting Sunnis in Iraq, and, in the eyes of many (most, I would say), this sectarian violence is just the long anticipated civil war finally coming to fruition. People who think that way must shake their heads in disgust (at Bush) when the they read stories like this one from yesterday's news:
Car bomb kills 55 at Shiite shrine in Karbala
Explosion near one of Islamic sect’s holiest sites wounds dozens
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A parked car exploded Saturday near one of Shiite Islam’s holiest shrines in the city of Karbala as people were headed to the area for evening prayers, killing 55 people and wounding dozens, officials said.
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A car bomb exploded in the same area on April 14, killing 47 and wounding 224.
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The Karbala blast occurred a few hundred yards from the Imam Abbas shrine, setting several cars on fire and causing chaos in the area. The explosion took place as the streets were killed with people heading for evening prayers at the Abbas shrine and the adjacent Imam Hussein shrine, two of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines.
Note that there is no mention of the possible role for al Qaeda in this attack. In fact, even when you know for sure that the perpetrators were named by the US military, all MSNBC reports is this:
The U.S. military has warned that such bombings were intended to provoke retaliatory violence by Shiite militias, whose members have largely complied with political pressure to avoid confrontations with Americans during the U.S. troop buildup.
Such bombings were intended by whom to provoke retaliatory violence by Shiite militias? Al Qaeda, obviously. It is their stated plan for Iraq and it is their consistent (and very effective) method. This bombing occurred at a revered Shiite mosque. Sound familiar? It should. First of all, it is what Zarqawi specifically said that al Qaeda would do:
The Shi'a in our opinion, these are the key to change. Targeting and striking their religious, political, and military symbols, will make them show their rage against the Sunnis and bear their inner vengeance...Then, the Sunni will have no choice but to support us in many of the Sunni regions.
Second, it is precisely how al Qaeda provoked a civil war in Iraq in 2006. In fact, later in the same news story, the reporter reminds us of a similar attack that was the single most significant event of the post-Saddam era:
In Baghdad, U.S. and Iraqi officials declined to comment on Saturday about Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, 46, who was captured last fall on his way to Iraq, where he may have been sent by top terror leaders in Pakistan to take a senior position in al-Qaida in Iraq, the Pentagon said.
The insurgent group has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in Iraq, including the bombing last year of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra, which touched off a fierce cycle of retaliatory sectarian violence.
Well, al Qaeda is a terrorist group, not an insurgent group, but at least the story mentions this critical detail about the origins of the civil war in Iraq. That's progress. Perhaps Americans will slowly wake up to the fact that the sectarian violence they lament was not a spontaneous result of the removal of Saddam Hussein. Instead, it was deliberately engineered by the very terrorist organization that attacked us on 9/11.You can pretend that it is a different al Qaeda if it makes you feel better (many will do that as they awaken to what is going on), but I'm not sure why you would. Denial is irrational, even if it is understandable.
Awareness of al Qaeda is slowly growing in the minds of mainstream media reporters who have been hamstrung by the civil war schema that they simply cannot get out of their heads. Even so, there is not the slightest mention of the fact that al Qaeda was probably behind yesterday's bombing. Millions upon millions of readers of countless stories like this all over the world will read about that bombing and then shake their heads at the escalating "civil war" in Iraq. And then they will rage at George Bush for what he has done. Here is CNN's coverage of that event, and, again, not the slightest hint that this was an attack by al Qaeda (because, I assume, the reporter thinks this was part of the civil war). The CNN story even notes that this was a suicide bomber. Many stories fail to mention that key detail. It is important because virtually all suicide bombers are members of al Qaeda, as I detailed here. As such, this bombing was not part of that civil war. It was another atrocity designed to provoke a civil war that has largely abated since the troop surge began. That's the key distinction, and it cannot be emphasized often enough. People just don't get it, so it needs to be explained repeatedly until they do. In fact, what's missing from discussions by Bush and McCain and others who have the details right is the emphatic statement that these attacks are not part of the civil war; they are attempts by al Qaeda to provoke a civil war. Just stating that these attacks were perpetrated by al Qaeda does not go far enough to change the thinking of those whose minds are ensnared by an obsolete civil war schema. You have to specifically tell them that they are wrong to think like that. That gets their attention (because they are under the comfortable impression that the civil war debate was settled long ago), and it momentarily arouses disbelief (trust me -- I've been down this path with people many times). When they are presented with incontrovertible facts regarding the role of al Qaeda in Iraq in a moment of disbelief, it has been my experience that minds change (including liberal minds). But you have to directly assert that these attacks are not examples of the civil war in action, nor do they represent sectarian violence. If you don't, people have great difficulty assimilating the idea that attacks by Sunni al Qaeda against Shiite civilians do not constitute examples of sectarian violence/civil war.
Here is the current (inaccurate) schema:
It is a civil war involving escalating sectarian violence between between Shiite militias and Sunni "insurgents" (Sunni Baathists who once worked for Saddam allied with Sunni al Qaeda)
Almost all news reporters describe events from Iraq after those events are forced through this obsolete way of thinking. Here is the vastly more accurate schema:
Sunni al Qaeda is not trying to win a civil war against the Shiites. Instead, they want the Shiite militias to kill Sunnis in large numbers. The civil war between the Shiite militias and the Sunnis is de-escalating (not escalating); what's escalating are attacks by al Qaeda to re-ignite the civil war that they previously triggered by bombing the Golden Mosque in Samarra
When you draw the contrast between these two schemas, minds change. Bush needs to draw the contrast, and he needs to do it often. Just telling people that al Qaeda is behind these sensational attacks does not give them a new way of thinking, so they just process the information through their pre-existing schema.
The CNN story also notes this:
The bombing occurred as people were heading to evening prayers.
As such, this attack was:
(a) specifically designed to...
(b) indiscriminately slaughter...
(c) innocent civilians.
If that isn't a terrorist attack, what is? Even so, neither MSNBC nor CNN described the attack as such. The problem with people on the right is that they call all combatants in Iraq "terrorists." That's wrong because some are fighting against US and Iraqi military forces. Those insurgents are the enemy, but they aren't terrorists. The problem with people on the left (like reporters at CNN and MSNBC) is that they won't call anyone a terrorist, even when they carry out an atrocity like this. It's freaky, yet it is so common it goes unnoticed.
I believe that reporters who write stories like this are engaging in journalistic malpractice because they know perfectly well that the US military attributes these attacks to al Qaeda in Iraq and they know perfectly well they are acts of terrorism by any reasonable definition of that word. Just because you don't want to reinforce Bush's claim that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror is no reason to be deliberately misleading when presenting the news from Iraq. But this story by Reuters in the Washington Post got the details right, and it should serve as a shining example for other reporters who might be interested in reporting the news in an accurate way:
KERBALA, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber killed 57 people and wounded nearly 160 near one of Iraq's most revered Shi'ite Muslim shrines in the city of Kerbala on Saturday, in an attack likely to inflame sectarian tensions.
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The attack bore the hallmarks of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, which U.S. and Iraqi officials accuse of trying to tip Iraq into full-scale civil war between the majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs, once dominant under Saddam Hussein.
The U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said on Thursday al Qaeda was bent on committing what he called "sensational" attacks designed to fuel more sectarian violence.
Speaking in Washington, Petraeus said al Qaeda was now "probably public enemy number one" in Iraq.
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Four years after U.S-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraq has been riven by violence that has killed tens of thousands.
The turmoil escalated when suspected al Qaeda militants destroyed one of the holiest shrines to Shi'ites in the Iraqi town of Samarra in February 2006.
Is all of that clear enough for you? This latest suicide bombing attack was not part of the civil war. It was not Sunni al Qaeda engaged in sectarian violence designed to defeat the Shiites. Instead, it was Sunni al Qaeda trying to goad Muqtada al Sadr's Shiite militias into once again killing hundreds of Sunnis every week (as they were doing back in the Fall). That's the third force at work, and it is now public enemy number one. It always was, but people are only slowly awakening to the idea. Lawrence Kudlow just wrote a column drawing attention to this increasingly undeniable fact.
In light of all of this, when you rage at George Bush for the violence in Iraq, your anger is misplaced. The Muslim world knows that it was al Qaeda, not Bush, who did this (even if you don't):
The blast occurred at a checkpoint on an approach to the golden-domed al-Abbas shrine, situated among shops and restaurants in the holy city. The area was crowded at the time, witnesses said.
Television images showed a man running down a smoke-filled street holding a lifeless baby above his head. Smoke was rising off the child. Ambulances had rushed to the scene in Kerbala, 100 km (70 miles) southwest of Baghdad.
Still think this is an immoral war? If so, your idea of morality is foreign to me. Don't be so morally righteous that you become prepared to surrender to al Qaeda without even realizing it. They are primitive savages, and they did this intentionally. What's more, they plan to keep doing it until Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi manage to engineer our unconditional surrender, and then they'll be free to do a lot more of it. If you don't believe me, then believe Zarqawi. He devised the plan that has been implemented with stunning success in Iraq. Because it is a wretched terrorist telling you what is coming and not George Bush, perhaps you will believe him. You should.
UPDATE: I just noticed a link to this story on freerepublic.com:
BAGHDAD, April 29 (Reuters) - The political battle in Washington over a Democratic plan to pull U.S. troops from Iraq is being exploited by al Qaeda, which has stepped up attacks to hasten a withdrawal, Iraq's foreign minister said on Sunday.
Hoshiyar Zebari said Iraq had become "entangled" in domestic politics in the United States, where there is growing impatience for progress in reconciling the country's warring sects.
U.S. President George W. Bush has vowed to veto a war spending bill that requires combat troops to begin withdrawing by Oct. 1. Congress, which is controlled by the Democrats, plans to send the bill to Bush on Tuesday.
"This plays out very badly here," Zebari said in an interview with Reuters, making the first substantive government comment on the political tussle.
"It shows the administration is not united. And everybody watches this development, al Qaeda, the anti-democratic forces who are fighting us."
He pointed to an increase in car bomb attacks blamed on al Qaeda that have caused the civilian death toll to stay high despite a major 10-week-old operation by U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad, the epicentre of the violence.
"This recent escalation you have seen was expected, just to show the Baghdad security plan is not working. If this plan were to fail, then the next step is for the multinational forces to withdraw. That is their simple strategy," Zebari said.
Al Qaeda's strategy is simple, but it is also amazingly effective. It has even magically caused Democratic leaders to adopt an eerie code of silence on the issue of al Qaeda in Iraq. Using some sort of secret mind-control ray beam (I guess), al Qaeda directs Democrats to robotically talk about going to Afghanistan to fight terrorists. Meanwhile, al Qaeda slaughters hundreds of innocent Shiites every month Iraq -- right before your very eyes -- which mainstream media reporters then obediently mischaracterize as "sectarian violence." It's creepy. I feel like I've just slipped into the Twilight Zone...
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