Bush plan to boost U.S. troop levels antagonizes Sunnis

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sunnis15jan15,0,6674692.story?coll=la-home-headlines

President Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq has inflamed passions among the restive Sunni Arab minority, bringing new recruits to insurgent cells and outpourings of popular anger toward the United States, the spokesman for the country's most hard-line Sunni clerical group declared Sunday.

"Iraq is like a fire," said Mohammad Bashar Faidy, spokesman for the Muslim Scholars Association. "Instead of putting water on the fire, Bush is pouring gasoline."

The association, which claims to represent thousands of clerics throughout Iraq, shares the aims and praises the methods of the Sunni Arab insurgency. But it also reflects the views of a significant segment of the Sunni Arab population, which has largely turned to Islamic political ideologies since the downfall of the secular Arab nationalism represented by Saddam Hussein's regime.

During a 90-minute interview in his Amman office, Faidy voiced views that illustrated the seemingly intractable gulf between Iraq's Shiite Muslim-led government, the Sunni guerrilla movement fighting it and the United States, which in the long term hopes to draw down its troops without permitting Iraq to slip further into sectarian civil war.

Faidy welcomed war, predicting his side would win. He advocated a step-by-step withdrawal of U.S. troops, which he said would allow armed nationalist Sunnis to rout the Iranian-linked Shiite militias and political groups that are a major component in the country's violence.

[heldmyw]

1. Uh... What?

QUOTE: "Faidy welcomed war, predicting his side would win. He advocated a step-by-step withdrawal of U.S. troops, which he said would allow armed nationalist Sunnis to rout the Iranian-linked Shiite militias and political groups that are a major component in the country's violence."

Let's do a little math here, Sparky! Sunnis 20%, Shiite-Kurd 80%.

The U.S. is the only thing that keeps this overheated catbox from degenerating into an all out Civil War with a genocide probability of about 99%! We even have some lunatics that imagine that the internecine rivalry is only "political"!

If we leave, you're dead, numbnuts!

Unless Iran is giving you nukes?

[lapfog_1]

2. You funny...

Iran giving nukes (that they don't have) to Sunnis in Iraq.

:rofl:

[GreenZoneLT]

3. Not necessarily

The Sunnis have a much more warlike tradition; they made up a disproportionate percentage of the Saddam-era army and were the bulk of the officer corps. There's a reason they controlled the country for so many decades, and it's not just because the Brits put them in power. They're desert Arabs and the Shiites are marsh, river valley and city Arabs; desert Arabs are tough.

The Shiites have a huge population advantage, but if you compare numbers of armed, military-age males, it's probably more like 2 to 1. In an all-out conflict, the Shiites could probably ethnically cleanse the Sunnis out of the mixed provinces, but the Sunnis would probably be able to retain all of the western provinces where they are the majority, and could make life hell in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul.

The one guarantee is that the largest death toll, Shiite and Sunni, will come from among the unarmed innocents.

[harveyw]

4. Now we should all know how the Germans felt under the Nazis

What can or will the people do to protect its democracy?

[Igel]

5. Many Sunnis reject the notion that

they're a minority; some firmly believe that they're a majority, and saying otherwise is counterfactual-indeed, a Zionist-Crusader-Iranian.

Salafists have no shortage of enemies. While healthy toddlers go through a phase in which they make up imaginary friends, many Salafists grow up to have imaginary enemies. It helps to maintain unity and that nice sense of false superiority needed for cohesion, as any sufficiently militaristic populist leader knows.