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Losing the Shia

(National Review) Michael Rubin - Whereas President Bush repeatedly promised that the U.S. sought democracy in Iraq, the British government, U.S. State Department, and the National Security Council project the opposite to an Iraqi audience. Iraqis were not blind to high-level discussions of a "Sunni strategy," meaning that Washington would not live up to its rhetoric of democracy, and instead return the Sunni minority to what many former Baathists - and the Saudi and Jordanian governments - felt was the Sunni community's birthright. The decision to reverse de-Baathification in effect traded the goodwill of Iraq's 14 million Shia and six million Kurds for the sake of, at most, 40,000 high-level Baathists. The Marines, against their better judgment (according to their own situation reports), lifted the siege of Fallujah. They appointed a Baathist general to lead the new Fallujah Brigade. Violence throughout the country skyrocketed. The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of the Middle East Quarterly.
2004-08-20 00:00:00
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