{"id":338,"date":"2007-10-05T13:56:47","date_gmt":"2007-10-05T17:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=338"},"modified":"2007-10-05T13:56:47","modified_gmt":"2007-10-05T17:56:47","slug":"shia-loves-you-yeah-yeah-yeah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=338","title":{"rendered":"Shia Loves You (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><meta http-equiv=\"Content-Language\" content=\"en-us\" \/> <meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=windows-1252\" \/><title>You think you lost your love<\/title>You think you lost your love,<br \/>\nWhen I saw her yesterday.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s you she&#8217;s thinking of&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;She Loves You, The Beatles, 1963<\/p>\n<p>Iraq is, finally, going the way that many had wanted to see years ago, before  Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld&#8217;s and General John Abizaid&#8217;s  counter-insurgency negligence and the Sunni onslaught against the Shi&#8217;a nearly  drove us and the Iraqis over the cliff. Iraq is far from being a lost cause&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aei.org\/publications\/filter.all,pubID.26914\/pub_detail.asp\">Are  We Winning the &#8220;War on Terror&#8221;?<\/a>, Reuel Marc Gerecht, 2007<\/p>\n<p>With the singular exception of Elliott Abrams at NSC and John Hannah in  Cheney&#8217;s office, all the major Right Zionists have now departed from service  within the Bush administration.\u00c2\u00a0 Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Wurmser,  etc.<\/p>\n<p>You would think they would all be demoralized.\u00c2\u00a0 And maybe they <em>do<\/em>  feel marginalized and ostracized in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>But they seem <em>increasingly<\/em> satisfied with a vicarious victory in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Although some Right Zionists participate in the happy talk about how the sun  will come out, tomorrow, that isn&#8217;t the basis of the satisfaction.\u00c2\u00a0  Instead, Right Zionists are feeling like their effort to <em>transform Iraq from  a country ruled by Sunni Arabs into a Shiite-dominated country<\/em> is winning  the day.<\/p>\n<p>The goal is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zmag.org\/content\/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10185\">not new<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0  Gerecht, for example, has consistently championed Shiite power in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>But for a while there, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/rubin\/rubin200408191059.asp\">Right  Zionists were convinced that Right Arabists were winning all the political  battles, in Washington and Baghdad<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It looked as if Washington was  going to abandon the Shia of Iraq and that <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=140\">a Right Arabist triumph in  Washington<\/a> would terminate Shiite power in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Now there is every reason to believe that they feel they have <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=192\"><em>lost<\/em> much of the  war for Washington<\/a> but have <em>won<\/em> (in absentia) the war for a Shiite  Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>If some Right Zionists had reservations about Shiite power (i.e., the  anti-Americanism of Moqtada al-Sadr), these appear to be dissipating.<\/p>\n<p>Gerecht was, undoubtedly, the first to &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=227\">choose  Sadr<\/a>&#8221; when confronted with the choice between Shiite militias and the Sunni  insurgency.<\/p>\n<p>But, as Gerecht <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aei.org\/publications\/filter.all,pubID.26914\/pub_detail.asp\"> pointed out in his most recent essay<\/a>, he is not alone.\u00c2\u00a0 There is also  the British essayist, Bartle Bull, who has rehabilitated the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.prospect-magazine.co.uk\/article_details.php?id=9804\">Mission  Accomplished<\/a>&#8221; claim and has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/extra\/?id=110010683\">learned to love  Moqtada al-Sadr<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And then there is <a href=\"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/?p=274\">Fouad  Ajami<\/a>, who has nothing but praise for the Shiite-led Maliki government and  who seems <em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/editorial\/feature.html?id=110010610\"> unimpressed<\/a><\/em> by the Sunni-led &#8220;Anbar Awakening.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An Iraqi in the know, unsentimental about his country&#8217;s ways, sought to  \tplay down the cult of Abu Reisha. American soldiers, he said, won the war  \tfor the Anbar, but it was better to put an Iraq kafiyyah than an American  \thelmet on the victory. He dismissed Abu Reisha. He was useful, he said, but  \tshould not be romanticized. &#8220;No doubt he was shooting at Americans not so  \tlong ago, but the tide has turned, and Abu Reisha knew how to reach an  \taccommodation with the real order of power. The truth is that the Sunnis  \tlaunched this war four years ago, and have been defeated. The tribes never  \twin wars, they only join the winners&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Four months ago, I had seen the Sunni despondency, their recognition of the  \ttragedy that had befallen them in Baghdad. That despondency had deepened in  \tthe intervening period. No Arab cavalry had ridden to their rescue, no  \tbrigades had turned up from the Arabian Peninsula or from Jordan, and the  \tEgyptians were far away. Reality in Iraq had not waited on the Arabs. The  \tSunnis of Iraq must now fully grasp that they are on their own. They had  \trelied on the dictatorship, and on the Baath, and these are now gone; there  \thad, of course, been that brief bet on al Qaeda and on the Arab regimes, and  \tit had come to naught&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And there are other Right Zionists, some more obscure than others, who  welcome Shiite power and retain a deep hostility toward Sunni Arab Iraq.<\/p>\n<p>Consider, for example, the case of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.acpr.org.il\/people\/gluft.html\">Gal Luft<\/a>&#8211;executive  director of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iags.org\/staff.htm#ac\">Institute for the  Analysis of Global Security (IAGS)<\/a>&#8211;who recently co-authored an essay, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aijac.org.au\/review\/2007\/32-9\/essay32-9.htm\">The  Great Divide: Sunnis, Shi&#8217;ites and the West<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[A]t least some elements in the Bush Administration seem to be leaning  \ttoward [Sunni Arab political dominance]. Increasingly disenchanted with  \tIraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and intent on containing Iran, they  \thave begun to speak of a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,  \tarraying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153moderate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Sunni allies like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the  \tGulf states against the Shi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ite \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extremists\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah.<\/p>\n<p>Evidence for this shift in thinking lies in Washington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rising regard for  \tSaudi Arabia. Just five years after September 11, an attack perpetrated in  \tlarge part by Saudi nationals, the US appears to be outsourcing parts of its  \tMiddle East policy to the House of Saud, bolstering the kingdom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s military  \tcapabilities and, according to reports, involving itself in clandestine  \toperations with radical Saudi proxies who loathe America but happen to hate  \tthe Shi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ites even more. As Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for  \tNear East Policy told the New Yorker, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153At a time when America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s standing in  \tthe Middle East is extremely low, the Saudis are actually embracing us. We  \tshould count our blessings.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>But these \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blessings\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are themselves decidedly mixed, as the Bush White  \tHouse itself has long recognised&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>An alignment with supposed Sunni \u00e2\u20ac\u0153moderates\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is, in short, a huge gamble.  \tEssentially it would perpetuate, or resurrect, the same Sunni order that has  \tbeen responsible over the course of several generations for most of the  \tMiddle East\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pathologies. It is under the Sunni dispensation, after all,  \tthat the Arab world has lagged in every dimension of human development, from  \tpolitical and cultural freedom to economic growth, while simultaneously  \tgiving birth to a virulent Islamic radicalism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Shiite-led government in Iraq is flexing its muscles in relation to  Washington on a host of issues including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/nationworld\/ci_7069539\">the courting of  Sunni Arab insurgents<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thetimes.co.za\/News\/Article.aspx?id=578964\">Blackwater<\/a>  and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/10\/03\/AR2007100302464_pf.html\"> arms for the Shiite-dominated Iraqi police<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Might signs of Shiite stridency and autonomy shake the Right Zionist faith in  their local Shiite surrogates?<\/p>\n<p>Right Zionists would not be excited to see Iraq turn toward China.\u00c2\u00a0 But  they might not mind observing the ways in which independent Shiite power in Iraq  &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/afp.google.com\/article\/ALeqM5hHpaRLyp07obzFk4LaF_uX2V-FAw\">focuses  the mind<\/a>&#8221; of the Right Arabists who preside in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You think you lost your loveYou think you lost your love, When I saw her yesterday. It&#8217;s you she&#8217;s thinking of&#8230; &#8211;She Loves You, The Beatles, 1963 Iraq is, finally, going the way that many had wanted to see years ago, before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld&#8217;s and General John Abizaid&#8217;s counter-insurgency negligence and the Sunni [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profcutler.com\/wordpress_blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}