Edward Wong wrote an incredible article in the NY Times Week in Review section yesterday. I’m sure someone noticed or diaried on it somewhere. If they did- apologies in advance. I couldn't find it with my meager tag search.
PERHAPS no fact is more revealing about Iraq’s history than this: The Iraqis have a word that means to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets.
The word is "sahel," and it helps explain much of what I have seen in three and a half years of covering the war.
It is a word unique to Iraq, my friend Razzaq explained over tea one afternoon on my final tour. Throughout Iraq’s history, he said, power has changed hands only through extreme violence, when a leader was vanquished absolutely, and his destruction was put on display for all to see.
Most famously it happened to a former prime minister, Nuri al-Said, who tried to flee after a military coup in 1958 by scurrying through eastern Baghdad dressed as a woman. He was shot dead. His body was disinterred and hacked apart, the bits dragged through the streets. In later years, Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party crushed their enemies with the same brand of brutality.
That is the no holds barred way the article begins on page 3 of the best section (IMHO) that the NY Times produces each week. (Good articles, best of political cartoons, best of late night political humor, Frank Rich etc..) Conservatives will wave their hands to shoo such realities aside, but this is the country that Bushco decided we could force American style democracy on and make an example of to the rest of the world. Umm, sorry, wrong country...
"Everyone — the Sunni, the Shia — is playing the waiting game," an Iraqi leader told me over dinner at his home in the Green Zone. "They’re waiting out the Americans. Everyone is using time against you."
Much seemed different in April 2003, when the Americans pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square and allowed Iraqis to drag it through the streets. It looked like an act of sahel at the time, but the Americans failed to establish total control, as Iraqi history says a conqueror must.
Paging Donald Rumsfeld and that "strong and light" army. Or was it "swift & strong"? Whatever- it got Shinseki fired and led to stupid shit like leaving munitions dumps the size of Manhattan unguarded during the all important march to destiny and our prime time appointment with Baghdad Bob...
...to many Sunni Arabs, the borders of Iraq do not delineate the boundaries of the war. The conflict is set, instead, against the backdrop of the entire Islamic world, in which demography and history have always favored the Sunnis. That sense of entitlement is fed by the notion that Iraq’s Shiite Arabs are just proxies for Iran’s Persian rulers.
For the Shiites, who make up 60 percent of Iraqis, the unalloyed hostility of the Sunni Arabs only reinforces a centuries-old sense of victimhood. So the Shiite militias grow, stoking vengeance. Through force of arms, and backed by the Americans and Iran, the religious Shiites intend to dominate the country entirely, taking what they believe was stripped from them when their revered leader Hussein was murdered in the desert of seventh-century Mesopotamia.
Shit. These guys really hate each other. And strangely, it seems to go back way farther than the Happy Days reruns that were so popular during the first Bush Gulf War...
The belief of the Shiites that they must consolidate power through force of arms is tethered to ever-present suspicions of an impending betrayal by the Americans. Though the Americans have helped institute the representative system of government that the Shiites now dominate, they have failed to eliminate memories of how the first President Bush allowed Saddam Hussein to slaughter rebelling Shiites in 1991. Shiite leaders are all too aware, as well, of America’s hostility toward Iran, the seat of Shiite power, and of its close alliances with Sunni Arab nations, especially Saudi Arabia.
Okay. So whose side are we on again? Think of all the rhetoric coming from the White House and press that enables the White House and ask yourself- Are they being truthful? Are they asking honest questions?
Sitting in the cool recesses of his home, the white-robed sheik said he was a moderate, a supporter of democracy. It is for people like him that the Americans have fought this war. But the solution he proposes is not one the Americans would easily embrace.
"In the history of Iraq, more than 7,000 years, there have always been strong leaders," he said. "We need strong rulers or dictators like Franco, Hitler, even Mubarak. We need a strong dictator, and a fair one at the same time, to kill all extremists, Sunni and Shiite."
I was surprised to hear those words. But perhaps I was being naïve. Looking back on all I have seen of this war, it now seems that the Iraqis have been driving all along for the decisive victory, the act of sahel, the day the bodies will be dragged through the streets.
And whose body will it be? A Sunni? A Shiite? An American? I have my opinions, but that could fill another whole diary. The casualty figures from Iraq recently are obscene. 104 dead in April. 117 in May. 19 in the last 2 days. And that’s just our guys- the Monkey’s in the middle. The surge is just a sham, another clever brand name for a less appetizing brand name- Escalation. And a futile escalation at that... Articles like this are what prove print newspapers like the NY Times to still be vital. Nothing can replace the viewpoint a reporter who has been on the frontlines. Wong has been there for over 3 years. Like Michael Ware, Lara Logan and most correspondents who have had extended stays in Iraq, it becomes quite obvious- reality has a well known liberal bias... (Not that I'm saying the viewpoints of these Iraqi's have anything in common with the American left, it's just that the reality of the situation has been obvious to us pretty much from the beginning.)
This article plus the relegation of the JFK bombing plot story to page 37 made it a good day for the Paper of Record. Credit where credit is due...