Think Carpetbaggers & Reconstruction

One needs to read Tom Friedman. Notice I didn't say one needs to agree with him, at least not all the time. But by NYT standards he is wildly rational.

Today's column is [HERE], and is titled "Outrage and Silence." It contrasts the Muslim world's loud outrage over a (false) Newsweek story of Koran desecration with its bizarre silence when it comes to terrorist murder:

Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.

The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward.

Friedman goes on to make a point that I, at least, had not previously understood. I certainly knew that Sunnis and Shia believed each other to be fundamentally in error with respect to various important theological questions. I certainly understood that, since this split has ancient roots, it has become not only a religious dispute, but a cultural and political fight. But I guess I naively supposed that the proper analogy was to Anglicans and Methodists fiercely disputing over John Wesley. Friedman says that's about as wrong as one could be:

Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a Shiite's being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and are indifferent to their brutalization.

That creates, as Friedman points out, rather a steeper hill to climb than I had completely understood. It has certainly long been clear that the road would be hard on the political side:

At the same time, politically speaking, some Arab regimes prefer to see the pot boiling in Iraq so the democratization process can never spread to their countries. That's why their official newspapers rarely describe the murders of civilians in Iraq as a massacre or acts of terror. Such crimes are usually sanitized as "resistance" to occupation.

The whole column is worth study. Go ahead: Buy the darned NYT, and tear Friedman's column out right away, so no one sees you with the rest of the paper.