Samara Mosque

Originally uploaded by Will_Tom.

Sunni militants blew up a sacred site in Iraq last week bringing Iraq even closer to being the world’s leading exporter of rubble, hopelessness and futility.

It is almost a habit for me to post on current events after they are current but so often, I am conflicted. This is a horrible event perpetrated by one sect to another yet the groups seem indistinguishable from each other. From another perspective, this bombing is the result of events perpetrated by the United States, so they share perhaps the lion’s share of the blame.
I am reminded of some of what I have heard Gwynne Dyer say and write: that the object of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and further attacks on the Saudis, the Spanish, the British and those longsuffering victims in Iraq is not to vanquish an enemy. It is not to exact justice or revenge. It is not to encourage others to do the same and it is not for religious outrage against the realities of modern life in the West.

No, the motive behind these attacks it this: to provoke the United States and her allies into such an unmeasured, irrational response that it would enrage Muslim society so much that they would overthrow the pragmatic (or brutal) dictatorships of the Arab world and embrace the religious right.

This has proved true in the first instance. The US did fall for the bait and they did exactly as Usama’s script would have them do. The US did attack impulsively and without plan or object. While it is true that Afghanistan was a measured rational response with a clear goal: remove the Taliban and Bin Laden’s ability to strike. What of Iraq? The American invasion of Iraq was what the Whahabbis were looking for. This was the response that would get them a Taliban with a difference. A Taliban with oil, roads, a population. The fanatics may not have had the immediate success they were hoping for.

But they may yet get Iraq