For anyone who is struggling with the “right” thing to do in Iraq, I would suggest that you bone up on Middle Eastern history. This is where the answer to our daily “wringing of hands” on Iraq will be discovered. There are some very important historical underpinnings that reveal America’s true ignorance and totally incompetent strategy in knowing “what is best for Iraq”. First of all, before we even get into the history, which is fascinating reading by the way, I would like to ask this simple question…what in the hell qualifies the U.S. to know what is best for Iraq anyway? Iraq has made its own history for thousands of years in deciding their own fate. So, exactly what qualifies us to determine it now? Who are we to know what is best for Iraq, and most importantly, who are we to impose what our idea of what is best for them on them?

Before we get to our answer on what to do about Iraq, let’s review some good old history lessons on the Middle East. Theirs is a very complicated and convoluted history involving thousands of years but for the sake of this article, I will attempt to simplify it somewhat. To understand some basic interactions of the different parties battling in Iraq, we need to understand the difference between the Shi’a and Sunni sects.

According to Wikipedia, the Shi’a sect arose from a proclamation that religious leaders of Islam can only come from the familial succession to the Holy One, Muhammad. They embrace the rule by Imams, infallible leaders who provide guidance over spiritual and political affairs.

Whereas, the Sunnis believe that religious leaders can be from elections in which the community itself would decide the leader. Thus, after Muhammad’s death and without appointing a successor, there was a schism in the Islamic faith that has torn Islam apart with devastating and perpetual disastrous fighting between the two lasting centuries.

For a detailed description of Middle East history, please read this article written by, Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer and chief weapons inspector in Iraq and author of a new book called Target Iran. He has been a student of the Middle East for many years and understands it well. He is also pushing Americans to learn about the Middle East in order to be qualified to even discuss our Iraq situation. What I will attempt here is to simplify and summarize Ritter’s excellent review of Middle East history.

Ritter points out that “Abu Bakr, a close colleague of Muhammad but not a member of Muhammad’s biological family, was elected as the first caliph after the prophet’s death, an act that many Muslims believed broke faith with a necessity for the successor of Muhammad to be from his family. Abu Bakr’s death brought about a quick succession of caliphs, all of whom met untimely deaths and none of whom were from the family line of Muhammad”. Thereafter, the succession of leaders alternated between the two with continuous assassinations and subterfuge until they split completely each with its own separate leaders as today.

Thus the stage was set for the continuation of conflicts in regards to Islam’s religious leaders and what is “true” or “pure” in Islam. The thing to remember here and what is most important to understand in Iraq, is that both Shiite and Sunni view one another as deviants from the pure form of Islam as taught by Muhammad, and as such functioning as opposers to the “true” religion, deserve death. This is pretty black and white I would say.

This is the backdrop to our occupation of this country which is playing out right under our noses without any promise of being able to allay these hatreds or bring security to an extremely untenable and unstable situation that has lasted for thousands of years.

Now here’s the most important part of this history lesson that Ritter spells out that is critical to truly understand what is happening. After the Mongol wars, in the 13th century, Ibn Taymiya broke ranks with the rest of the Sunni community. He professed that a true Muslim state could exist only where the political leader governed as a partner with the religious leader, and was subordinated to the religious through strict adherence to the “sharia,” or religious law. The Muslim jurists, or “ulema,” held total power over society, to the extent that even matters pertaining to war were reserved for the religious leader, or Imam, who was the only person authorized to declare a jihad. This is where the term jihad as we know it today comes from. Taymiya rejected the notion of jihad as an inner struggle, instead proclaiming that true jihad involved a relentless struggle against the enemies of Islam.

For a while, Taymiya’s teachings were popular but he was eventually branded a heretic. However, in the 18th century, his teachings emerged again under Muhammed al-Wahhab who created a movement that not only embraced the teachings of Ibn Taymiya but took them even further, preaching a virulent form of Islam that claimed to bring the faithful back to the religion as practiced by the prophet Muhammad himself.

Wahhab befriended the local governor, Muhammed Ibn Saud, initiating what was to become a partnership in which the Saud family took on the role of emir, or political leader, while Wahhab became Imam, or religious leader. This partnership of Bedouin warrior and Islamic fanatic soon led to what would become known as the Wahhabi conquest, bringing much of what is now present-day Saudi Arabia under their strict religious rule. By 1932 a new nation, Saudi Arabia, emerged from the Arabian deserts, governed by the house of Saud and with religious affairs totally in the hands of the fanatical Wahhabis.




The importance of this religious fanaticism plays out in Wahhabi concerns over the weakening of the Muslim world by those who practiced anything other than pure Islam. This was further exascerbated in April 2003, when American soldiers captured Baghdad in what many Wahhabis viewed as a repeat of the sack of the city at the hands of the Mongols in 1258, the imperialistic domination by the Ottoman empire in the 1700’s-1800’s and British colonial control in the early 1900’s. To say the least, they have been fighting for their independence from non-Islamic control for a long, long time.

Adding insult to injury, the role of Iraq’s Shiites, in aiding and abetting the American conquest, is seen as proof positive that the salvation for the faithful could only come at the hands of a pure form of the Islamic faith, that of Wahhabism. As the American liberation dragged on into the American occupation, and the level of violence between the Shiites and Sunnis grew, the call for jihad as promulgated by the Wahhabis gained increasing credence among the tribes of western Iraq. Thus was laid the foundation of failure of the Americans to achieve a superimposed democracy and inevitable failure to bring security or reconciliation to opposing forces passionately committed to their fanatic and radical beliefs.

And, this is why democracy will not work in a country wherein there are those who will never accept a political leader who is not partnered with, and subordinate to, the “accepted” religious leader. When the U.S. keeps demanding “reconciliation” with these radical religious sects, it is impossible to fathom. How are they to reconcile centuries of conflict and hatred by submitting to a weak government that has proven itself impotent over and over with disjointed, corrupt and prejudiced parties vying for power?

In summing up Ritter’s perspective on Iraq, he makes a most convincing argument concerning the consequences of our ill-considered and hasty invasion of a country for which we know nothing about even to this day. He says,

The longer the Americans remain in Iraq, the more violence the Americans bring down on Iraq, and the more the Americans are seen as facilitating the persecution of the Sunnis by the Shiites, the more legitimate the call of the Wahhabi fanatics become. While American strategists may speak of the rise of al-Qaida in Iraq, this is mis-recognition of what is really happening. Rather than foreigners arriving and spreading Wahhabism in Iraq, the virulent sect of Islamic fundamentalism is spreading on its own volition, assisted by the incompetence and brutality of an American occupation completely ignorant of the reality of the land and people it occupies.

We are the ones who have brought Wahhabism to Iraq. We are the ones who have spawned radical Islamic fundamentalism and continue to cause its spread throughout Iraq, not al Qaeda. The funny thing about all this is that no one seems to be factoring in our “ally” Saudi Arabia who recently proclaimed the American invasion of Iraq as “illegal”. Saudi Arabia has long been considered a friend to the U.S. But what’s to stop them from changing their mind and begin to see the U.S. as an enemy of Islam itself?

With Wahhabism thriving in Saudi Arabia, and building strength in Iraq, we need to seriously consider the implications of us as an occupying force for which we are associated as foreign infidels similar to the Mongols. No matter how much good we think we are doing, this casts us as villains in all of the Middle Easterners’ eyes. And, the Shi’as working alongside us is only further inflaming the hatred between the two. But, what is abundantly clear to me is that the longer we stay in Iraq, the more our presence will foment hatred and opposition between the warring sects. We need to get out today and let Iraq decide its future as it has done for thousands of years. The Sunni and Shi’a will work out their differences in their own time and in their own ways whether we approve or not.