Andrew Sullivan links to Hugh Hewitt's interview with NYT war correspondent John Burns. Sullivan quotes this passage:

Ugh. I just hate lazy platitudes like that. I hate it because it's not just nonsense — there's plenty of that around — but it's dangerous nonsense. We saw the same sort of talk about Yugoslavia in the 1990s, that the antipathies there are centuries-old and so forth. The embrace of that conventional wisdom by decision-makers in America and Europe, I am convinced, directly abetted the destruction of Bosnia as a multinational state. And that's a damn shame.

If you parse Mr Burns carefully, you can argue that he isn't exactly wrong. Mostly he's making the point that today's Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq aren't going to make peace any time soon, which seems plain enough. Parenthetically he is acknowledging that the difference between Sunni and Shia "has its origins" in the seventh century, which is technically correct. But by highlighting the 1,400 years and using the phrase "so deeply rooted in history", he's strongly implying that the current war is about an age-old blood hatred going all the way back to the distant past, which it most assuredly is not.

You don't need to know much about Iraq history to figure this out; you merely need to have a passing familiarity with logical reasoning. Let us suppose this ancient hatred really exists and take Mr Burns' word for it that it was only "the weight of Saddam Hussein's terror" (which we so carelessly removed) that "had managed to suppress the schism". Well, OK, but Saddam was not in power for 1,400 years, now was he? What weight suppressed this awful schism for the other 1,360 years? Was General Qasim's milder terror in the 1960s just as weighty? Was it the Hashemite kings or their British sponsors who suppressed the schism under the bland monarchy that saw Iraq through the middle of the 20th century? Was the loose grip of distant Ottoman rule enough to suppress the schism for four centuries? Did wealth and prosperity suppress the schism during the glory days of the Abbasid caliphate when Baghdad was the center of the civilized world?

One needn't know the answers to all those questions to guess that this is not a 1,400-year-old war which we accidentally reignited by lifting the weight that had held it down for all that time.

I wrote this post mostly to gripe, but I suppose I can take a shot at being constructive as well. These questions really are the right ones to ask. The (partial) answers are that there was plenty of violence in Iraq in the 1960s. Gen Qasim's regime was never really stable, nor, in its later years, was the monarchy that preceded it. Ottoman rule, on the other hand, was quite stable. Yes, it was punctuated by occasional periods of war — just as nearly any part of the world is for any 400-year period — but for the most part, the various Sunni, Shia and other groups lived in peace. Ottoman rule, especially in distant provinces, employed local leaders. These leaders in Iraq coexisted in peaceful rivalry or sometimes even friendly cooperation.

This begs the question: What is different between that period and the modern period starting in the middle of the 20th century? Two things come quickly to mind: one is oil, and the other is the modern state. The two are related, of course. Many historians have observed the connection between the rise of nationalism and the modern state. One of my favorite historians, M.E. Yapp, has discussed it specifically with regard to the formerly Ottoman states in the 20th century.

In a pre-modern economy, it makes little difference if the language you speak or the religion you practice is not the same as that of the ruling elite. Your life is still going to center around your small, mostly agricultural community regardless. As the economy modernizes — and all the more so in a single-resource economy like an oil state — more and more of the nation's resources are funneled through the central bureaucracy. Consequently, the paths to success, or even just a decent existent, depend more and more on being part of the group in power.

The Sunni and Shia factions in Iraq aren't killing each other over a disagreement about whether the wicked Umayyads caliphs robbed Imam Ali of his rightful position as heir to the Prophet. They are killing each other over a disagreement about who gets to be in power.

7:49:39 PM  [permalink]  comment []