Captain Ed notes that Maliki is promising a major crackdown on militias. That’s especially tricky considering that it’s going to put him in direct conflict with the Sadrists. But that was a confrontation that was going to happen sooner or later.
I wish him luck. If he fails, or proves to be unserious, the ramifications will be hugely negative.
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I still doubt we’ll see a major move on Shia militias.
The media, which is oddly pro-Sunni, tends to claim the Shia are as responsible, if not more so, than the Sunni terrorists for the current situation. I doubt Maliki or most Shia see it that way; they sat back and turned the other cheek (so to speak) for quite some time, and the Shia death squads generally aren’t targeting women and children in markets.
If the car bombs start to ebb and the militias don’t let up, maybe we’ll see some action. More than likely though, they’ll just target the worst offenders now and then.
I was sure there must be some appropriate expression in Arabic, aside from al-taqiyya, that explains the way Arabs — or nations that have adopted in part Arab culture — consistently use dissimulation to others, either for purposes either of perceived protection from danger or in order to increase their sense of power in relation to others.
And I think I found it; “al-tauriyya” refers to lies that applie to relatively unimportant things, such as (in the example I read on someone’s comment that I googled up) a man adding an extra zero to a $50 price tag on a dress he bought for his wife. In other words, lying in order to reduced social unpleasantness.
Pervasive lying in all relationships with friends as well as strangers are cultural characteristics that bar me from believing any statement spoken or written statement by Arabs who have not joined some western culture such as ours, and thereby learned that lying is a symptom of a disease that destroys trust between people, businesses, nations and governments.
And therefore the very qualities that cause me to admire and attempt to emulate american presidents such as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, and Ronald Reagan, cause me to view the promises made to the United States government by Maliki of once and possibly future Iraq with my lips curled in a slight sneer of unbelief.
As a loyal American who has served his country a very long time ago, I want the United States to emerge from the Iraq conflict victoriously and with a sense of having accomplished something useful in compensation for the lives and material resources otherwise squandered on behalf of our participation.
Therefore, Dean, like you, I sincerely wish to see Mr Maliki disarm the militias of Sadr and others the presently feed the iraqi conflict and keep the people there from building a peaceful and productive society.
I think you have invested a great deal of personal emotion on the proposition that Arab leaders and governments can be dealt with more or less in the manner that we deal with, say the leaderships of Norway, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom and the rest of our northwest European cultural kinsmen. At least that is what I deduce over the past couple of years from the topics to which you have steered much of the discussion in Dean’s World.
And I can sincerely say I hope you are right. Because I am neither vengeful, stupid, nor desirous of everything in the Middle East winding up in a nuclear war.
But I commit not one drop of emotion into any expectation this desired action shall take place, in full or perhaps even in part.
As President Reagan once told General Secretary Gorbachev back in the 1980s, the best way to handle such situations is by trust backed up by verification. And when dealing with sons of the various arab cultures, I would say that the proportion of verification to trust should be something at the level of two to one.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
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