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Rob, I'm glad to see you commenting here and hope you share your first hand knowledge here more often. Are you still in regular contact with others in Iraq or keeping up to date with the news? What are your best sources? Any of the TV news? I doubt it, right? Papers? Blogs? Or first hand info? This morning I'm feeling a little like the proverbial frog in the tepid water who doesn't notice it's boiling since the temp has risen slowly. It's a frog and a human thing, I suppose. When the Taliban blew up the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan I had a similar uneasy reaction. The world knew their intentions. They broadcast their plans well in advance. Cultural institutions pled with them not to but it was almost as if the otherwise impotent losers -- the Taliban -- wanted to mock the world with the only trick in their limited arsenal. Blowing up some ancient Buddhist works of art. People kill people all the time and there seems to always be some "good" reason for that. But the centerpieces of culture -- architecture and art and books -- their destruction has a more ominously symbolic message. It's more of a forecast of things to come. And I don't like it.
This Golden Dome business got me to dig out some of Josh's college textbooks from his Islamic history class. I'm left with this grim sense when I realize how incompatible Sunnism and Shiitism seems to be. The long time animosities that have never simmered down over the centuries even if it seemed not to affect us. How to reconcile a religion, which requires the primacy of the religion over all else including governance with a society that has differences even within the same religion. Since the dispute goes back to which sect was the TRUE inheritor of Mohammed's __________ (I don't even know what to call it) and since it was the cousin of Mohammed -- the martyr Ali -- buried in this blown apart mosque -- and since the followers of that branch of Islam, the Shiites, are all conscious of his ultimate symbolic importance, how could they NOT avenge themselves against the Sunni factions?
When you factor into the mix that no one has claimed responsibility, as is the favored post-explosion afterglow with your run-of-the-mill suicide bombing, it could also be a more secular bit of terrorism ala Zaraqawi who doesn't care whom he upsets as long as he is promulgating chaos. Oh, my head hurts.
And then I think about the lack of any central command within Islam. An imam here. A cleric there. A scholar over yonder.
And the whole deal with Iran's mullahs waiting for the return of the Lost Imam and the End Times. Meanwhile does it not go without saying that the president of Iran immediately blamed the destruction of the mosque on Israel and the US? I don't know. Some days it seems worse than others. Don't get me started on KASHMIR!!! Whadda mess. Whadda mess. Yes, no doubt Bush stirred up a hornet's nest. But I'm just not convinced the buzzing hives were going to quietly hum among themselves indefinitely. I used to say I didn't believe I'd live to see the end of this. Today I'm thinking I don't think your grandchildren's great-grandchildren will either. Generic "your." It's been a loooooooooong time coming and I really think we're seeing some of the downside of a poorly conceived philosophy. If only... Susan
“Half a truth is often a great lie.” Ben Franklin
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