Text 3038, 133 rader
Skriven 2006-11-01 00:47:00 av Bob Klahn (1:275/311)
     Kommentar till en text av Alan Hess
Ärende: Sistani in charge?
==========================
 AH> I find it ridiculous that Sistani has refused to meet with
 AH> any Americans.  He's been freed from Saddam Hussein by the
 AH> blood of our soldiers and the money of American taxpayers,
 AH> but we remain inferior infidels to him.  With him being
 AH> possibly the most powerful figure in Iraq, this does not
 AH> bode well for a future secular-type democracy in Iraq.

 Sistani appears to be a lot less powerful than that. He has
 recently announced he is removing himself from public affairs
 because the Iraqis are not listening to him.

 Oh, and how does the US get off trying to insist on a secular
 democracy? I support secular democracy. I believe in seperation
 of church and state. But I apply it to every country in the
 world, including the US. Yet it seems Bush doesn't agree with me
 on this.

 ...

 AH> washingtonpost.com
 ...

 AH> The question directed this week to the National Security
 AH> Council press office was straightforward: "Has the Grand
 AH> Ayatollah Ali Sistani met with any American official,
 AH> either military or civilian, since the U.S. invasion in
 AH> 2003?" The answer reveals the extent to which the Bush
 AH> administration is now, and always has been, out of its
 AH> depth in Iraq.

 Dang I can't argue with that.

 ...

 AH> a heavy hand. Sistani was on the receiving end of
 AH> assassination attempts by Hussein's thugs. But all that
 AH> changed in the spring of 2003, when the United States
 AH> toppled the Iraqi regime.

 ...

 AH> al-Maliki, serves as prime minister. Were it not for Iraq's
 AH> liberation from Hussein's tyranny by U.S. troops, Sistani
 AH> and his followers would still be under the thumb of Sunnis.

 And now they are under the thumb of near anarchy. Which is the
 worse despot?

 AH> The average Iraqi may not be happy to see the country
 AH> occupied by foreigners. But if any Iraqi should feel even a
 AH> tad kindly toward his American liberators, it ought to be
 AH> the grand ayatollah. After all, he is the chief beneficiary
 AH> of Hussein's defeat. It's not too much to think that if the

 Is he? Now he see his people being killed in numbers Saddam
 did not approach, possibly never, certainly in the years after
 the first Gulf War.

 ...

 AH> Frederick Jones, the NSC's communications director, said
 AH> yesterday that no American official has ever met Sistani.

 AH> But how, you might ask, can that be? After all, since
 AH> Hussein's statue was pulled down in 2003, Iraq has been

 By American forces, don't forget.

 ...

 AH> How is it possible that leaders of the world's most
 AH> powerful nation -- a country that has generously sent
 AH> 140,000 of its finest sons and daughters to fight, suffer
 AH> and die to free Iraq from the Baathist grip -- have not met

 If that were true, it might be a valid arguement. Freeing Iraq
 was never the point. It was all social engineering on a grand
 scale. If freedom was the point, Bremer would not have been
 running around rewriting the economy of Iraq as well as the
 politics.

 It's their country, that's the part the administration forgot.

 AH> It's because the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has designated
 AH> himself off-limits to Americans. He will not let Bush,
 AH> Cheney, Rice and company in to see him because they are
 AH> non-Muslims and thus he considers them to be kafir, or
 AH> infidels. Sistani regards himself as too good to meet with
 AH> those who freed him.

 Which is his right. Does Sistani have the right to demand that
 Bush meet with him?

 ...

 AH> Consider what happened in 2004: Barricaded in a Najaf slum
 AH> miles from Baghdad, the unseen Sistani was able
 AH> single-handedly to block the United States from staging a
 AH> handover of power without elections. He did so by issuing a

 That point alone makes Sistani's case. Apparently secular
 democracy was not a significan consideration to the
 administration.

 ...

 AH> husbands. His whole purpose is to promote Shiite theology
 AH> and keep Iraq as a democratic, but decidedly Islamic, state.
 AH> Billions spent, thousands of Americans dead or maimed, U.S.
 AH> armed forces
 AH> exhausted, stretched thin and working around the clock --
 AH> for that? Is this what George W. Bush had in mind?

 Nope. Nor was freedom for Iraq. Nor was secular democracy. At no
 time was the wellfare of the Iraqis a real consideration.

 If it was we might actually have had a chance.

 Other than that I tend to agree with him. Oh, and remember, with
 all that, with all his many defects, Sistani is still one of the
 better ones.

 Think on that and be afraid.

 The bad guys lost, but it wasn't the good guys who won, it was
 the monsters.

BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... Bush's strategy: "Leave our men in Iraq to fight and bleed and die."
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