Today’s bombings: in Pakistan and in Iraq…
These were aimed at Shiites attending religious festivals, and were presumably detonated by or at the behest of Sunnis.
In Pakistan, Sunnis are the majority, in Iraq, the Shiites hold sway.
These religion-based civil wars appear to be beyond our control, and certainly beyond the control of the local governments.
It’s difficult to square our national security strategy in these regions, which is essentially to keep Islamic terrorists from attacking in the West, with the reality on the ground in places where terrorists live: there aren’t any jobs, village life is more or less medieval, and the populations are easy targets for the ravings and the bombs of religious fanatics.
No amount of soldiers will change the situation, and it’s very unlikely that weak and corrupt governments can do anything more than pursue containment in those regions they tenuously control.
What’s frustrating and depressing about all this is that these problems don’t get discussed by our political leaders.
They seem stuck on either fear (“they’ll be attacking by July!”) or on anger (“we’ll show these ragwearers a thing or two!”).
And they certainly want to do anything to avoid admitting that we don’t have a clue about what’s going on in Iraq, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or that the threat a few thousand fifth-rate terrorists pose to our way of life is extremely minimal.
We’re not winning anything, we’re not nation building, and we’re not promoting democracy: we’re essentially a marginal player in a religious civil war.
Gorilla says: “It’s their fight, not ours, and so far they want to keep fighting!”
