Friends and Coups

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Nadezhda suggests an oft-neglected point in this post, which I’m taking slightly out of context. Right now, in Iraq at least, the operating assumption is that the Sunnis are our bitter foes, and Salafist groups like al-Qaeda pose an existential threat to the United States, while the Shiites are our friends and natural allies. That may turn out to be true: the Shiites could indeed spearhead a “reformist” element within Islam. On the other hand, no one can predict the future, and ten years down the line, it could be Shiites—perhaps backed by, oh I don’t know, Iran and our erstewhile allies in Iraq—that are attacking U.S. interests, the Sunnis our natural allies, and the CIA could be kicking itself for arming and training Shiite militias in Iraq. Who knows? It’s one of the reasons why arming one group to fight another always seems like a short-sighted and potentially disastrous idea. And that’s exactly why the neoconservatives opposed that sort of strategy. But then engaged in it anyway. Oh, whatever.

On a slightly different note, the Times is carrying this story about a Shiite coup in Baghdad today—SCIRI, one of the Shiite parties running the new government, ousted the mayor and installed one of its own militiamen. It’s a situation in which it’s hard to claim that the ousted mayor, installed as he was by coalition forces, somehow has more legitimacy than the thugs who ousted him; but, on the other hand, no one wants this sort of thing to become a regular feature of life in Iraq. On the other hand, it’s pretty clear that U.S. intervention in the matter would prove none too popular.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate