Scott Ritter: Calling Out Idiot America
By Scott Ritter
03/24/07 "ICH
' -- -- The ongoing hand-wringing in Congress by
the newly empowered Democrats over what to do about the war in
Iraq speaks volumes about the level of concern (or lack thereof)
these “representatives of the people” have toward the men and
women who honor us all by serving in the armed forces of the
United States of America. The inability to reach consensus
concerning the level of funding required or how to exercise
effective oversight of the war, both constitutionally mandated
responsibilities, is more a reflection of congressional
cowardice and impotence than a byproduct of any heartfelt
introspection over troop welfare and national security.
The issues that prompt the congressional collective to behave in
such an egregious manner have more to do with a reflexive
tendency to avoid any controversy that might disrupt the status
quo ante regarding representative-constituent relations (i.e.,
re-election) than with any intellectual debate about doing the
right thing. This sickening trend is bipartisan in nature, but
of particular shame to the Democrats, who obtained their
majority from an electorate that expressed dissatisfaction with
the progress of the war in Iraq through their votes, demanding
that something be done.
Sadly, Congress’ smoke-and-mirrors approach to the Iraq war
creates the impression of much activity while generating no
result. Even more sadly, the majority of Americans are falling
for the act, either by continuing their past trend of political
disengagement or by thinking that the gesticulation and
pontification taking place in Washington, D.C., actually
translate into useful work. The fact is, most Americans are
ill-placed intellectually, either through genuine ignorance, a
lack of curiosity or a combination of both, to judge for
themselves the efficacy of congressional behavior when it comes
to Iraq. Congress claims to be searching for a solution to Iraq,
and many Americans simply accept that this is this case.
The fact is one cannot begin to search for a solution to a
problem that has yet to be accurately defined. We speak of
“surges,” “stability” and “funding” as if these terms come close
to addressing the real problems faced in Iraq. There is
widespread recognition among members of Congress and the
American people that there is civil unrest in Iraq today, with
Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence tearing that country apart, but the
depth of analysis rarely goes beyond that obvious statement of
fact. Americans might be able to nod their heads knowingly if
one utters the words Sunni, Shiite and Kurd, but very few could
take the conversation much further down the path of genuine
comprehension regarding the interrelationships among these three
groups. And yet we, the people, are expected to be able to hold
to account those whom we elected to represent us in higher
office, those making the decisions regarding the war in Iraq.
How can the ignorant accomplish this task? And ignorance is not
something uniquely attached to the American public. Rep.
Silvestre Reyes, the newly appointed chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, infamously failed a pop quiz in which
journalist Jeff Stein asked him to differentiate between Sunni
and Shiite. Reyes has become the poster boy for congressional
stupidity, but in truth he is not alone. Very few of his
colleagues could pass the test, truth be told.
The task of holding Congress to account is a daunting one, and
can be accomplished only if the citizenry that forms the
respective constituencies of our ignorant congressional
representatives are themselves able to operate at an
intellectual capacity above that of those they are holding to
account. So rather than issue “pop quizzes” to our elected
representatives, I’ve designed one for us, the people. If the
reader can fully answer the question raised, then he or she
qualifies as one capable of pointing an accusatory finger at
Congress as its members dither over what to do in Iraq. If the
reader fails the quiz, then there should be an honest appraisal
of the reality that we are in way over our heads regarding this
war, and that it is irresponsible for anyone to make sweeping
judgments about the ramifications of policy courses of action
yet to be agreed upon. Claiming to be able to divine a solution
to a problem improperly defined is not only ignorant but
dangerously delusional.
So here is the quiz: Explain the relationship between the Iraqi
cities of Karbala and Baghdad as they impact the coexistence of
Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni populations.
Most respondents who have a basic understanding of Iraq will
answer that Karbala is a city of significance to Iraq’s Shiite
population. Baghdad is Iraq’s capital, with a mixed Sunni and
Shiite population. If that is your answer, you fail.
Karbala is a holy city for the Shiites. Its status as such is
based on the fact that Hussein, a grandson of the prophet
Muhammad and son of Ali, the fourth caliph, was killed outside
Karbala in a battle between Hussein’s followers and forces loyal
to Yazid, son of Muawiyah, the fifth caliph. The two sides were
fighting over the line of succession when it came to leading the
Muslim faithful after the death of Muhammad in the year 632. Abu
Bakr, a close colleague of Muhammad but not a member of
Muhammad’s biological family, was elected as the first caliph
after the prophet’s death, an act that many Muslims believed
broke faith with a necessity for the successor of Muhammad to be
from his family. Abu Bakr’s death brought about a quick
succession of caliphs, all of whom met untimely deaths and none
of whom were from the family line of Muhammad.
When Ali was elected as the fourth caliph, many Muslims believed
that for the first time since the death of Muhammad the
caliphate had been restored to one properly authorized in the
eyes of God to lead the Muslim faith. In fact, upon Ali’s
accession as caliph, one of his first acts was to seek to
restore the Muslim faith to its puritanical origins, which Ali
believed had been departed from by the merchant families closely
allied with the third caliph, Othman. Ali’s efforts were
bitterly resisted by merchant families in Damascus, which
refused to recognize Ali as the caliph. The head of the Damascus
rebels, Muawiyah, fought a bitter conflict with Ali, which
weakened the caliphate and paved the way for Ali’s
assassination.
Upon Ali’s death, the caliphate was transferred to his elder
son, Hassan, but when this succession was challenged by Muawiyah,
Hassan relented, transferring the caliphate to Muawiyah with the
caveat that once Muawiyah died, the caliphate would be returned
to the lineage of the prophet Muhammad. When Muawiyah died, the
caliphate passed to his son, Yazid. This succession was
challenged by Hussein, Hassan’s brother and Ali’s younger son,
who believed that the succession, as dictated by Hassan when he
abdicated, should have gone to someone within the direct line of
the prophet Muhammad, namely Hussein. Yazid’s treacherous attack
on Hussein and his followers, occurring as it did during prayer
time, set the stage for the split in the Muslim faith between
the Shiat Ali (Shia, or followers of Ali) and the Ahl-i Sunnah
(Sunni, or the people who follow in the custom of the prophet
Muhammad). Both Shiite and Sunni view one another as deviants
from the pure form of Islam as taught by Muhammad, and as such
functioning as apostates deserving death.
If you answered the quiz on Karbala in the above fashion, you
would still be wrong. The split between Sunni and Shiite goes
beyond simple hatred for one another. Not only did the religion
split, but so too did the methodology of governance as well as
the interrelationship between religion and politics.
There was a final chance at achieving unity within the Muslim
world. In the year 750, at the battle of Zab in Egypt, nearly
the entire aristocracy formed from the lineage of Muawiyah was
annihilated when the Damascus-based caliphate clashed with
predominantly Shiite rebels. Jaffar, a Shiite spiritual leader
and the great-grandson of Hussein, was supposed to be elevated
to the caliphate, thereby uniting the Muslim world, but was
instead murdered by Al-Mansur, who established the Abbasid
caliphate in Baghdad. This final treachery created a permanent
split between the Shiites and those who became known as Sunnis.
The Shiite faithful embraced rule by imams, infallible leaders
who provide guidance over spiritual and political affairs.
According to the majority of Shiites, there are 12 imams,
originating with Ali. The 12th imam, also named Muhammad, is
believed by many Shiites to be the Mahdi, or savior, who went
into hiding at God’s command and will return at the end of days
to bring salvation to the faithful. With the passing of the 12th
imam, matters of spiritual and political concerns were dealt
with by religious scholars, or the ulema. These scholars are
products of religious academies, known as “hawza.” In Iraq, the
city of Najaf is home to the most important hawza, the Hawza
Ilmiya. Each hawza produces religious scholars, or “marjas,” who
interpret religion and provide guidance over social matters to
those who rally around their particular teachings.
The Najaf Hawza currently has four marjas, or grand ayatollahs,
each of whom reigns supreme when it comes to matters of religion
or state. The faithful look to their hawza for guidance in all
they do, and the sermons given by the various marjas take on a
significance little understood by those who aren’t born and bred
into that society. To speak of creating a unified Iraqi state
without factoring in the reality of the hawza and its competing
marjas is tantamount to claiming one will seek to fly without
factoring in the realities of lift and gravity.
So if you answered the question concerning the city of Karbala
with anything remotely resembling an insight into not only the
schism that exists between the Sunni and the Shiite but also how
the development of the practice of the Shiite faith has led to
an absolute insinuation of religious dogma into every aspect of
social and political life in a manner that operates
independently of any so-called central state authority, you
would get a passing grade, enabling you to move on to the next
city covered by the pop quiz: Baghdad.
It is not only the Shiites who are bound by religious ties
seemingly indecipherable to the West. From the chaos that was
created with the Islamic schism came a very fluid situation in
the development of Sunni Islamic dogma, with the Sunnis
embracing a notion of consensus among the historical Muslim
community, a line of thinking that led to the creation of four
so-called legal schools of Islamic thought (the Maliki, the
Hannafi, the Hanbali and the Shafi’i). These schools produced
Islamic scholars who in turn competed for a constituency of
followers. While in theory Sunni scholars preached adherence to
the customs of the prophet Muhammad, in practice the Sunni
schools became intertwined in the affairs of state and business.
This deviation from the pure practice of faith led to the growth
of “mystic societies” known as Sufism. Sufi brotherhoods sprang
up throughout the Muslim world, each preaching its own mystical
path toward achieving personal growth through the teachings of
the prophet Muhammad.
The Abbasid caliphate, which oversaw this period of religious
“softening,” in which the pure practice of Islam gave way to a
more secular tolerance of the baser concerns of man, was
centered in Baghdad. It was the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols
in 1258 that signaled not only the end of the Abbasid caliph’s
rule but the certification in the eyes of some Sunni faithful
that Abbasid’s ruin was brought about by the lack of pure faith
in Islam by those professing to be Muslim. One of the basic
tenants of the Sunni faith was the notion of community
consensus, or “taqlid.” Taqlid was actively practiced by three
of the four “legal” schools of Sunni thought. The sole exception
was the school of the Hanbali, which followed a stricter
interpretation of the faith. A Hanbali religious jurist, Ibn
Taymiya, rose to prominence in the aftermath of the Mongol
invasion. He held not only that the Mongols were an enemy of
Islam but that the Shiite Islamic state that emerged in Persia
after the Mongol conquest was likewise anathema.
More important, Ibn Taymiya broke ranks with the rest of the
Sunni community, especially those who practiced Sufism,
declaring all to be an affront to God. Ibn Taymiya rejected the
notion of community consensus represented in the taqlid and
instead professed that a true Muslim state could exist only
where the political leader governed as a partner with the
religious leader, and was subordinated to the religious through
strict adherence to the “sharia,” or religious law. The Muslim
jurists, or “ulema,” held total sway over society, to the extent
that even matters pertaining to war were reserved for the
religious leader, or imam, who was the only person authorized to
declare a jihad.
During the Abbysid caliph, the term jihad had taken on the
connotation of inner struggle. This interpretation gained wide
acceptance with the spread of the Sufi brotherhoods, which were
all about inner discovery. Ibn Taymiya rejected this notion of
jihad, instead proclaiming that true jihad involved a relentless
struggle against the enemies of Islam. For a while his teachings
were popular, especially when they were being used to encourage
the forces of Sunni Islam confronting the infidel Mongol
invaders. However, his strict interpretation of Hanbali tenets
were rejected even by other Hanbali religious scholars, and Ibn
Taymiya himself was branded a heretic.
The teachings of Ibn Taymiya continued to be taught in certain
Hanbali circles, including those operating in the holy city of
Medina. It was here, in the 18th century, that a Arab Bedouin
from the Nejd desert, in what is today Saudi Arabia, named
Muhammed al-Wahhab emerged to create a movement that not only
embraced the teachings of Ibn Taymiya but took them even
further, preaching a virulent form of Islam that claimed to seek
to bring the faithful back to the religion as practiced by the
prophet Muhammad himself. Wahhab’s movement, known as the Call
to Unity, reflected his strict interpretation of Islam as set
forth in his book Kitab al-Tawhid, or the Book of Unity.
At first Wahhab was rejected by the Sunni scholars, and he was
hounded and finally forced to take refuge in the tiny village of
Dariya. There Wahhab befriended the local governor, Muhammed Ibn
Saud, initiating what was to become a partnership in which the
Saud family took on the role of emir, or political leader, while
Wahhab became imam, or religious leader. The team of Bedouin
warrior and Islamic fanatic soon led to what would become known
as the Wahhabi conquest, bringing much of what is now
present-day Saudi Arabia under their strict religious rule. In
1802 a Wahhabi army attacked Karbala and sacked the sacred
Shiite shrine to Hussein. In 1803 the Wahhabis sacked Mecca,
laying waste to the most holy sites in the Islamic world,
including the Great Mosque. In 1804 the Wahhabis captured
Medina, looted the tomb of the prophet Muhammad and shut off the
hajj, or pilgrimage, to all non-Wahhabis. The rise of the
Wahhabi empire was seen as a threat to all Islam, and soon a
massive counterattack was mounted by the caliphate in Egypt. By
1818 the Wahhabis had been destroyed in battle, and everyone
professing Wahhabism was treated as an apostate and butchered.
The head of the Saud tribe was captured and beheaded, along with
many of his fellow tribesmen.
Deep in the Arab deserts, a small number of Saudi tribesmen,
strict adherents to Wahhabism, survived the Egyptian onslaught
and began the struggle to regain their lost power. By 1924 the
Wahhabis once again controlled Mecca and Medina, and by 1932 a
new nation, Saudi Arabia, emerged from the Arabian deserts,
governed by the house of Saud and with religious affairs totally
in the hands of the Wahhabis.
To the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia there were two great sources of
religious heretics: the Shiites, who ruled in Iran and
represented a majority population in several Arab nations,
including Iraq, and worse still, the Sunni Arabs, who rejected
the true path as represented by the teachings of Wahhab. The
puritanical form of Islam pushed by the Wahhabis was difficult
to export, however, until the oil crisis of 1973, after which
the Saudi government was able to fund the printing of Wahhabi
literature and training of Wahhabi missionaries. In Iraq, there
was some attraction to the puritanical teachings of Wahhabism
among the Bedouin of the western deserts. However, with the rise
to power of Saddam Hussein, Wahhabism and those who proselytized
in its name were treated as enemies of the state. Wahhabism was
still practiced in the shadows of Sunni mosques throughout Iraq,
but anyone caught doing so was immediately arrested and put to
death.
Wahhabi concerns over the weakening of the Muslim world by those
who practiced anything other than pure Islam were certified in
the minds of the faithful when, in April 2003, American soldiers
captured Baghdad in what many Wahhabis viewed as a repeat of the
sack of the city at the hands of the Mongols in 1258. Adding
insult to injury, the role of Iraq’s Shiites in aiding and
abetting the American conquest was seen as proof positive that
the only salvation for the faithful could come at the hands of a
pure form of the Islamic faith, that of Wahhabism. As the
American liberation dragged on into the American occupation, and
the level of violence between the Shiites and Sunnis grew, the
call of jihad as promulgated by the Wahhabis gained increasing
credence among the tribes of western Iraq.
The longer the Americans remain in Iraq, the more violence the
Americans bring down on Iraq, and the more the Americans are
seen as facilitating the persecution of the Sunnis by the
Shiites, the more legitimate the call of the Wahhabi fanatics
become. While American strategists may speak of the rise of al-Qaida
in Iraq, this is misrecognition of what is really happening.
Rather than foreigners arriving and spreading Wahhabism in Iraq,
the virulent sect of Islamic fundamentalism is spreading on its
own volition, assisted by the incompetence and brutality of an
American occupation completely ignorant of the reality of the
land and people it occupies. This is the true significance of
Baghdad, and any answer not reflecting this will be graded as
failing.
A pop quiz, consisting of one question in two parts. Most
readers might complain that it is not realistic to expect
mainstream America to possess the knowledge necessary to achieve
the level of comprehension required to pass this quiz. I agree.
However, since the mission of the United States in Iraq has
shifted from disarming Saddam to installing democracy to
creating stability, I think it only fair that the American
people be asked about those elements that are most relevant to
the issue, namely the Shiite and Sunni faithful and how they
interact with one another.
It is sadly misguided to believe that surging an additional
20,000 U.S. troops into Baghdad and western Iraq will even come
close to redressing the issues raised in this article. And if
you concur that the reality of Iraq is far too complicated to be
understood by the average American, yet alone cured by the
dispatch of additional troops, then we have a collective
responsibility to ask what the hell we are doing in that country
to begin with. If this doesn’t represent a clarion call for
bringing our men and women home, nothing does.
Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984
to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991
to 1998. He is the author of numerous books, including “Iraq
Confidential” (Nation Books, 2005) and “Target Iran” (Nation
Books, 2006).
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