Over 120 dead today. Pray for the victims and their families. I hope this doesn’t turn the insurgency into a Sunni-Shi’ah civil war. The country is in bad enough condition as it is. Hopefully Sistani will issue a call for peace, and will be allowed and encouraged to do so. Hopefully Sadr won’t get any ideas in his head to launch the end of the world. Pray for peace.
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Say Thank You
Please drop a note to Sen. Boxer and say thanks for this.
Friedman on Sistani and the Nobel
See here. Friedman, like most commentators, acknowledges Sistani’s Shi’ism, but fails to understand what that means. “People power” as he describes is what the Ithna’shari conception of the state was/is prior to Khomeinism taking center stage. The idea of jurists leading the state, vilayat-e faqih, is a relatively new concept, but it’s already become normative for even op-ed writers who supposedly have the time to be able to think.
Bringing Iraq Home
As TPM notes, it seems like the London bombings were based on ideas developed in Iraq. As we’ve seen, it doesn’t match up exactly because the devices were crude with little chance of causing mass casualties had they gone off, thankfully they didn’t. Here’s my question, why did Afghanistan stay local? Why did the mujahidin stay in Afghanistan and not export themselves to the Soviet Union? Or, to put it another way, why is Iraq flowing past its borders? Is this simply Al-Qaeda ideology? Strike at the infidel? It just seems so ineffective if you want freedom for you Muslim…