Monday, September 19, 2005
The New York Times and Cindy Sheehan's fraud
The New York Times has a very painful story this morning about the suffering of Iraq's Shiites at the hands of the Sunni mass murderers who slaughter them wholesale.
The rooms of the dead are mostly empty now. Their meager belongings are all that remain: A small pile of pickles wrapped in plastic. A bag of salt. Pairs of old shoes. Work shirts and towels draped on a coat rack in the corner.
The items, left in a hostel in the Kadhimiya neighborhood of Baghdad, belonged to poor Shiite day laborers who were killed Wednesday in a suicide bombing. The attacker lured them to his van with promises of work, then blew himself up, killing 114 people. It was this city's deadliest bombing since the American invasion and, it seemed to many, one of the cruelest.
That attack, and a string of others that have followed, all aimed at Shiites, have brought new vulnerability and dysfunction to the streets of Baghdad, the capital. For days, three of the four main roads leading in and out of Kadhimiya have been closed. Neighborhoods have been unusually quiet, as Shiites stay home, afraid to venture out. The violence has also reinforced a new reality of the war here: That Shiites are now paying the highest price in blood of any group in Iraq.
"Americans are not attacked anymore; it's the Shiites who suffer from these bombings," said a 40-year-old owner of a cigarette shop in front of the bombing site, who gave only his nickname, Abu Ali. "It is increasing now. Sometimes several in one day."
The fascists in Iraq are slaughtering innocent Shiites, and not just important Shiites. They are killing powerless day laborers for whom every day is a struggle. This is, in many respects, far more vile and pointless than beheading Western soldiers and civilians, even if it receives much less coverage in the Western press. It pains me to write this, but fairness demands that we credit the NYT with putting this story on the front page. That is far more coverage than most Western MSM gave to the slaughter of these poor bastards.
By now it is well known that al Qaeda in Iraq has declared a "total war" on the Shiites in the hope of igniting a civil war. Their spiritual leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, however, knows that this is a trap and has said that "if half of Iraq's Shiites were killed, it would not lead to a sectarian war." As long as Grand Ayatollah Sistani -- perhaps the wisest man in the Middle East right now -- lives, the Shiites will turn the other cheek (as it were). The 60% of Iraq that is Shia has joined the 20% that is Kurdish to build a new country, and they will not retaliate in kind, even as they run the mass murderers to ground.
It so happened that the next story I read this morning involved Cindy Sheehan's tour of New York, which yesterday involved busting Hillary Clinton's chops. The lede assumes into evidence the shallowest leftist cant:
Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq, last night brought her campaign to end the war to New York, where she accused Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of not doing enough to challenge the Bush administration's Iraq policies.
It is a fantasy of the left that the war in Iraq will end if the United States and the rest of the Coalition retreats. Cindy Sheehan promotes this idea, as does George Galloway -- he said as much during his debate with Christopher Hitchens on Wednesday night -- and the rest of the "surrender now" crowd. Whether or not one blames the United States for having created the conditions under which Sunni Arabs feel justified in murdered scores of poor Shia day laborers, it is insane to think that the killing will end if the United States withdraws. It is far more likely that the Shia will abandon the patience that has been possible with the help of American arms, however imperfect that help may have been, and the war will escalate.
American withdrawal cannot end the war in Iraq, and it is far more likely to make it worse. Cindy Sheehan's campaign is not "to end the war," which is not within her power, but to abandon the Shia and the Kurds and to retreat from a battle with al Qaeda. Sheehan cannot "campaign to end the war" anymore than she can campaign for an end to destructive hurricanes. If she were doing the latter the Times would point out that her objective is impossible, if it covered her all. It does not in this case because it is riven with leftists who agree with Cindy Sheehan, no matter what its own foreign correspondants might be reporting.
4 Comments:
By 
Dymphna, at
Mon Sep 19, 09:15:00 AM:
The fact that the NYT reports on the doings of Cindy Sheehan is a sign of their lack of gravitas. Doing so is no better than those fake videos of the Palestinians that Belmont Club talks about. Sheehan is a traveling circus; no one takes her seriously, especially and including the NYT. To make of her a useful idiot is to their shame...
...have you considered not reporting what they say?
By 
, at
Mon Sep 19, 12:25:00 PM:
Dear Mr. TigerHawk:
Mr. Sistani is preaching restraint, but the Shi'ites in Iraq are actually fighting back, just not in the media-friendly way that Al Qaeda would prefer. As both Strategypage and we report here and here, Shi'ite vigilantes are quietly persuading Iraq's Sunnis to fear them more than Al Qaeda. Thus, more Sunnis are cooperating in the counterinsurgency and taking up arms against Al Qaeda.
Iraq has become a media war. Al Qaeda wants a spectacular Shi'ite response in order to mobilize the global Sunni sect to their side. But the Shi'ites are doing their fighting off-camera.
Westhawk
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