Repent At Leisure

Iraq is now effectively a Shi'ite-dominated country. The former Baathist regime of the dictator Saddam Hussein was that of a Sunni minority dominating a Shi'ite majority, and now the tables are turned. With the invasion of the Coalition of the Willing led by President George W. Bush's administration, it was the intention of the United States to convince the three principle groups in Iraq, the Sunni faction, the Shia, and the Kurds, to administer the country equally.

That uneasy collaboration appeared to be working fairly well, with the equal division of the executive lawmakers, but it took no longer than the departure of the U.S. troops and diplomats for it to disintegrate. That is, formally, for the divisions between the tribal Islamic sects were so severe and so fraught with suspicion and hatred they had convulsed previously in an eruption of psychopathic slaughter even while the Americans and their allied troops were still in the country.

Now, Iraq, under the total influence of its Shi'ite majority which has ignored the equality reassurance needs of the Sunnis, bringing it into the companionable sphere of influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has an incipient civil war simmering. The current administration of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted that U.S. troops leave; it was sufficiently disinterested in having any remain behind to refuse an agreement that would have them exempt from Iraqi prosecution as the U.S. demanded.

And now with the daily onslaughts against the Shia majority and the reciprocating attacks on the Sunni minority, the situation is getting out of hand and the administration has sent military emissaries to the tribal Sunni areas to try to persuade them to re institute the Northern Awakening militias to engage with the government. Those very same militias which had been armed and trained and supported by the U.S. military and whom the U.S. military brass had insisted that al Maliki absorb into the regular army, guaranteeing them equality and respect.

In response to which the opposite occurred. The Northern Awakening militias had been hugely successful in fending off the attacks by al-Qaeda in Iraq. They were as repulsed by the atrocities committed by the Sunni Islamist terrorists as were the Shi'ites, and precisely for the reason that al-Qaeda failed to differentiate between the sects, attacking both Shia and Sunni Iraqis randomly.

Travelling humbly recently to Washington to plead for aid in restoring peace and reconciliation to his country by the Americans, willing them to pledge treasury and intervention, Prime Minister al Maliki pleaded his case by insisting that the war in Syria had destabilized his country; not that he has permitted Iran to use Iraq as a handy route to distribute men and munitions to the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Act in haste, repent in leisure, Mr. al-Maliki seemed to be the response.

A double bombing targeting a Sunni Baghdad mosque and a handful of other attacks around the country killed a dozen people on Friday. Just after Friday prayers as worshippers left the Ali Bin Abi Talib mosque in Baghdad's Shurta district, and then a second bomb a bit down the street exploded mere seconds later, just in time to catch those running from the first blast. In Fallujah, gunmen opened fire on a security checkpoint.

A bomb exploded in the city of Mosul in a commercial street, killing five, wounding 20. Where previously it was attacks on Shi'ite targets that had become commonplace, often enough with the al-Qaeda signature of precision targeted suicide bombing, one after another, now it seems the Sunnis are being targeted increasingly. A series of earlier attacks across the country left 30 dead, mostly soldiers killed when two suicide bombers drove into a military base just north of Baghdad.

The Iraqi regime, it would appear, is facing an intractable situation of intensely bitter interactive hatred and determined obliteration of the enemy, fellow Muslims in a secular war of attrition.