Thursday, July 19, 2007

Rational Comments Today

This is one of those arguments that is more informative about the person making it than about the subject being argued. Someone who believes in identity politics will find it perfectly natural to think Sunni and Shia could never cooperate on anything. Nevermind that in the real world Baathism is literally the Arab branch of (atheist) Nazism, (sunni) Palestinian terrorists happily accepted sponsorship from the (atheist) Soviet Union, the USSR was succeeded in that role by (shiite) Iran, and extremists today are funded by Iran, (sunni) Saudi Arabia, and others with plenty of distinct ideologies, including a large if unintentional contribution from (atheist) Europe.
The 9/11 bombers were mostly Saudi and Egyptian as well. The irony is we devote all our attention to attacking the hostile regimes in Iraq, Syria and Iran - but the real terrorist threat comes from Islamists from our "allies" - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.