26 October, 2005

My Shinola....dont worry you'll get it

Yeah okay so sometimes Christopher Hitchens is a stark raving loon and A can certainly, and happily, point out those parts where he is ass wrong, but other times he makes points of clarity so remarkable I end up hitting my head against a wall screaming "why didnt i think of that"...

Well, check out this little ditty from Hitchens on tribal distinctions in Iraq and how ignorant the media--and hence the rest of us--of it. As Hitchens rightly points out, discussions of the tribal division within Iraq are limited to the so-called big three--Sunnis, Shittes and Kurds. Except, as Hitchens points out, Kurds are in fact Sunni Muslims. You see, this is a "basket" with two apples and an orange [ everyone sing now "one of these things is not like the other ]....Sunni Shitte Kurd is in reality Sect Sect Ethnicity. Very similar to the situation in Bosnia, where the conflict as painted by the media was Serb, Croat and Muslim [here Ethnicity Ethincity Religion]. Money quote:

to be a Kurd is to be a member of a large non-Arab ethnicity as well as to be, in the vast majority of cases, a Sunni. Thus, by any measure of accuracy, the "Sunni" turnout in the weekend's referendum on the constitution was impressively large, very well-organized, and quite strongly in favor of a "yes" vote. Is that the way you remember it being reported?
See what I mean? The way its played out in the MSM, its the Kurds and Shittes vs. the Sunnis...but the reality is Kurdish Sunnis and Arab Shittes vs. Arab Sunnis. And, as Hitchens rightly points out, in talking about Iraq's tribal divisions we cannot leave out Iraqi Assyrians, Christians, Jews and Turkomen.

Anyway, read the article, its certainly eye-opening...lord knows Ive been guilty with the same thing.

Eve

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