I received the following comment on the Townhall.com site to my latest column, “al Qaeda Democrats“…

You show why Iraq will sink McCain
Newsflash, none of the events of the last few days has anything to do with al-Queda. The parties involved are all Shiite. Recents events have exposed the canard that the Iraq mission is about the WOT, it is a civil war, and we are now taking sides with the faction most strongly connected to the Iranians.

Note to people issuing criticism: Should you wish to nitpick my commentary, please make sure I can’t do so in return. As I am expected to know the difference between a Sunni and Shiite, I would expect the person issuing criticism to know how to spell “al Qaeda”.

All pettiness aside, while the Shiites (led by Muqtada al-Sadr) hates the guts of the Sunni Arabs we’ve allied with, and while al Qaeda is mostly made up of Sunnis, the whole area comes down to one messed up dynamic. Who are our friends today, and will they remain friends tomorrow?

I could have spent the first hundred words or so doing review on the different factions involved, but one must also note that I am not just preaching to the choir. There are readers out there who vehemently disagree with my politics and (for example), many believe there is no difference between a Republican and Democrat. Tell me how I then go about explaining the difference between a Sunni and Shiite, as well as the tendencies of players in that regions switching sides against the common foe of the day, usually US?

Today I wrote of al Qaeda in general, and cited an AP story as an example of the uptick in violence in Iraq that may spread as we get closer to our presidential election. Sure, it’s al-Sadr’s boys today, but it would be naive to think al Qaeda is out of the game and not plotting future attacks against U.S. soldiers tomorrow. If al-Sadr’s Shiites ramp it up as well, wouldn’t that technically put them both on the same side, maybe even reaching some unholy alliance just so their mutual interests can be achieved? In that part of the world, anything is possible.

So while John McCain was technically wrong about the players and was summarily pounced on by the Democrat candidates and their operatives, the joke may end up being on the smart-asses who believe the Middle East teams are as well defined as the Yankees and Red Sox.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Bob Parks, Politics, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.