RE: AP: Destruction of mosque pushes Iraq towards all-out civil war
Michael Pollak wrote:
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
Why would they want to do this? How are US and/or Israeli interests served by civil war in Iraq?
I think the question is rather Why do Iraqis (and Iranians, and other neighbors) leap to blame them? And the answer is because they want to damp down civil war. Blaming an external enemy is the perfect solution.
And as for why they immediately jump to choose this one, it’s because it’s the default framework in the middle east (kind of like Republicans always blame everything on liberals). They used to believe the British and the French were responsible for every sparrow that fell. Now they think it it’s the US and Israel. It’s a conspiracist mindset that grew out of historical experience. It wasn’t that long ago that every political action in the Middle East was determined by an offstage imperial conspiracy. And as far as their concerned, the entire creation of Israel was the result of a plan by outsiders.
That all makes sense, but why should western “leftists” parrot this unfortunate tendency?
Doug