As Mideast scholar Fred Halliday teaches, the term “ancient hatreds” should always be viewed with suspicion. Making the case for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, Oregon GOP Senator Gordon Smith told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:
You know, this is a fight, when you get right down to the root of it, between Sunnis and Shias — it goes back a millennia of time — over who is the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed. That is not our fault. That is not our fight. And that’s not something we can fix.
I agree that the Iraq mess is not something the U.S. can fix. But in this TNR column, aptly titled “We Broke It,” Peter Beinart debunks Smith’s increasingly popular view:
Shia and Sunni Iraqis are not turning on one another because of ancient, primordial hatreds. They’re turning on one another because when the state fails in its most basic task–keeping you alive–you turn to any entity that can.
[…]
For most of the twentieth century, while Kurds mourned the state they were denied after World War I, relations between Iraqi Sunnis and Shia were good and national identity was strong.
[…]
“Iraq is not the Balkans,” insisted Phebe Marr, author of The Modern History of Iraq, in April 2003. “There really isn’t traditional enmity or hostility between Sunni and Shiite communities.”
Mind you, Beinart is no Saddam apologist. It is clear that Saddam’s persecution of the Shia, and his privileging of a narrow Sunni elite, laid the groundwork for the current bloodletting. But Beinart’s rejoinder to the “ancient hatreds” meme bears repeating again and again:
[W]e should, at least, have the decency to acknowledge that it was Americans (not Iraqis) who bore the responsibility under international law to provide security after Americans (not Iraqis) overthrew Saddam. It was we who failed and then handed Iraqi politicians the poisoned chalice of a government that did not sit atop a state.
So, to return to Senator Smith’s statement above: “That is not our fault.” Yes, it is.
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