THE REAL SURGE AND THE PHONY CIVIL WAR

The Traitor Media and their Democrat allies are so fond of chanting the mantra of "the civil war in Iraq."  Google "civil war" plus "Iraq" and you'll get 3,800,000 hits.  Barack Hussein "The Apostate" Obama and other lefty Senators condemn Bush for sending Americans to "die in someone else's civil war."

The truth is that there is no civil war in Iraq.  A real civil war is two armies or armed militias fighting each other for control of a government or country.  They fight each other.  This is exactly what Sunni and Shia terrorists are not doing.  They are engaged in committing terrorist atrocities upon each other's civilian population.

What is going on in Iraq is terrorism, pure and unadulterated.  You can call it "sectarian" terrorism and violence, but it's not civil war.  Neither Sunni-Baathist-AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) terrorists nor Shia-Moqtada terrorists are fighting to topple the elected Maliki government and seize governmental power.  Neither is fighting the other.

The real civil war in the Middle East is some distance to the west of Iraq.  It's between Arabs all right, but not Arab Iraqis – Arab Palestinians.  Two Palestinian armies, Hamas and Fatah, armed to the teeth are fighting and slaughtering each other, both claim to represent and are struggling for legitimate government power. 

This is a real civil war and it's getting worse.  It's made possible by a Shia government – Iran – funding Hamas, a Sunni terrorist gang.  Just as that same bunch of Shia mullahs in Tehran funds the Sunni terrorists of AQI in Iraq.  So much for the "ancient enmity" of Shias and Sunnis.

There is no "ancient" enmity because Shiism itself isn't.  All the legends of it being founded as Shia'at Ali, the Party of Ali, the husband and first cousin of Mohammed's daughter, Fatima (for all his wives, Mo had no sons), the defeat of Ali's son (thus Mohammed's grandson) Hussein at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD at the hands of Abu Bakr, founder of Sunni Islam – are just that.  Legends, mythology.

The only – only – evidence for the Battle of Karbala that supposedly founded Shiism, for example, is a manuscript of a Hisham Al-Kalbi who died in 826, or 146 years after the battle.  It consists of notes of conversations he had with an Abi Mikhnaf, who died in 774 and said he talked with participants in the battle when they were very old.

That's it, folks, all the evidence there is for Shiism, no first-hand or independent accounts, just third-hand hearsay by anti-Sunni axe-grinders.

Shiism was actually invented by a 15 year-old kid in Persia some 500 years ago.  At the time he was born in 1487 in what is now northwestern Iran, Persia had long since ceased to exist. 

Seized by Arab conquerors in the mid-7^th century, wiped out by the Mongols in the mid-13^th century, wiped out again by a Central Asia horde led by Tamerlane in the late 14^th century, by the late 15^th century Persia had been carved up by the Ottoman Turks, Uzbek Khans, and various local tribal warlords.

Although this kid wasn't Persian but ethnic Azeri (a Turkic people), at age 15 he declared himself to be Shah Ismail I of Persia, a descendant of Ali and Fatima (and therefore of Mohammed), and proclaimed a state religion, Shi'at Ali, opposed to the orthodox Sunni (the Path) Islam of the Ottomans.

By the time he was 23 in 1510, he had kicked out the Ottomans, Uzbeks, and warlords, and with his anti-Sunni version of Islam, glued Persia back together again – which included most of present-day Iraq with Baghdad and the "holy cities" of Najaf and Karbala.

In other words, Ismail I invented Shia Islam as a rationale for re-inventing Persia.

For the next 400 years until the breakup of the Ottoman Empire with World War I, the major struggle within Islam was between the Shia Persians  and the Sunni Ottoman Turks.  The Arabs were part of the Ottoman Empire and on the sidelines. No one cared about them. 

No one had cared about the Arabs since 1258, when their capital of Baghdad was razed to rubble and their entire civilization demolished by the Mongols.  (See The Real Crusaders, which also contains a concise history of all eight Crusades, none with which did the Arabs have anything to do.)

The only reason anyone started caring about Arabs in the 20^th century was all the oil underneath the sand where they lived.  Thus this Arab Sunni vs. Persian Shia hatred and rivalry is of modern origin.  And we needn't be suckered into it.

Any more than we should be suckered into a civil war between Palestinian savages.  (Well, OK, I don't mind us giving money to Fatah so they can stave off defeat by Hamas and the civil war prolonged thereby.)  The more they fight each other the less they can fight Israel.

The problem of what the left wants to call "civil war" in Iraq is its sponsor, the terror masters in Iran. 

And they are the real targets of Bush's "surge" so stupidly and pointlessly being denounced and debated in Congress.

Senators and Congressistas and the Media are all focused on the 21,000 extra troops to be positioned mostly in downtown Baghdad.  But that's really a diversion, a small part of the full surge.

The single most powerful concentration of military force in the world today is a US Navy Carrier Group.  There's one in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Iran right now, led by the USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier, plus a guided missile cruiser, two guided missile destroyers, an attack submarine, and various supply ships.

A second Carrier Group led by the USS Stennis will be in the Persian Gulf shortly.  Two entire Carrier Groups on Iran's doorstep.  But wait, there's more!

Two Expeditionary Strike Groups led by the amphibious assault ships USS Boxer and USS Bataan, carrying 4,000 Marines and equipped to insert them into enemy territory by helicopter and hovercraft, are now also in the Persian Gulf – accompanied by two more attack submarines (a total of four).

This utterly staggering assemblage of overwhelming firepower is being readied to take Iran down – and Senators are blathering about a troop increase from 137,000 to 158,000?

Bush is out to win, folks.  To win in Iraq he has to shut down Iran.  He hopes his armada will precipitate a regime change as we discussed in The Coming Coup in Iran last month through intimidation.  But he's ready to pull the trigger if intimidation alone doesn't work.

(Hint:  the pathetic posturing of the mullahs in threatening today (2/8) to "strike US interests all over the world" is a clear indication that they are panicking and the intimidation is working.)

That's the real surge – and that's how Bush intends to end the phony civil war in Iraq.