Juan Cole: Apocalypse II in Samarra("Folks, this is very bad news")

[RedEarth]

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Apocalypse II in Samarra
US Kills 6 at National Dialogue Front Office

CBS/AP report that an angry crowd of Sunni Arab demonstrators in the northern city of Samarra, protesting Saddam's execution, broke "broke the locks off the badly damaged Shiite Golden Dome mosque and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the executed former leader."

Folks, this is very bad news. The Askariyah Shrine (it isn't just a mosque) is associated with the Hidden Twelfth Imam, who is expected by Shiites to appear at the end of time to restore the world to justice. (For them, the Imam Mahdi is sort of like the second coming of Christ for Christians). The Muqtada al-Sadr movement is millenarian and believes he will reveal himself at any moment.

The centrality of the cult of the Twelfth Imam, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad who is said to have vanished in 873 AD, helps explain why the bombing of the Golden Dome on February 21 of 2006 set off a frenzy of Shiite, Sadrist attacks on Sunni Arabs. Last February, stuck in a Phoenix hotel because of a missed flight and without an internet connection for my laptop, I blogged from my Treo that it was an apocalyptic day. Sadly, it was, kicking off a frenzy of sectarian violence that has grown each subsequent month.

For Sunni Arabs to parade a symbolic coffin of Saddam through the ruins of the Askariya shrine won't be exactly good for social peace in Iraq.

http://www.juancole.com/2007/01/apocalypse-ii-in-samarra-us-kills-6-at.html

[High Plains]

1. The shit is falling apart in Iraq...

...but let's talk about Gerald Ford.

[judaspriestess]

2. isn't juan cole a repuke shill??

why all the worry now?

[rodeodance]

3. NO, he is not

[Jacobin]

4. Uhm, NO

Not at all.
His blog is excellent, but because he sometimes takes Israel to task over its treatment of Palestinians, some on DU consider him to be a heretic.

His writings and predictions on Iraq have been spot on

[cali]

7. What?!

I don't know where on earth you got that idea, but if you want insights into the mideast, I recommend commencing reading Juan Cole.

[quiet.american]

8. It's probably Juan *Williams* you're thinking of -- he fits the bill. :) n/t

[Morgana LaFey]

10. No, he doesn't

He's definitely on the left, tho perhaps not as far left as we'd like. He IS, after all, a journalist and IMO they've pretty much all been infected with the Bush/GOP "complicity" virus.

[quiet.american]

11. Shades of "far left" aside, it was probably Juan Williams, instead of Juan Cole. n/t

[blogslut]

14. I vote for John Cole

He runs the blog "Balloon Juice" and it's pretty wingnutty.

[quiet.american]

17. On that note, maybe it was Natalie Cole. :) n/t

[aikoaiko]

5. Yeah, I foresee the new strategy on the WOT to be poking the

Sunnis and Shiites into ongoing regional warfare.

[Junkdrawer]

9. Um..doesn't that date back to at least the 80s....

When we gave Saddam the chemical weapons and intelligence to attack Iran?

Seems like the same-old same-old to me...

[cali]

6. bad, bad news.

And completely unsurprising. That said, I really think that millenarian eschatology, whatever flavor it comes in, is a huge danger to humanity.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Behind the Aegis]

13. Are you fucking kidding me?!

That site is a plethora of anti-Semitic BULLSHIT! What a fucking load!

[leveymg]

16. That article is widely-referenced. e.g., Jim Lobe in Alternet writes:

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/15413/

Bush's Axis of Upheaval

By Jim Lobe, AlterNet. Posted March 18, 2003.

SNIP

(T)he prospect of chaos may not be unattractive to neo-conservatives like Perle, Ledeen, Wolfowitz and his deputy, Douglas Feith.

In fact, some analysts suggest that, in the probable event that democracy does not sweep the region, the default option -- fragmentation and disintegration of Arab states -- corresponds all too neatly with the long-held dreams of some on the Israeli right. Such a scenario was spelled out in an influential article published on the eve of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 by Oded Yinon, who at that time was attached to Israel's foreign ministry. Published by the World Zionist Organization, the paper, "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," urged policies that promote the dissolution of Arab states into different ethnic and sectarian groupings. It also expressed the hope that the war then raging between Iran and Iraq would result in the break-up of the latter into at least three states for the three major groups -- Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ites.

According to Uri Avnery, a veteran Israeli peace activist and former Knesset member, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who led Israel's ultimately disastrous invasion of Lebanon shortly after Yinon published his piece, entertained some of the same ideas at the time. "(Sharon's) head was full of grand designs for restructuring the Middle East, the creation of an Israeli 'security zone' from Pakistan to Central Africa, the overthrow of regimes and installing others in their stead, moving a whole people (the Palestinians) and so forth," he wrote last Fall. "I can't help it, but the winds blowing now in Washington remind me of Sharon. I have absolutely no proof that the Bushies got their ideas from him, even if all of them seem to have been mesmerised by him."

It is not necessary for Bush to be enchanted with Sharon simply because some of his closest advisers, including Perle, Feith, and David Wurmser (who now works on post-invasion Iraq in the State Department), were already working toward a similar scenario in 1996 when they prepared a memorandum for Sharon's Likud rival, former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In addition to the idea of ousting Saddam Hussein and restoring the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, the paper touted re-establishing the "principle of pre-emption" against Syria and groups in Lebanon, in part by securing alliances with different ethnic and tribal groups within these nations.

SNIP

Lobe's a pretty solid source, and in some searching, I didn't come across any real debunking that indicates the Yinon article is a hoax.

You're free to show us otherwise. But, for now, this seems "the genuine article", as they say.

[Behind the Aegis]

18. Did I say anything about the article?!

Do check out page FOUR of The Hate Directory:Hate Groups on the Internet!

[true_notes]

15. Umm Back to the Topic

Believing the bullshit of "endtimes" that EVERYONE is foaming over these days is about as smart as kissing the Herpes infected lips of a prostitute.

It's just another way to keep people enslaved to a doctrine of hysteria and absolute hilarious hypocrisy.