Professor Cole

Over at Informed Comment has a small blurb up among his other reporting from Iraq. It really stood out as being the reason why Civil War has become almost inevitable.

Although young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has called for peace and lack of reprisals, clearly a lot of furious Shiites are paying no attention to him. When people are really angry, the clerics lose a lot of their influence. If people in Lebanon had listened to their clerics, there never would have been a civil war there. At some point, political resentments go so far that the sermons themselves become helpless.

The Shiite majority spent too long under a Sunni dominated government to just sit back and take it. Whoever it is that's trying their best to incite a civil war (and the media hasn't been helpful on figuring that out) certainly know that at a point, populations become so enraged that no amount of pacifying by religious leaders (or any leader) is going to stop the violence.

I can't see any near future in Iraq that doesn't include at least the low level civil war we're seeing right now. The mosque bombing on February 22nd was the tipping point.

Iraq Civil War Juan Cole