The Democratic party recently launched an attack on Mitt Romney, accusing him of ignoring reality. And what reality might that be, you may well ask?
Romney completely ignores the number one foreign policy issue in this campaign: the war in Iraq. Worse, Romney reiterates his misleading rhetoric about "violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism," declaring that "their goal is to unite the world under a single Jihadist caliphate" and "collapse freedom-loving nations like us." But, as critics have pointed out, Romney's ill-informed and dangerously oversimplified outline of the threat is "misleading" and completely ignores the reality on the ground in Iraq and in the Muslim world, including the facts that Shias and Sunnis are "fighting a civil war in Iraq" and many of the groups Romney typically cites "have not targeted the United States." [Boston Globe, 5/27/07; Texas Monthly, 8/07]
This is not new, this idea that there is an Iraqi civil war going on. Democrats have been promoting it for quite some time now. Make no mistake, there was a close call. After al Qaeda bombed of the Golden Dome of the Al Askaria mosque in Samarra in February 2006, a bloody wave of sectarian violence followed, pushing Iraq towards the brink. But earlier this year when al Qaeda staged a repeat performance by blowing up the remaining minarets, the expected new round of sectarian violence failed to materialize.
In retrospect, it may be safe to say, al Qaeda's second attack on the Al Askaria mosque was launched in desperation. Rather than stoking sectarian reprisals, al Qaeda has given Iraqis strong incentive to set aside their differences and and join together against a common enemy -- al Qaeda. In fact, this past weekend Ammar al-Hakim, a leader from Iraq's largest Shiite party paid a visit to the Anbar province, where he delivered a message of unity to Anbar's Sunni sheiks.
"Iraq does not belong to the Sunnis or the Shiites alone; nor does it belong to the Arabs or the Kurds and Turkomen," al-Hakim, who is being groomed to take over the helm at the Supreme Council, told his hosts in the provincial capital Ramadi, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad.
"Today, we must stand up and declare that Iraq is for all Iraqis," said al-Hakim, son of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who was diagnosed with cancer last May and has been receiving chemotherapy treatment in neighboring Iran.
"We stand together in one trench to defeat Iraq's enemies," al-Hakim said, with his host, leader of the Anbar movement Ahmed Abu Risha standing next to him.
The movement's founder and Abu Risha's brother, Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, was killed in a bombing on Sept. 13.
Al-Hakim later led officials from his party and dozens of Anbar sheiks in prayer, a significant display of religious unity.
Apparently Democrats cling to the civil war narrative as their rationale for demanding that troops be withdrawn from Iraq. They have their narrative, but those elusive facts to back it up continue to escape them.
