Sunday, February 26, 2006

Who benefits by bombing the Samarran mosque?

Did Sunni insurgents bomb the golden mosque in Samarra? Or was it al Qaeda members attempting to instigate an Iraqi civil war? Or was it more complicated than that? Here are some informed speculations from the blog Iraq Dispatches.

One thing which is clear it you want to understand the Middle East. You can't. Nothing is what it seems. No outsider will ever have a clue, and neither will most Iraqis. We don't even know who all the different players are, let alone how they each benefit from an action like this bombing. So we simplify, losing all connection with reality. Read this to see other ways of looking at the event.

Ulimately the real question we might be able to answer is how we benefit or lose in various situations. We'll really only get that when we look back at what happened and what the historians write about it.

But for right now, go read Iraq Dispatches.

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