The Muslim Civil War

The Muslim Civil War -- Bret Stepehens, Wall Street Journal

Standing by while the Sunnis and Shiites fight it out invites disaster.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the prominent Sunni cleric, said Friday that Hezbollah and Iran are "more infidel than Jews and Christians." Coming from the guy who once lauded Hitler for exacting "divine punishment" on the Jews, that really is saying something.

That the war in Syria is sectarian was obvious almost from the start, despite the credulous belief that Bashar Assad ran a nonsectarian regime. That a sectarian ruling minority fighting for its life would not fold easily was obvious within months, despite happy guarantees that the regime's downfall would come within weeks. That a sectarian war in Syria would stir similar religious furies in Iraq and Lebanon was obvious more than a year ago, despite wishful administration thinking that staying out of Syria would contain the war to Syria alone.

What should be obvious today is that we are at the dawn of a much wider Shiite-Sunni war, the one that nearly materialized in Iraq in 2006 but didn't because the U.S. was there, militarily and diplomatically, to stop it. But now the U.S. isn't there. What's left to figure out is whether this megawar isn't, from a Western point of view, a very good thing.

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My Comment: Standing by while Sunni and Shiite communities fight it out may invite disaster .... Western intervention will all but guarantee it. Bret Stepehens is right that the time to have acted was at the beginning .... but it is too late now .... and for that White House calculation two years ago we are now witnessing the disaster that is unfolding right now.