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By Neil the Ethical WerewolfIn some ways, Silvestre Reyes' lack of knowledge about the ethnic composition of Iraq isn't surprising. He is, after all, the guy who thought we needed to increase troop deployments to dismantle the militias. This is the kind of mistake you make when you don't understand that the real problem in Iraq is intra-ethnic violence of the sort that really can't be solved by a foreign military presence, at least in the absence of an internal political solution formed by Sunni and Shiite leaders. I'm reminded of when Jeff Stein went around asking these questions last time, to people like Terry Everett (R-AL):
I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. “Now that you’ve explained it to me,” he replied, “what occurs to me is that it makes what we’re doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area.”The more you make people aware that the real conflict in that country isn't us versus the terrorists, but rather the Iraqis versus each other, the more they understand how difficult our position is, and why we need to leave.
