It is infuriating to see this destruction and makes one mourn that people could destroy such beauty. Who will be blamed for the blast? Who will protest? Who will die?
NY Times:
Blast Destroys Golden Dome of Sacred Shiite Shrine in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 – Insurgents dressed as police commandos detonated powerful explosives this morning inside one of Shiite Islam’s most sacred shrines, destroying most of the building, located in the volatile town of Samarra, and prompting thousands of Shiites to flood into streets across the country in protest.
The golden-domed shrine housed the tombs of two revered leaders of Shiite Islam and symbolized the place where the Imam Mahdi, a mythical, messianic figure, disappeared from this earth. Believers in the imam say he will return when the apocalypse is near, to cleanse the world of its evils.
The blast took place at about 7 a.m. and shook the city of Samarra, a Sunni-dominated area that is nevertheless sacred to Shiites. The gunmen entered the shrine and handcuffed guards in the building, then set about planting the explosives, an official of the provincial governorate said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but the golden dome was entirely destroyed, as well as three-quarters of the structure.
Here in Van Nuys 
I agree. We should have never gone into Iraq and we need to get the hell out. What good can we do since we’ve already said we are not totally rebuilding their nation, but only removing the despot?
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A civil war is not likely as long as you have American soldiers to unite adversarial groups against a common enemy.
What happens if we leave? Civil war is likely, but not inevitable. It’s hard to imagine, but Iraq under a despot like Saddam Hussein was still able to achieve a standard of living on par with the West.
The Shia, Sunni and Kurds likely remember what kind of life they had, and they just may be able to come to a political consensus regarding law and economic development. They can do this all by themselves.
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Let’s hope that this is not the case.
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Will millions of Muslims in every country protest as they recently did when a private newspaper published a cartoon in democratic Denmark
Protest?! You’re going to see A LOT worse things then that happen. By and large, the protests over the cartoon saw very little deaths, and what deaths there were had to do with local sectarian tensions (Nigeria) or were carried out by the security forces and not the protestors (Afghanistan, Pakistan).
This is going to be much, much worse– exactly the strategy of the insurgents, as they know that America will have a terrible dilemma on their hands if an actual civil war breaks out. Your comments betray naivety and deep misunderstanding.
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