Standing between the Hatfields and McCoys.

“Man is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly, teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”—MT

The Bush administration’s claim of weapons of mass destruction, (that justified the invasion of Iraq) was correct. The problem was one of misidentification. We were led to imagine atomic and biological weapons at the ready. But what we were not told was of another weapon of mass destruction, also at the ready, that had been seething for centuries. To grasp the significance of the Middle Eastern tree of turmoil it’s necessary to first consider the roots. This was the Sunni mouse that had laid in waiting, divided around the world into somewhere between 1.2-1.5 billion individuals, without a roar waiting for release from Pandora’s Box. As George Eliot said, “Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together,” and we provided those series of small steps necessary for the dormant ISIS mouse to roar with a ferocity never imagined.

One of the “true religions” spoken of by our satirical pundit is Islam, but in this case it isn’t a matter of conflict between one true religion and another. Instead it is a conflict within Islam that has been brewing for nearly 1,400 years, flaring from time to time with a violence capable only when motivated by religious fervor, thus proving MT’s point: “Man is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man with his mouth.”

To acquire an adequate portrait of this millennial old conflict would require volumes, but as the saying goes, A picture is worth a thousand words. By clicking here, you can witness that picture. It doesn’t require a genius to know that standing in the middle of a gun fight between the Hatfields and McCoys isn’t the best of ideas. To shoot at either side invites the fury of the other. In the posts to follow, I’ll walk you through the most important small steps we took to light the fuse that led to the current conflagration.