The Islamic Republic of Iraq?

The Islamic Republic of Iraq is becoming more of a reality with every passing day of lawlessness and civil disorder in Iraq. This is not the ranting of naysayers, or the defunct liberals who seek to find some fault with U.S. President George Bush's Iraq scenario. The likelihood of an Islamic Republic is voiced by a majority of Iraqis. Indeed, there are those that would prefer secularism, especially religious minorities such as the Chaldeans, Assyrians, and other Christians who number up to 800,000 in Iraq.

However, the momentum of political Islam began some 1,400 years ago and began to take on its present shape after the 1991 Gulf War. While much of this flux is being propagated by organized Shiite groups, it does envelope Sunni factions as well.

It would not be a surprise, then, to read something similar to the mock letter below in the coming days and weeks:

Dear America,

Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, a man who has kept us from realizing our political power; has forbidden us from many of our beloved customs. But by God, we lived like the Imam Ali, and we died like Hussein. Today, you have destroyed Saddam's reign and ended his hold on Iraq. And today you have freed us, the Iraqi people and the Shiite people of Iraq.

Before Saddam, there was Ahmad Hassan Bakr (we doubt any of you know who this man is because you have been so ignorant of Iraqi affairs for so long) who also kept us from majority rule. Then there was Abd Al Karim Kassem, Colonel Abdul Salem Mohamed Aref, and many others as well. We were never really allowed to voice our concerns, our will, our aspirations.

Go back to Kuwait - they worship the ground your dirty boots walk on.

Our time has come.

The above is a very likely scenario because U.S. foreign policy and the planning for post-war Iraq were influenced by external forces that were simply out of touch with the reality of Iraqi religious aspirations. So much planning, effort, disinformation, public relations, and diplomacy were put into the war effort, that the post-war religious power that would likely emerge in Iraq was completely overlooked. Members of the Iraqi National Congress, the main Iraqi opposition group, (with much influence in the Pentagon, but regarded with disdain in the State Department for its unreliable track record) assured the Bush administration that the Shiites of Iraq would rise up against Saddam, fight side by side with U.S. forces and welcome them with flowers. Despite urgent efforts by mainstream media to portray the latter, the information relayed by Iraqis in and outside Iraq is clearly unfavorable to U.S. efforts to establish a democratic state in Iraq.

Al-Hakim's return to Iraq is compared by many Middle Eastern analysts (not Washington think tanks who are not in the Middle East and rely only on Israeli sources) to the Ayatollah Khomeini's return to Iran in 1979.

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