Back in high school, I was a pretty avid Stephen King reader. One of my favorite SK books was Needful things. In the book, Satan comes to a small town in the form of Leland Gaunt, a store owner. In exchange for gifts in his store, he has the townsfolk play tricks on each other. So Person A plays a trick on Person B. Person B assumes Person C played the trick, and thus retaliates against Person C. And so, falling into the trap, an escalating battle ensues between Person B and Person C, all instigated unknowingly by Person A.
Well, a similar trap has been set in Iraq, and all the players are falling into their expected roles.
A couple of days ago, one of Iraq's holiest Shiite mosques was blown up. Shiite's blamed the Sunnis for the bombing, and retaliated by killing scores of people, including many Sunni imams, and attacking Sunni mosques. The incident has many worried that Iraq is heading towards civil war.
I don't know for sure who set off the bombs, but I'd be willing to bet it was Al-Qaeda, and not "Sunnis" en masse. The set things in motion, trying to provoke the Shiites into attacking the Sunnis and starting a civil war, and it fucking worked!
Can you believe it? It's insane that people would fall for such a trick, isn't it?
It would be almost like if Al-Qaeda wanted to turn the Muslim world against us, so they attacked us, hoping that we would attack another country, inflaming the Muslim world and turn world opinion against us.
Imagine that?
Leland Gaunt would be proud.
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