Dahr Jamail says no sectarian violence in Iraq before 2003

"The snow job by the corporate media on the issue of sectarianism in Iraq has ensured that the public buys into the line that the Sunni and Shia will dice one another up into little pieces if the occupation ends.

 

It may be worthwhile to consider that prior to the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq there had never been open warfare between the two groups and certainly not a civil war." -- Dahr Jamail

 

It is true that there was no "open warfare" between Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs before 2003, not like what has happened in Iraq in the last four years.  That's because the Iraqi government was controlled by Sunni Arabs before 2003, and the Iraqi Shia did not mass murder Iraqi Security Forces and government officials in order to punish the government, nor did they blow up marketplaces and shrines.  Furthermore, Jamail conveniently ignores the mass murder of Iraqi Shia in 1991 and the Anfal campaign during the 1980s.  Apparently for Jamail and Arab Americans like him, what Saddam's regime did to Iraqis before 2003 was acceptable.