What's Important 4

Fourth in a series.

This entry's from the LA Times's Rosa Brooks:

When it came to predicting the sectarian conflicts that have wracked Iraq since we "liberated" it, McCain was equally off target. "There's not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias," he explained confidently on MSNBC in April 2003, "so I think they can probably get along."

Okay, granted the two groups - although despising each other - had so far not reached inter-Christian levels of violence. But then again, they've rarely tried power-sharing, either.

Back to Ms Brooks:

McCain's had five long years since then to reflect on just how well Sunni and Shiite groups are getting along, but he's still having a tough time keeping the whole thing straight. In Jordan this past March, he pronounced it "common knowledge ... that Al Qaeda" -- a Sunni-dominated group -- "is going back into Iran" -- a country led by hard-line Shiites -- "and receiving training ... from Iran." Oops ... no! Joe Lieberman, McCain's new Mini-Me, whispered a correction in his ear, presumably explaining that the Iranian Shiites hate Sunni-dominated Al Qaeda and wouldn't help the group if their lives depended on it.

A slip of the tongue on McCain's part? That would be easier to buy if McCain hadn't repeated variants of the claim on multiple occasions, insisting to a Texas audience in February that Iran was aiding Al Qaeda and wondering during Senate hearings if Al Qaeda in Iraq was "an obscure sect of the Shiites overall? ... Or Sunnis or anybody else."

McCain seems more than a little confused about who's who in the Middle East, which is maybe why he's so dead-set against the idea of talks with anyone not already a U.S. ally. It's always embarrassing, from a diplomatic perspective, to have no idea who you're talking to.