Dear Mr. Buffett_ What an Investor Learns 1,269 Miles From Wall Street - Janet M. Tavakoli [116]
John Sheehan is a retired Marine Corps general. He turned down the job as White House implementation manager for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars because he thought there is no consensus in Washington on strategy. He was also concerned about Iran as “an ideological and destabilizing threat to its neighbors and, more important, to U.S. interests.”10 Most important, he felt that Washington lacks “a broader view of the region and how the parts fit together strategically.”11
Some pundits feel that pulling out of Iraq would allow Al Qaeda to flourish, but Al Qaeda is almost completely made up of Sunnis. The government of Iraq’s 25 million people is dominated by Shiites. Shia Moslems make up around 55 percent of Iraq’s population, and Sunnis make up most of the other 45 percent.
Iran already has a foothold in Iraq, and Iran would probably help eliminate the influence of Al Qaeda Sunnis. Shiites in Iraq and Iran have strong ties even though they have ethnic and language differences. Khomeini temporarily hid in Iraq when the Shah ousted him, and Shia Moslems make up around 90 percent of Iran’s population of 68 million people. The greater threat might be that Hezbollah, an enemy of Israel, would find more support if we withdrew from Iraq.
It sometimes seems to me that Moslems would get along much more easily with Warren Buffett, a good-hearted atheist, than with members of a different faction of Islam. For centuries, the various factions of Islam have quarreled and, at times, have even gone to war.
The birthplace of Mohammed, the founder of the Islam, is Medina, located in Saudi Arabia. Shiites believe that Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, is his successor. The Sunnis believe the Caliphs are Mohammed’s successors. All Moslems have ties to Saudi Arabia. Devout Moslems believe that the hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, is required at least once in one’s lifetime. Performing the hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. The other four are professing one’s faith, praying in Arabic five times per day, giving alms to the poor, and fasting during Ramadan.
One would think those similarities would be enough for people to get along, but Islam is divided among itself, sometimes with snobbery that makes a British royal appear egalitarian. Most Iraqis are Arabs, but some are Kurds. Kurds consider themselves to be racially distinct from Arabs. Minority populations of nomadic Kurds also live in neighboring countries. Iraqis chiefly speak Arabic, but regional minority languages include Kurdish and Turkmen. Iranians, formerly known as Persians, consider themselves Aryans, but many Persians appear to look Arabic.
When I lived in Iran, an Iranian friend joked that 40 percent of Iranians may have Arabic blood, and 100 percent of them will deny it. Nose jobs are a brisk business among Iranians living in foreign countries. Yet, many Iranians claim they are descended from the prophet Mohammed, who was an Arab. My Iranian ex-husband, who earned his Ph.D. in chemical engineering, had no problem performing the required mental gymnastics to live with this contradiction. This is not that unusual, either. Having been born and raised a U.S. Catholic, I know a few who cannot accept that Jesus was Jewish. Many who do accept it believe he looked like the blond blue-eyed actor Jeffrey Hunter in the King of Kings.
Iran’s official language is Farsi (or Persian). It is an Indo-European language (most Westerners find Farsi much easier to master than Arabic), yet it uses Arabic script. All Iranian Moslems pray in Arabic, even if they do not understand the language. (Catholics recite Latin prayers without fully understanding them.) Iran has a small Arab minority and one of its neighbors is Arab-speaking Iraq. The United States has a much bigger language barrier in Iraq than Iran has. Given the large population of Shia Moslems in both Iraq and Iran, and given their common economic interest