Bush, Iran, and the house of Saud

From my post over on gristmill.org:

Sounds like the administration is cooking up a scheme to engage the Iranian military in hostilities. That makes zero sense. The country is riven by at least two more or less distinct conflicts: the Shiia-Sunni civil war, and the anti-U.S. insurgency.

The latter is a largely Sunni phenomenon. With the 2003 invasion, the U.S. pushed the Sunnis out of power and "liberated" the Shiite majority, who now control the central government. The anti-U.S. resistance has been largely Sunni-led.

The question becomes, who is funding the Sunni insurgency? Probably not U.S. arch-enemy Iran; that nation is populated, and controlled, mainly by Shiites.

More likely, the money that's bolstering the resistance is coming from staunch U.S. ally Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government is Sunni-dominated and has already publicly announced its intention to fund Sunni militias if Bush can't bring the Shiite government to heel.

It will be remembered, I hope, that Bush marketed the Iraq war as a response to the Sept. 11 attacks. He never explained why invading Iraq made sense as a response to a crime committed largely by a bunch of Saudis.

Now, he seems to be gearing up for a move to attack Iran, even though, again, the real problem seems to lie in Saudi Arabia. It's hard to figure out what he hopes to achieve from such a move, beyond yet more chaos and killing. Enough. It's time for Congress to defund the war, and demand a regional summit aimed at ending the Shiite-Sunni conflict that Bush seems bent on escalating.