GW, les sunnites, les chiites, — et les musulmans

La question de la culture de base (de l’inculture de base) de GW Bush a toujours été un dossier fourmillant d’anecdotes entendues et de clins d’yeux complices. Hors de ce folklore sympathique, force est de constater que, dans certains cas, cette inculture soulève de très sérieuses questions.

C’est le cas lorsqu’on nous apprend que, jusqu’au début 2003, GW ignorait qu’il existait des chiites et des sunnites, et que, lorsqu’on l’en instruisit un peu par inadvertance, il s’exclama : « Je pensais que les Irakiens étaient tous des musulmans ! » Plus préoccupant encore, le fait que cette inculture n’ait pas vraiment été considérée comme une gêne par l’entourage de GW, qu’elle semble même avoir été partagée, — et que, d’ailleurs, on s’en foutait puisqu’il y avait la démocratie (US) à installer en Irak et la meilleure armée du monde (US) pour l’installer.

Le site RAW Story rapporte cette anecdote venue de Peter Galbraith (fils du grand John Kenneth) et d’un livre qu’il vient de publier sous le titre qui nous dit ce qu’il faut savoir : The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End.

Voici des extraits :

« Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith is claiming President George W. Bush was unaware that there were two major sects of Islam just two months before the President ordered troops to invade Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

» In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

» A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

» Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam — to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

» Research by RAW STORY has confirmed a surprising lack of public statements from the president regarding the branches of Islam, but did uncover at least one mention of their existence. A fact sheet released by the White House in December of 2001 does indeed use the term Sunni to describe a Lashkar-E-Tayyib, “the armed wing of the Pakistan-based religious organization, Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad.” Other mentions, not originating from the White House, were common in government documents and proceedings, as well as in media coverage of the middle east.

» Other reports also place Bush announcing newfound knowledge of the differences between Muslim groups shortly before entering the Iraq war.

» In an interview with RAW STORY, Ambassador Galbraith recounted this anecdote from his book to exemplify “a culture of arrogance that pervaded the whole administration.”

»  “From the president and the vice president down through the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, there was a belief that Iraq was a blank slate on which the United States could impose its vision of a pluralistic democratic society,” said Galbraith. “The arrogance came in the form of a belief that this could be accomplished with minimal effort and planning by the United States and that it was not important to know something about Iraq.” »

Mis en ligne le 5 août 2006 à 17H43