A bloodthirsty sectarian war centuries in the making has only just begun. It's going to get much worse before it gets better.

Caught in the middle of the civil war are the Americans. To Iraq’s factions, they are the weakest of all the armed groups in one crucial respect: their will is ebbing and their time here is limited. That leaves Iraqis more motivated than ever to cling to their weapons, preparing for what many see as an inevitable plunge into the abyss.

“Everyone — the Sunni, the Shia — is playing the waiting game,” an Iraqi leader told me over dinner at his home in the Green Zone. “They’re waiting out the Americans. Everyone is using time against you.”

Perhaps it is wrong to say it is just beginning. It is just resuming. The war that is being fought now is no different from the war that has raged in Iraq since the Sunni-Shi'i schism. It has been going on much longer than anyone can imagine. To think it is somehow beginning, or that we have anything to do with it shows America's short-sighted perspective by presuming that everything begins and ends with us.

The "sahel" is cultural - not genetic. See them as equally capable of wisdom and maturity as you are. We outgrew hanging people in the square, gunfights in the saloon, and lots of other things. Are we to presume that they are too damn slow too grow up? Or for that matter, MAYBE THEY ARE !!!
But - either way - don't give them the excuse that they have no choice and we are idiots for expecting otherwise.
And just like global warming,..a bit presumptuous to assume we are the cause.