CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “We have made a lot of mistakes in Iraq. But when Arabs kill Arabs and Shiites kill Shiites and Sunnis kill all in a spasm of violence that is blind and furious and has roots in hatreds born long before America was even a republic, to place the blame on the one player, the one country, the one military that has done more than any other to try to separate the combatants and bring conciliation is simply perverse. It infantilizes Arabs. It demonizes Americans. It willfully overlooks the plainest of facts: Iraq is their country. We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war.”

UPDATE: Tom Holsinger emails: “Krauthammer is blaming the victim. Many if not most of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs insist on slaughtering Shiite civiilians to regain power for the Sunnis. The only way the Shiites can stop this is to ethnically cleanse Iraq of Sunni Arabs. Krauthammer thinks that, if the Shiites don’t fight back, the Sunnis won’t kill them. This is blaming the victim.”

I think that overstates things, as the Shiites are doing a lot more than defending themselves, as the business about ethnic cleansing demonstrates. I agree that the Sunnis were idiots to start a civil war in which they were so completely outnumbered, but there’s more going on here than simple self-defense.