I notice that Greenwald doesn't mention when many of
these clerics saw their political power increase. But I'm not at
all surprised to see Iraqis who may have liked radical Islam in the
abstract, when it mainly entailed fulminations against the "great
Satan," reject it in practice, once they were being subjected to
its repression and violence. People don't like to have their
fingers cut off or their families terrorized. And that of course is
what the radical clerics and their militant followers have to
offer, which believe it or not actually does make them worse than
socially conservative Republicans.
topics:
Islam, Iraq