A Catholic Magazine Looks The the Horrors of Al-Qaeda In Iraq

Chiesa often has some excellent articles. I really urge people to read this piece called Kurdistan's Twin Towers: The Massacre of the Yazidi.

The opening paragraph lays out what this is about:
ROMA, August 24, 2007 – It has been underestimated in general, as if it were just another of the many anonymous killings that bloody Iraq each day. But the August 14 massacre that decimated the Yazidi people was absolutely out of the ordinary. One of the very few analysts of international politics who gave this the necessary emphasis was professor Vittorio E. Parsi, in a front page editorial in the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, "Avvenire."

In Parsi's judgment, the August 14 massacre of the Yazidi is second – in scope, and also in its communicative power – only to the felling of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Both were the work of al-Qaeda, the Islamist organization founded by Osama bin Laden. More than 500 people lost their lives in the massacre, with more than 350 wounded. To get an idea of the magnitude of the slaying, it's enough to remember that just a few days later, in Peru, a deadly earthquake claimed an equal number of victims.

I think these article is a eye opener. I also think it tells us some facts on the ground that go against this recent Vox Nova piece called What Causes Suicide Terrorism?

As professor Parsi, an instructor in international politics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan states:
Such a spectacular strike against a small minority held to be heretical by many proponents of fundamentalist and radical Sunni Islam (but who are not necessarily accessories to terrorism) has, above all, the precise meaning of restating the nature of the struggle in which the followers of al-Qaeda are engaged in Iraq. This struggle is a jihad, a holy war. It is not a war of national liberation, nor a war against American imperialism. With the massacre of August 14, the members of al-Qaeda wanted to reassert the extent of their war in Iraq, of their presence in that country. And the dimension of the violence functioned to emphasize, in communicative terms, al-Qaeda's capacity to impose its war over that of all others: the pro-Iranian Shiites and the followers of the "Mahdi army," Ba'thist insurgents and Sunni guerrillas financed by the Saudis.

I think many of us have been trying to point that out for months. Especially since forces that were fighting each other and American forces have now joined forces with the "American Tribe" in this region to fight this evil.

Now one can go "Well if the US had not invaded there would be no problem like this!!!! So there. Well we must live in the world as it is today.

Again this was a terrorist attack that has comparisons to 9/11. What shall the world's response be?