I know it’s hearsay (from my source in Iraq).

Read it anyway.

Verbatim.

I will tell you that the speaker of the Parliament Usama Al-Nujaifi is also the brother of Atheel Al-Nujaifi the Governor of Mosul who didn’t allow the military to get in a few months ago and kept on fighting them and kicked the Federal police (the Shiites from the city) and said we can protect it ourselves , and many more decisions that lead to this and he was the first to flee to Kurdistan

And Usama backed his brother in all his decisions against the government of Baghdad

Also for you informations Usama went to the States and convinced the Congress in not arming the Iraqi military cause he said that they will use the weapons to kill the Sunnis

I could tell you a few things about “malignant narcissism”, the “psychology of small differences”, the difference between

mafia and system-by-relationship

and

open courts and meritocratic justice and fairness,

but I would have a more difficult time addressing the matter of psychology’s “internal saboteur”.

It appears Atheel Al-Najaifi may have gambled on Sunni-based affinity to maintain Masul and, perhaps by chit-chat, to repulse such as ISIS, but as Mosul melts into ISIS, the same, Sunni or not,  may have lit out for the border.

Where I live, Maryland, USA, Christian Catholic and Protestant colonists had similar decisions to make but may have been more cooperative, eventually, with one another for finding themselves alone on a then European and English frontier with worries about security and markets held in common.  Maryland historian Robert Brugger came to call what the state found within itself a “middle temperament”.

Except in Israel, perhaps Lebanon at the moment, that “middle temperament” seems to be having a hard time surviving n the middle east.

The fascists, secular or religious, dictators or religious warriors, seem to have the more effective armies, and those possessed inherently of a “middle temperament” suffer mightily, endlessly at the onslaughts and impositions of both.

From a location 217 miles north of Baghdad, there’s a fine photograph of Atheel al-Nujafi at this location: http://www.knoxnews.com/photos/2014/jun/11/480986/

One may hope that Iraq will find its “middle temperament” and that Iraqi Sunni and Shiite adherents (for there is no compulsion in religion — or is there?) find the courage to build and cement the army that represents it.

Addendum

Perhaps I have made more of the mechanics than is deserved.  In the west, we would couch the same request — defense by local or regional militia — as associated with “local rule” and reasonable autonomy within a greater federal system.

The one thing known to politicos about the al-Qaeda affiliates: they make themselves the controlling agents of others until stopped cold.  They may or may not believe they are the soldiers of God Almighty himself, but (also given the numbers confused about this), they are really the Soldiers About Themselves Experiencing Power Revolving Around Themselves — pretty much the same as any other ordinary dictator.

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