Peter DeFazio Quotes

Sectarian politics gets votes in Iraq. But sectarian government fails in Iraq.

Lebanon, of course, is a country with great problems. Traditionally, they have religious-national groups or ethnic-national groups. They have the Druses. Even the two Moslem sects, the Sunnis and the Shiites, are apart. Then they have the armed groups. Everybody's got a private army.

The underlying dynamic of many communal wars is a security problem driven by mutual fear. Especially in states lacking strong central governments, communal groups worry that other groups with historical grievances will try to settle scores.

Unfortunately, the source of all this conflict between the Sunnis and Shia is some major powers that do not want religious unity amongst Muslims.

Ethno-sectarian violence is a particular concern in Iraq, as it is a cancer that continues to spread if left unchecked.

Finland had a civil war less than 100 years ago, just like in Ireland. If you look at the history of newly independent nations, civil war is almost every time present, even in the United States.

What is postwar Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites? That's a huge question, to my mind.

In the Middle East, the conflict today is a matter of generations and not of cultures.

Lebanon was at one time known as a nation that rose above sectarian hatred; Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. All of that was blown apart by senseless religious wars, financed and exploited in part by those who sought power and wealth. If women had been in charge, would they have been more sensible? It's a theory.

The main problem that we have in Lebanon, and in the region, is we don't have a real peace process and I think this is the main focal problem that we have in the region.

Jerusalem is a time bomb that I fear is just waiting to go off.

Life has become terribly insecure. It's on the vortex of civil war. It's difficult to know how America will bring it back from the brink and build up good will.

I cannot accept a divide between Malagasy people and a civil war.

The basis on which the Good Friday agreement was constructed was in addressing those problems in the history of Northern Ireland, the social and constitutional problems as well as the military problems that have been unaddressed for centuries.

if you allow…for a civil war to happen between the Shiites and the Sunnis, Iraq is finished forever. It will be dismembered. It will not only be dismembered, it will cause so many conflicts in the region that it will bring the whole region into a turmoil that will be hard to resolve

The Balkans are different from all other parts of the world. There are no world precedents that apply to the Balkans. Our problems have been going on for hundreds of years.

The Middle East is so constructed that the rational things are the things least likely to occur.

Of the 22 active conflicts in the world today, 20 involve Moslems verses someone else.

The end of the Cold War unfroze religion and ethnicity as violent forces…

The interests of the Crusaders have converged with the desires of their brothers, the hate-filled Rafidites, and the outcome was these crimes and massacres against the Sunnis

Washington seems to think that they will be welcomed with open arms in Iraq, but that they shouldn’t count on it. It is foolish to think of creating a modern democracy in an artificial country with a divided society like Iraq. Do you realize that, by invading Iraq, they might yet precipitate a civil war.

Both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream ‘Allahu akbar …. I say let Allah sort it out.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars

The Middle East was not always convulsed by sectarian bloodletting. For a long time it was a place where minorities coexisted with the Muslim Faith, inhabiting this world far more peacefully than they do today.

It is unfortunate that there is not a government in Iraq that has been able to unify the Shiites and the Sunnis sufficiently. They are not currently fighting together.