The Sunni cycle

NY Times:

...

In a cycle that has been tracked by the American military since May and June, after months of apparently random sectarian violence the pattern has become one of attack and counterattack, with Sunni militants staging what commanders call “spectacular” strikes and Shiite militias retaliating with abductions and murders of Sunnis.

Militias come to funerals and offer to carry out revenge attacks. Gunmen execute blindfolded people in full public view. Mortars are lobbed between Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods. Sometimes the killers seem to be seeking specific people who were involved in earlier attacks, but many victims lose their lives simply to even out the sectarian toll.

“The problem is that every time there’s a sensational event, that starts the whole sectarian cycle again,” said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the chief spokesman for the American command in Iraq. “If we could stop the cyclical nature of this in Baghdad, we could really change the dynamics here.”

...

No kidding. It is the Sunnis that start the cycle. They have refused to recognize their defeat and believe if they continue to brutalize the Shia they will still win. Many in the Shia have decided to brutalize the Sunni in hopes of getting them to stop. The difference is that the Sunni are usually killed or dumped at the site of one of their murders. The Sunnis are going to have to stop this cycle. They started it with their attacks on non combatants, which the Shia stoically endured for a couple of years. They are no longer stoic and they are lashing out sometimes randomly and sometimes targeted at the Sunnis.