Will Religion Yet Again Lead to Genocide in Iraq

Time and time again throughout history religion has lead to the genocide of others of different faiths or even different sects within a faith tradition.  Anyone or anything that threatens the typically blindly followed dogma of the aggressors must be destroyed and rooted out so that no challenge conceivably exist to the generally ignorance based religious teachings.  Now, in Iraq, we see the phenomenon yet again as the minority Yazidi sect faces slaughter because they are seen as devil worshipers by Sunni extremists.  The impending slaughter has prompted Barack Obama to announce a US airlift of food and water to stranded Yazidis and targeted airstrikes against the ISIS extremists.  Here are excerpts from The Guardian:

Tens of thousands of members of one of Iraq's oldest minorities have been stranded on a mountain in the country's north-west, facing slaughter at the hands of jihadists surrounding them below if they flee, or death by dehydration if they stay.

UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, have taken refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy, mile-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah's ark.

At least 130,000 more people, many from the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar, have fled to Dohuk, in the Kurdish north, or to Irbil, where regional authorities have been struggling since June to deal with one of the biggest and most rapid refugee movements in decades.

At least 500 Yazidis, including 40 children, have been killed in the past week, local officials say. Many more have received direct threats, either from the advancing militants or members of nearby Sunni communities allied with them. "They were our neighbours and now they are our killers," said Atyas.

The Kurdish minority Yazidis have long been regarded as devil worshippers by Sunni jihadists who have targeted them since the US invasion. As the extremists' latest and most potent incarnation, the Islamic State (Isis), has steadily conquered Iraq's north, the small, self-contained community has been especially vulnerable.

"Iraq is spiralling out of control," said Ali Khedery, the former longest-serving US official in Baghdad. "The centrifugal forces are spinning so quickly. They are on one timeline and Washington is on another. I am beyond concerned."

Khedery, who reported to five US ambassadors and three US central command generals and is now chairman of the Dubai-based consultancy Dragoman Partners, said: "Everybody is retreating to their corners. And there is no credible international actor that I can see that is trying to bring it together again.

"It definitely is an existential threat to the Iraqi government and I think it represents yet another manifestation of the disintegration of Iraq as we know it.

"Iranian overreach, the genocide in Syria, [Nouri] al-Maliki's consolidation of power in a very sectarian way, have all led to the disillusionment, the disenfranchisement of the Sunni Arabs, who have fatally, but perhaps understandably, chosen to consummate a deal with the devil. Now we are locked in a race to the bottom."

It is critical to remember that Iraq's spiral into utter chaos was triggered by  the Bush/Cheney regimes invasion which was based on deliberate lies to the American people.  It is also important to remember that Bush and Cheney also saw Iraqis as less than human because they were Muslim.  Indeed, Chimperator Bush seemingly saw himself on a modern day crusade against the infidel. On all fronts religious based bigotry (and greed in the case of Dick Cheney)