At the end of this very strong piece  by Tim Arango of the New York Times, he adds this important paragraph:

Mr. Ahmed, reflecting a widely held belief in this country’s Sunni population, said in defiance of the facts that his sect is a majority in Iraq. In many ways, Iraq’s Sunnis have never accepted the new political order that came after the American invasion, which forced out the Sunni-dominated government of Saddam Hussein and led, through democratic elections, to Shiite domination.

For a new leader of Iraq, he said, “We would accept a Kurd, a Christian or even a Jew.”

But not, he said, a Shiite.

“They consider us infidels,” he said. “And we consider them infidels.”

The point is underreported in much media, probably.  Those who ask with some frequency why Iraq has no Mandela do at least need to recognize an important distinction as between the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the end of Sunni dominance in Iraq.  Whites in South Africa, finding themselves squeezed economically, ostracized socially and embarrassed globally, decided as a whole to negotiate a political surrender on terms not entirely unfavorable to them (i.e. we will accept a complete political transformation if you will not force a complete economic one).

That did not happen in Ba’ath Iraq.  In Ba’ath Iraq, the United States came in and told the Sunnis they lost, and their attitude was more whites of the antebellum South than it was whites of South Africa.  “No we didn’t, and we’ll resist you to the end.”  It took over a century to change the American South, hardly a harbinger of hope for changed attitudes in Iraq among Sunnis.

So the better analogy I think is to Republicans as to climate change.  Most of the leadership must know that climate change is occurring and that it is caused by humans. Most conservative intelligentsia surely know it.  But in the stubborn face of facts, there is a noisy and numerous group within the party that insist it simply does not exist.  So it goes with Iraqi Sunnis and their entirely mythical demographic majority. And even as liberals throw their hands up and say they just can’t deal with this people, when they won’t even admit to the problem, so Shi’a will throw up their hands and ask exactly how to share power with a minority who insists on an unfettered right to rule based on demographics that are demonstrably contrary to fact and presume the inclusion of millions of Iranians who secretly stole across the border and voted without reputable monitors realizing it.

But that is not at all the whole story.  Because the fact is, and I say this as a proud Shi’i, when you have the power, and the demographic majority, as we do, you’re supposed to do the reaching out, not wait for the minority to do it.  Yes there will be some who will call you a Persian infidel who should get back to Teheran no matter what you do, but surely kinder and more generous words and deeds than those of our current Prime Minister would have reduced the numbers of the noisy ranks a little I think.  perhaps more Sunnis would be willing to accept the new political realities. Or not, but at the very least they’d be willing enough to accept it to stand with the state against ISIS of all groups I really do have to believe.

So the other problem is that the Shi’a are a majority in Iraq, but that’s the only Arab state where they are both majority, and they rule.  By and large, we Shi’a are a minority, and we’re the persecuted people. Our doctrine and our lore is rife with stories of Shi’a suffering at the hands of tyrants and barbarians.  We aren’t generous with power when we have it for a simple reason–we don’t actually think like an empowered majority, because globally beyond Iraq, and historically within it, we aren’t.  We’re the ones arrested in Egypt for “insulting companions”, we’re the ones marginalized in Saudi, detained in Bahrain, the name you give to a Palestinian when you want to insult him.  So we think precisely like the disenfranchised and marginalized and oppressed people we’re used to being.  And that, combined with Sunni denial, is a really deadly combination.