Trump gets another foreign policy victory: Bahrain

[Politesse]

Seeing the Middle East as inherently divided between Sunni and Shi'a states is, in and of itself, buying into terrorist propoganda and hardly a pathway to "peace", any more than "recognizing" Hindu and Muslim States brought peace to India and Pakistan.

Recognizing reality is not "buying into terrorist propoganda[sic]". The Islamic world is inherently divided into these two camps and they genuinely hate each other.

It is a truth that Sunni and Shi'a are longstanding divisions within the body of Islam. It is not true that there are "Sunni nations" and "Shi'a nations" (That's making things sound way too simple), or that all or even most Muslims are interested in waging merciless, endless war against their neighbors.

 

[Derec]

It's a big Trumpian win. Trump and his allies have been wanting to turn the mid-east from an Arab vs Israel conflict to a Sunni vs Shia conflict.

That didn't require that much turning as the Sunni-Shia conflict has been with Islam since its inception. The conflict is inherently one of succession - whether the blood relatives of Mohammed (Shia) or his lieutenants (Sunni) should lead Islam after his death.

The interesting thing to me that the US is solidly behind the Sunni countries against the Shia. However, almost all terrorists who attack the US are Sunnis.

It has to do with the governments. Shia Iran was an ally of US when it was more secular and not run by expansionist theocrats running the country since 1979.
And these Sunni terrorists you talk about hate Arab Sunni governments almost as much as they hate the US and Israel. So it's not exactly a surprise that US is working with those countries even if they have rather unpalatable ideologies and policies such as KSA.

 

[Derec]

It is a truth that Sunni and Shi'a are longstanding divisions within the body of Islam. It is not true that there are "Sunni nations" and "Shi'a nations" (That's making things sound way too simple), or that all or even most Muslims are interested in waging merciless, endless war against their neighbors.

Many predominately Islamic countries have both Sunnis and Shias among their citizenry, yes. But Iran can certainly be described as an explicitly Shia theocracy. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 certainly heated up the animosities between the two camps.

I would also agree that most Muslims are not interested in a bloody war against those they see as heretics. But a sizeable minority is enough for that to happen anyway.
I do think that most Muslims tend to see the "other side" as heretics though.