no society is really clear on their separation of church and state. i'd argue the state should deal with certain things that the reaganites dumped into the realm of the church. but, all western countries would agree that war is the exclusive domain of the state. the church cannot declare war.

but, in the past the church did declare war. these wars were called crusades.

i'm not sure that the collapse of the iraqi army is possible for westerners to understand without making a number of mental cultural adjustments. it seems to me that islamic cultures tend to lean towards the idea of war being an issue to be dealt with by religious authorities, rather than state authorities. saddam may have pushed a different perspective, but he was some kind of weird totalitarian marxist - his system was alien to arab culture.

so, when you see the iraq army collapse like this, i think a big part of what you're seeing is the cultural rejection of the state's perceived usurpation over fundamentally religious concerns. this is an issue for fatwas, not for parliaments. and, the fatwa is more legitimate than the parliament is on this issue. the state is seen as overstepping it's bounds.

that may be a large part of the reason these militias were targeted for disassembly. but the failure of this policy may necessitate the realization that imperially constructing an iraq that follows western standards of parliamentary centralization is, in truth, a cultural impossibility.

there's a level of irony. militia movements are integral to the framework erected in the united states constitution.