Posted on 03/03/2004 10:34:32 PM PST by quidnunc
How are the Americans to persuade the Shia leadership in Iraq that they must fight the same enemy? The people who blew up the Shia Muslim shrines in Karbala and Baghdad at the end of the Ashoura festival (which commemorates the assassination of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson in a 7th-century power struggle), are the same who have been attacking American convoys, and secular Iraqi police stations. But the Shia leadership of Grand Ayatollah Sistani is currently positioning itself for power, after the Americans leave. It refuses to cooperate openly with the U.S. and allied military, or other Iraqi groups, and then blames them for every disaster. It refuses to take responsibility for anything, until it has total power.
The problem with the Ashoura festival itself, which could be held openly this year thanks to the Bush administration, is that it presented a security nightmare that any half-brained terrorist could exploit. And the four suicide bombers who stationed themselves around the packed Imam Musa al-Khadam shrine in Baghdad, and who were almost certainly affiliated with Al Qaeda, knew what they were doing. There were two at the gates for openers, then one inside for the people running in, then one outside for the people running out. Then, grenades were thrown into the terrified crowds from the window of a small hotel.
Shia pilgrims were arriving in considerable numbers from Iran, Pakistan, the Gulf States, and Saudi Arabia, as well as from other parts of Iraq. Huge numbers of strangers were collected in the streets around the shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad's Khadamiya district: it was impossible to number them, let alone guess which ones were wired. The Israelis can't even stop suicide bombers under everyday conditions.
Unfortunately, in the midst of this carnage, Ayatollah Sistani decided to play more games. His spokesmen excited tensions further by blaming the U.S. for the attacks — emotionally, if not coherently. They claimed U.S. troops knew the bombers were coming, and did nothing to stop them. And since the Americans seem to have superhuman capacities in other respects (they got rid of Saddam, which Iraqis could not do), they must therefore have wanted the attacks to happen.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at davidwarrenonline.com ...
...the crowds at the sites of both bombings hurled rocks at U.S. troops, even as they arrived to help rescue the bomb victims. But thanks to previous anti-American harangues in the mosques, they would also have thrown rocks had U.S. attempts to provide security been more visible.
You can't win an argument against paranoia: and once it has got its claws into a whole society, that society must either disintegrate, or be held together by raw tyranny. So the question of post-Saddam Iraq is really, "Can these people govern themselves?" Or must we instead acknowledge that, given contemporary realities, only a murderous tyrant like Saddam Hussein can rule? There are two schools of thought, as ever: optimistic, and pessimistic. The Bush administration remains optimistic, the Iraqis themselves are increasingly pessimistic, and my own luxurious position from this safe distance is that I don't know.
David Warren - Clear-thinking Canadian - BUMP [please freepmail me if you want or don't want to be pinged to David Warren articles]
If you want to bookmark his articles discussed at FR: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/k-davidwarren/browse
His own website: http://www.davidwarrenonline.com
His page at the Ottawa Citizen: http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/columnists/davidwarren.html
Iraq remains, after the fall of Saddam, the most promising opportunity for responsible government in the region. If the experiment quickly fails, the Bush administration could be toast. But worse, the hope that a responsible government can be established anywhere in the Arab world will be lost for another generation.
The fact they don't want to realize, or as Lee Harris puts it, they can't because they are deep in their own Fantasy Ideology - reality is not the realm they operate in - the fact is that if they fail in responsible governing, they [meaning Islamists, not Iraqi per se] will attack us again badly. They are not capable of destroying us, the best they can do is to damage significantly our economy and cause loss of human life. Actions ANY administration will have to take after that will finish any illusions they have now and will pale anything we do now. They were left alone until recently to entertain their ideas ONLY because of our liberal world order. As soon they destroy it, they will no more be allowed to exercise their fantasy. Unfortunately, I don't see any persuasive argument that can convince them not to through that final suicidal blow.
Which point I made in a post yesterday.
The bleating and beeyatching that the U.S. had not devoted enough to the security begged the question what if the U.S. had more of a presence--
There would have been bleating and beeyatching about the U.S. occupation.
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