Najaf: Opening the Bottle
Tensions were ratcheted so high, some immediate resolution to the obscene standoff in Najaf was inevitable. A day ago, this blog envisioned the grim necessity of mastering sociological queasiness and crushing the sacred city's captors with decisive military force. Instead, a putative peace through something like diplomacy appears to have been eked out.
Peace, like food for the starving, brings instant gratification. Any kind seems better than none. Long-term health, however, requires more. What's being served up in Najaf may, sadly, be a junk peace. Worse, peace may also prove the continuation of terror by other means.
It's good that further bloodshed and further damage to the city's holiest site have been preempted. It's also good that the redoubtable Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani has finally emerged from tantalizing passivity to perform an active service for his nation.
Unfortunately, however, the furbishing of his bona fides goes hand in hand with the unmerited legitimizing of the thug Muqtada Al-Sadr.
Most ignobly, the interim Iraqi government seems even to have seen fit to grant this miscreant a pass on an arrest warrant – for murder, no less! – issued against him earlier this year under the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority.
All right: expediency trumping the rule of law; American dignity dealt another low blow; crime paying off – all of these are bad enough as immediate consequences of the junk peace at Najaf.
Worse, still, however, for the future of Iraq is the de facto certification this peace grants to demagoguery as so practical and efficient a modality in the nation's new political order. A formal faction of stupidity and hate has now been born, its birth and birthright both recorded at Najaf.
The activity of such a force in some form or other was predictable. This is the Middle East. Despite its enormous cultural, social and economic potential – and even with the incentive of its precious liberation to mobilize its better angels – it was too much to hope that Iraq might transcend utterly the traditions of savagery and ignorance so pervasive in the region.
But inviting them to the table like this is another matter entirely.
Mark these words: a dark and baleful djinn was unchained this week at Najaf. The ugliest guest at democratic Iraq's future banquet has been announced.
Peace, like food for the starving, brings instant gratification. Any kind seems better than none. Long-term health, however, requires more. What's being served up in Najaf may, sadly, be a junk peace. Worse, peace may also prove the continuation of terror by other means.
It's good that further bloodshed and further damage to the city's holiest site have been preempted. It's also good that the redoubtable Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani has finally emerged from tantalizing passivity to perform an active service for his nation.
Unfortunately, however, the furbishing of his bona fides goes hand in hand with the unmerited legitimizing of the thug Muqtada Al-Sadr.
Most ignobly, the interim Iraqi government seems even to have seen fit to grant this miscreant a pass on an arrest warrant – for murder, no less! – issued against him earlier this year under the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority.
All right: expediency trumping the rule of law; American dignity dealt another low blow; crime paying off – all of these are bad enough as immediate consequences of the junk peace at Najaf.
Worse, still, however, for the future of Iraq is the de facto certification this peace grants to demagoguery as so practical and efficient a modality in the nation's new political order. A formal faction of stupidity and hate has now been born, its birth and birthright both recorded at Najaf.
The activity of such a force in some form or other was predictable. This is the Middle East. Despite its enormous cultural, social and economic potential – and even with the incentive of its precious liberation to mobilize its better angels – it was too much to hope that Iraq might transcend utterly the traditions of savagery and ignorance so pervasive in the region.
But inviting them to the table like this is another matter entirely.
Mark these words: a dark and baleful djinn was unchained this week at Najaf. The ugliest guest at democratic Iraq's future banquet has been announced.
posted by Chet G @ 6:41 PM
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