You may have heard that the minarets of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra, still standing after the bombing that destroyed its golden dome, were blown up last week. But never fear! TIME magazine is here with good news from Bobby Ghosh in Baghdad. Still, if this image captured from Google News is any indication, he may have spoken too soon. Note the WaPo headline right above the TIME headline:
More below the fold.
Sunni Shrine Leveled In Apparent Reprisal Washington Post
Why Iraq's Shi'ites Aren't Retaliating TIME
He begins by noting that it could have been worse, and cites the carnage that followed the bombing of the shrine in February of 2006. Then he contrasts that with today:
Following the latest bombing of the shrine, there has been remarkably little retaliation, apart from scattered acts of violence against a handful of Sunni mosques. It has helped that Shi'ite leaders were quick to call for restraint. Al-Sadr asked his followers to observe three days of mourning and peaceful demonstrations. The Iraqi Shi'ites' most revered figure, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, said Sunnis should not be harmed. But such calls have gone unheeded in the past — Sistani had appealed for calm after the first Samarra bombing, too.
Ghosh, that's strange. Why would Sistani's call for calm be listened to this time around?
If appeals for restraint are working now, it's because they're backed up by the force of American arms.
Luckily for Baghdadis, the second Samarra attack came just as the last battalions participating the American "surge" arrived in Baghdad. ...
Ghosh! That is lucky! I bet they can hardly believe their luck. It sounds like the surge is working. I hope there isn't any way anything could go wrong.
Still, don't count the militias out: a few more egregious acts of provocation from al-Qaeda, and the Mahdi Army could come back into the fray. But for the moment, the surge is keeping a lid on a sectarian free-for-all. Residents of Baghdad often blame their many problems — everything from electricity shortages and soaring gas prices to unemployment and government corruption — on the Americans. Just this once, they might be inclined to give thanks.
So the surge is working, but mean ol' al-Qaeda might still mess it up. Still, I guess it's good that the Baghdadis might give thanks to the Americans for once. It's just too bad TIME magazine doesn't have a man on the scene in Baghdad who could ask them if they in fact do feel the way this writer speculates they might feel.
By BOBBY GHOSH/ BAGHDAD
Ghosh!
Here's the Washington Post article whose headline appeared just above the TIME headline on Google News.
I also found this diary by Gorette while searching to see if anyone had diaried this yet. You might find it interesting; I did.
When searching for Samarra to see if there was more evidence of reprisals, the first thing I found was this: 78 killed in Baghdad mosque bombing, but that is another attack on a Shi'ite mosque. I'm too sickened to search further.
It is disgusting that TIME magazine is running stories touting the success of the surge while Iraqis are dying and their country is disintegrating. We need to start pulling our troops out of Operation Charlie Foxtrot now. We don't have a decade for counterinsurgency operations, and we shouldn't wait for a political settlement that is never going to happen.
Above all else, George Bush and Dick Cheney must be impeached.