British troops have shut down an Iraqi newspaper for sixty days; whatever populist potential this story carries in the media is at odds with the fact that the rag was printed by the notorious Iranian-backed troublemaker Moqtada al-Sadr. The straw that broke, forgive the cliché, the camel's back? Al-Sadr's little op-ed calling September 11th "A miracle from God." (Via Winds of Change, whose war update shoud be required reading.) Those who will try to cast the Allies as intolerant, hypocritical or otherwise authoritarian ought to remember that in a nascent democracy, especially one without a permanent constitution, the freedom of expression must be closely regulated so as to keep it from falling prey to political abuses by powers dedicated to the destruction of liberties. An excellent historical example would be the squelching of the February 1st, 1947 general strike, the "2-1 Strike," in Japan. Managed by unions led by Moscow-backed Communists, the strike was intended not to increase nor defend worker's rights but to cause as much civil upheaval as possible, the desired result a weakening of both the Occupation's and the Diet's authority. MacArthur's SCAP selectively and temporarily abridged the very rights they had imported to the island and prevented the strike in order to guarantee that sincere efforts for labor rights could be preserved for the future.

By tolerating a subversive counterfeit of a popular institution, principle endangers practice; so the British have removed an independent newspaper run by men who would prefer no newspapers but their own. No word on whether al-Sadr's militia, the Mehdi Army, will be permanently disbanded as well.