From Fallujah, two cautiously optimistic reports: first, patrols led by the Fallujah Brigade, a hastily assembled force of Iraqis, have begun without incident. The Ba'athist-led insurgents may simply have wised up and resolved not to enter into a conventional battle with Allied forces; then again, the enemy has not shown much strategic foresight at all, and it remains to be seen if the terrorist mix will risk heavy losses for another offensive simply for the purpose of whittling away at American public support. But for now, Fallujah is quiet.

Another report was found by Robert Tagorda (via IP), this one on the "political process" referred to by Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt towards the end of last month:

Marines and Navy Seabees are seeking Iraqi contractors to repair and refurbish mosques in an effort to dispel the notion that the United States has declared war on Islam. The effort is proceeding more quickly in the surrounding nearby villages than in this Sunni Triangle city where Marines and insurgents waged bloody combat for three weeks.

The Marines have a growing list of mosques that villagers would like help in repairing, renovating or expanding. Few, if any, village mosques were damaged during the fight, but the Americans said that fixing the mosques could elicit more goodwill in return than almost any other construction project. "The mosques are part of their communal life, and that's what we're here to improve," said Lt. Col. Colin McNease, officer in charge of the civil affairs unit of the 1st Marine Regiment. "This is a good way to demonstrate that this is not a war against Islam."

While this outreach won't put down the intransigent thugs and so-called jihadists, it can at least begin to dissolve the encrusted culture of strength, deceit and violence that defines Fallujah and the other pinpoints in Iraq still stuck in the Hussein era — helping to convince the population that their familiar ways are not worth lawlessness and intimidation from foreigners and fellow Iraqis. The simple and the peaceful are the overwhelming majority now. Those inside Iraq working to undermine the country's transition to democracy can't even manage a whole percentage in representation; the Khomeinists in the south and Ba'athists in the Sunni Triangle each boast no more than a few thousand members out of 25 million. Even at that, Allied troops are steadily thinning out insurgents in the south. It's unlikely that recruitment responds apace. Despite the power of the elite journalism and the telephoto lens, most Iraqis are reacting like any people liberated from years of tyranny: frightened, unconfident, distrustful, and disoriented, but eager to try their hand at peaceful self-rule. They are not to be confused with the angry young men lobbing mortars and detonating car bombs. The gulf between most Iraqis and their former and would-be Near East oppressors is wide, and if we examine events throughout the occupation we'll see two distinct campaigns.

The first is the battle against the forces of terrorism, meant to be completed last year, prolonged doubly by Ba'athist cowardice, Iranian-Syrian-Saudi meddling and our own underestimation of the enemy's desire to keep Arabs captive under strongmen. The second is the cultivation of a modern, civil and pluralist society — one that, above all, embraces equal rights of the sexes and a congenial blending of Iraq's wealth of heritage. Allied intention was to finish the first before it began the second. As events unfolded, both have been fought simultaneously, the first with weapons and the second with goodwill; the first campaign, however, has, in politics, been used as a foil to the second. Terrorists attack our troops or Iraqis and headlines imply or impose that the Iraqi people themselves are fomenting violence and rejecting their own liberation. That's the worst sort of lie; whether or not the insurgents intended it as a political weapon, many press agencies and public figures endorse the bigotry. Read Zeyad, Alaa, Ali, Mohammed, Omar and others: they know they're being framed. The Marines in Fallujah know it, too.