Isn't it interesting that Abdel-Aziz Hakim is using the death of his good brother as a soapbox for the anti-American, theocratic ambitions neither one was very good at keeping a lid on:

"The occupation force is primarily responsible for the pure blood that was spilled in holy Najaf, the blood of al-Hakim and the faithful group that was present near the mosque," Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim said in his eulogy.

"Iraq must not remain occupied and the occupation must leave so that we can build Iraq as God wants us to do," he added.

Emphasis mine. Considering Najaf wanted no part of Allied security, which is already quite well known, it's obvious that CPA's outreach to every Iraqi leader, loons included, is detrimental. Abdel-Aziz ought to be thrown out of the Ruling Council first thing tomorrow morning. Whatever anger from the "Shiite street" the Allies risk by drop-kicking this dissembler is more than made up for by the stability and authenticity the nascent Iraqi government would gain.

Paul Bremer's been doing well playing nice; but he's going to need to practice playing hardball, and soon.

A problem with various detractors of the Bush administration's command is that their collective argument focuses on the wrong aspects of the war. Reconstruction and defense in Iraq and Afghanistan, while in many ways at the mercy of unrest and disorder committed by adversarial forces, will ultimately operate on their own timetables. Infrastructure can be built more quickly with greater resources - but civil society cannot. A decade needed to right the Iraqi national conscience is not unreasonable. Afghanistan will take longer. To connect exterior threats with a failure on the Allied occupations' part is erroneous.

While turning on a country like Pakistan is currently a political impossibility, Iran and Syria, by their dedicated support of the very terrorist groups attempting to destablize Allied progress in the region, should be the Near East front's next candidates for regime change. Questions of the White House's strategic outlook are warranted here. From Saul Singer:

Just as the U.S. cannot afford to lose in Iraq, it cannot afford to exempt Iran and Syria from the Bush Doctrine: Supporting terror is punishable by regime change. If the terrorist network senses that the Iraq war was the end, rather than a cardinal demonstration of, the war against it, it is a matter of time before terrorist attacks against the West multiply in size and number.

Let's say the U.S. realizes this, but is still not ready to target other regimes. Such reticence is understandable, however unwise. Yet it is no excuse for a false, all-or-nothing dichotomy. Who says that just because the U.S. does not want to invade or immediately seek the overthrow of the Iranian and Syrian regimes that there is nothing to be done?

...much more could be done. Topping the list should be to unmask the abominable human-rights record of the Iranian regime. Iran holds thousands of political prisoners and brutally represses dissent, yet is not thought of as human-rights abuser in the league of Saddam Hussein, Burma, or even China. True, Iran did not make Freedom House's 2003 list of World's Most Repressive Regimes, but it came close: a rating of 6 for lack of political and civil rights, where 7 is the bottom of the barrel.

...Syria, on the other hand, is on the list of most repressive regimes. The Freedom House report explains that a brief easing dubbed "Damascus Spring" reached its zenith in January 2001 when 1,000 Syrian intellectuals called for comprehensive political reforms. By the end of that year new restrictions were imposed and 10 leading reformists were arrested. In 2002, the "Damascus Ten" were sentenced to prison and over a dozen prominent journalists and human-rights activists were arrested.

The problem with Singer's argument - one that affects most critiques of the administration - is that he ends with no clear alternative, merely resting on the belief that "Something is better than nothing":

All of this can be done even if the U.S. does not have a clear idea as to how the Iranian and Syrian regimes will ultimately fall. A plan for regime change is best, but a minimal alternative is to follow the simple blueprint these two enemies are using: The more problems we make for the other side, the less trouble they can make for us. Incrementalism is not ideal, but in this case, far superior to the combination of bluster and inaction.

Is it (and is "nothing" the only alternative)? American reconstruction in both Afghanistan and Iraq is derided for poor pre-planning and blurry long-term objectives. I would argue against this: far-reaching plans are of marginal worth at best when tactical circumstances present themselves, resulting in unexpected setbacks and a jagged road to success. The Bush administration could have leapt into Saddam's corner; but they didn't, and that serves as evidence to significant planning for Saddam's deposition and its consequences. And no, neither country is in as historically terrible shape as skeptics would have us believe. Moreover, many of the same people whispering aloud at Bush's determined pursuit of a New World Order turn around and serve up shibboleths of aimlessness. As with any double-sided partisan attack: which will it be?

Now suppose for a minute, whether you trust Bush or not, that the White House would be engaging Syria and Iran without even a semblance of a complete strategy. How much would that really accomplish for public trust at home or military victory abroad? And what would little pricks and prods amount to - remember, we did the very same thing to Saddam for a decade, with few results. Israel slaps Arafat and his thugs about week after week, but deprived of complete military victory, the Jews can't escape from a terrorist water torture.

Should we take Iran and Syria to task? By all means: they are prime instigators of terrorism and antagonists of liberty in the region. Steven Den Beste offers advice on cleaning out the State Department's penchant for the kind of indecision Saul Singer and others are worried about.

My fear is that too many critics aren't prepared to follow the logical response to their complaints: more regime change. Much more.

Just so it's understood, the Near East's jihadists and Islamist kooks mean to defend the totalitarian establishment in Iraq and not, by any means, the Iraqis themselves:

Two Saudis arrested after the Najaf attack in Iraq that killed leading Shiite cleric Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim were picked up after sending an e-mail saying "mission accomplished: the dog is dead," The Times reported today quoting a source close to the Iraqi inquiry.

The men were grabbed by a crowd and taken to the nearest police station after being seen sending the e-mail from an Internet cafe, the source said.

...The two suspects apparently attracted the attention of the son of the cafe owner after having "offered a larger than usual sum of money to use a computer," the British daily said.

This is the silver lining. The Iraqis, like any human beings, know freedom by instinct. The finer points of liberty will take years for them, of course - but individual rights were always connate and now, tangible. And Iraqis are not about to lose it all to the deranged, "practicing" cousins of their former oppressor. Threaten their first chance at normal life in decades? Quit babbling about the virgins somebody promised you: tell it to the beak.

It was while watching footage of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenant gloating over the destruction of the World Trade Center nearly a year ago - "More dead than we anticipated" or something to that demonic effect - that I realized how completely devoid of strategy or ethos, however convoluted, these men are. It isn't about a god; nor is it about culture. While many of their fanatic followers are drawn into terrorism to desperately seek an ideologically charged escape from despair and poverty, the terror masters - as Ledeen calls them - want baser things. If they sought to establish a world order, they wouldn't indiscriminately butcher people across borders and loyalties; Bali, Riyadh, Baghdad, Najaf. No, they just want to kill and consume. They wouldn't risk uniting humanity, however tenuous that alliance was.

I don't consider authoritarians bound by a "bestial will" for nothing. The Islamofascists are horribly dangerous; but also self-destructive fools. If this continues, they'll soon make rugged anti-terrorists out of the Iraqis.

UPDATE: Our friendship strengthens. The United States is more than willing to apply the strength of its intelligence and enforcement agencies to the success of democratic Iraq - and the Iraqis understand that.

Most of will us remember this incident, considered an American faux pas at the time:

An angry crowd of Iraqi Shiites prevented troops of the US 101st Airborne Division from approaching the Ali Mosque, a sacred Shiite site in the town of Najaf, according to footage aired by CNN cable news.

Some 200 civilians shouting in Arabic and waving their arms in "keep out" motions, blocked a US convoy from entering the street leading to the mosque, recognizable by its prominent golden dome.

The CNN correspondent said the US troops were heading for the residence of the local Shiite ayatollah, who had agreed to meet with representatives of the US forces but asked first that his home be protected.

Shortly after the tense standoff, Iraqis revealed that it was something of a misunderstanding:

U.S. troops were arranging a meeting with the mosque's cleric who had issued a decree urging Muslims to remain calm and not hinder U.S. forces.

He asked them for protection, and they moved toward his home.

But the crowd mistook that as U.S. troops about to storm the mosque, or target the cleric.

"City, okay ... mosque, no," said one Iraqi.

Commander Chris Hughes now faced a volatile standoff.

"Everybody smile. Don't point your weapons at them," he told his troops.

The biggest resentment for this crowd was the thought of U.S. soldiers carrying guns into the mosque. That's exactly what the Fedayeen had been doing for years.

Misunderstanding or not, it made an impression. If Allied troops have worked diligently - to the point of obsession - towards anything, it has been an almost obeisant courtesy to Islam in Iraq. Islamic clerics are uneasy about the very presence of foreign soldiers on their soil; this has rubbed off on congregations and crowds. Muslim pride, intact after two decades of Saddam, is something the Allies are loathe to offend (emphasis mine):

While accepting responsibility for maintaining security throughout Iraq, U.S. officials said U.S. troops have avoided patrolling in the immediate vicinity of the holy sites of Najaf and Karbala out of respect for the Shi'a faith. They described the Najaf mosque as a good example of a "soft target" for terrorists seeking to create turmoil in Iraq similar to the U.N. compound in Baghdad.

Compounding the tragedy is the predictable chorus blaming American fecklessness for the attack. That's absurd. Mosques became "soft" targets the moment they were declared off-limits to Allied soldiers. That was the Iraqis' demand, and one they may soon withdraw - but their demand nonetheless. Ralph Kinney Bennett described a coward's heavy-payload weapon of choice: the car bomb. He wrote the article, presciently, a day before the Ali bombing. As Bennett explains, point-defense is the only physical protection against suicidal bomb-drivers. Invasive intelligence-gathering - those unpopular raids and roundups - is the only real solution.

So which will it be? The Coalition Provisional Authority can't be accused of insensitivity to Islam and an inability to safeguard Iraq in the same breath.

Here's a little perspective to the supposed "chaos" in four-month-old, postwar Iraq. Japan had crime, iniquity and yes, sectarian and ethnic violence. This comes from the masterful accounting of postwar Japan, Inventing Japan, by former Washington Post Tokyo Bureau Chief William Chapman:

Tokyo endured [the] winter [of 1945-1946] on the workings of an illegal economy. The black market encompassed thousands of sellers and millions of buyers dealing in every commodity of daily life. It was also a vast jungle of lawlessness that began with thefts and led to gang killings, turf wars, and casual murders, becoming at last a criminal demimonde of immense proportions. It embraced all classes and kinds of people. When the war ended, sake, bread, clothing, shoes, sugar and blankets had disappeared from military depots all over the country, pilfered wholesale by officers and enlisted men alike. Small thefts were the routine of daily existence. A bicycle snatched at Ueno's railway station turned up repainted and for sale two hours later at the station in Shimbashi. Koreans and Chinese, forced-labor immigrants during the war, prospered with goods smuggled from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and by the Occupation's ruling, they could not be arrested by Japanese police.

It was the beginning for many mobster organizations, some of whose descendants still operate today. In Tokyo there were eight major syndicates, each with its own piece of turf around the major train stations...They fought amongst themselves and against other gangs, the Japanese mobs battling constantly for territory against the Koreans and Chinese. Guns were plentiful, another result of looted army depots. Unable or unwilling to intervene, police let gangs have at one another, and the shootouts continued for several years into the Occupation. One day in April 1948, two gangs - one Japanese, one Korean - fought it out with pistols in the Hamamatsu district. The next day, about one hundred Japanese returned to the attack on the Koreans' black market there and killed or wounded more than 15 men.

This was in a country unthreatened by organized mobs of terrorists or desperate figures from the militarist regime.

I'm beginning to take the European preference for August vacations seriously: there's a temporary fatigue I've come under, and it seems to be a combination of sultry weather capping three months of hot summer days and relative quiet in the world. Critical decisions are still being made daily, often shaped by significant events, but the world isn't charging ahead at the breakneck pace of the first four months of this year. Not every development is worth a cable news alert, radio bulletin or newspaper headline. The result, unfortunately, is that the same questions are being repeatedly thrown against circumstances that can't possibly change in the time frame to which we've become accustomed. Iraq is going to require years to stabilize - let alone rebuild, heal and [be given] its place among civilized nations. Consider the fact that it and the Near East are inextricably linked - Iraq surrounded by hostile, terrorist dictatorships will continually be harassed and attacked - and it's plain that the region, left under Islamofascism, will slow or even stunt Iraqi reconstruction.

Today everyone repeats the phrase "This will take years" just as they silently agreed with the administration's warning that "we have difficult work to do in Iraq." You'd think that would alter the perspective through which opinions, political and journalistic, are being made. Not a chance. It hasn't at all stopped the flurry of SERIOUS QUESTIONS and DIRE PROGNOSTICATIONS that crop up at two or three a week, even now. Why not, some would say - they fit in well with the war's rhythm. Given that the substantial military defeat of Saddam Hussein took four weeks, a pundit could get away with describing a day's delay as, technically, a significant setback - about a month or two in equivalent time to Allied victory against Nazi Europe. Couldn't that news-cycle-friendly magic be carried over into post-Saddam time? The prevailing assumption is that technology will similarly speed rejuvenation, be it politically, industrially, economically, religiously or militarily.

Technology has already averted major food and water shortages; it has aided the capture of most lead Ba'athists and mitigated the damage of many attacks; it has provided an unprecedented ability to communicate, the world to Iraq and Iraq to the world. But it cannot overturn immutable laws of construction or societal restoration, nor can it erase the time and sacrifices necessary for further prosecuting the wider war. In March and April, "Are we there yet?" was annoying. Now it's unbearable and destructive. Stories are being beaten to death; predictions are made out of focus. The obsession with quick results makes for bad journalism, repetitive [negative] blogging, unrealistic public expectations, and poor strategic decisions. Mark Steyn tears the phony United Nations panacea to shreds, although it's simpler than that: what's not happening after four months under occupation that realistically and historically should be? Four months? Nothing. Saddam's out and the country is slowly rebounding where it isn't completely deficient, no thanks to the Ba'athists. Our boys are supposed to, say, flick the lights back on when Saddam's electrical grid was specifically designed for subordination? Rule: any laundry list of CPA failures must include "moving mountains" and "altering space and time."

The people of Afghanistan were lucky enough to lose the spotlight immediately after their liberation from the Taliban. Progress occurs over there on a daily basis - but the fact that Afghans have been "forgotten," as some skeptics put it, actually means that no one is gauging the marathon against doubt, fatigue and terrorists by the footfall. Obstacles and setbacks are not magnified into global-scale tragedies. Iraq may not be upstaged in the near future; nor should it have to be. It's our responsibility to gain a sense of patience - not rely on the benefits of a short attention span or a near-complete ignorance of the trials faced in the most instructive occupations, those for Germany and Japan.

News stories can continue. Critical op-eds can, too. But not every weekend. Or weekday. Or hour. Hide the panic button. Skip the doom and gloom. Vigilance, not trainspotting.

Seventeen people dead from a car bomb is seventeen too many. What makes the murder of Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim complicated is the fact that he was a polite advocate for theocracy, based in Tehran and obviously in political harmony with Iran's mullahs. Statements he made in May are far better examples of his intent for Iraq than the conciliatory jargon spewed a couple of months later for the benefit of Baghdad's Governing Council:

Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, head of the Iran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said his group does not want a secular government "because a secular government doesn't respect religion."

The group wants "a democratic government that respects Islam," he said.

...In a speech Saturday to a huge crowd of supporters, al-Hakim called for a "modern Islamic" system in Iraq.

On Tuesday, he said, "As a supreme council we call for an Islamic state because we are Islamic" - but "not at the exclusion of others."

State-established religion is, of course, the height of exclusion. In spite of his poisonous agenda, Mohammed Baqir didn't deserve death. So the question remains: who killed him? Ba'athists haven't demonstrated any active hostility to foreign elements inside the country - could this be a turning point? Tacitus believes this to be the beginning of sectarian violence, though one of his suspects, Moqtada al-Sadr, seems just as radical as Mohammed Baqir, only intransigent and unable to politically adapt.

As I said on Tacitus: If this is a battle between radical Shiite gangsters, it may fall into a similar phenomenon of rampant crime, murder and market shootouts between Japanese Yakuza factions that popped up in 1946 and 1947. From that perspective, it's less troubling than truly widespread violence - or direct attacks on Allied troops. I'll draw out some Yakuza accounts and observations this weekend - and keep on eye on Iraq in the meantime.

UPDATE: 85 dead. The Iraqis are being forced to learn painful lessons about the sort of hate and malevolence a nation inherits when it joins the ranks of liberal democracies - how fragile the peace of freedom is. Horrifying as it is, they'll triumph.

UPDATE II: 107 dead. And this may, indeed be another sign of invasion by Islamofascists - not, thankfully, a Shiite civil war. (Via Instapundit.)

I'd seen this article earlier today but wasn't able to comment:

Frustrated at the failure to find Saddam Hussein's suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, allied intelligence agencies have launched a major effort to determine if they were victims of bogus Iraqi defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war.

The goal, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, "is to see if false information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we were totally duped on it." He added, "We're reinterviewing all our sources of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just the U.S."

I heard it remarked this afternoon that this may have been a strategic leak by the CIA, an agency traditionally hostile to Iraq's democratization potential, resistance groups' reliability, weapons program breadth and terrorist ties. Furthermore, the first sentence posits "failure" to find weapons and corresponding institutions as irrefutable fact, despite growing murmurs of a watershed to come.

That aside, the idea is equally flimsy: why in the world would Saddam Hussein not only risk his regime but practically ensure its destruction by luring America into a decisive attack? It's as unlikely as Al Capone seeding the FBI with proof of tax evasion so he could die peacefully in prison instead of hanging for an eventual murder rap. Criminals favor the easiest methods to escape from suspicion. If Saddam wanted to use defectors as decoys, their story would have been precisely the opposite: that Ba'athist Iraq was clean.

As the Oxblog-Tacitus argument continues, I noticed that today's list of violent incidents occurring in Shiite locations might be a bit of an overstatement on Tacitus' behalf.

Particularly with today's reiteration of a simple, nonideological criminal element in Iraq, we can't consider deaths in a Shiite town to be proof positive of Shiite resistance or the kind of organized violence that the Allies should consider a political failure or of internal origination.

I've read through the articles of ambushes in Shiite cities and towns, and with all but one, haven't come across any distinct identity of assailants.

It's no surprise or secret that people in Basra are frustrated; any disrupted urban environment with an accommodating authority (i.e., one that won't round up malcontents and yank out their eyeteeth) is ripe for protest. Two weeks ago, a small number of residents rioted. But even in those accounts, it's unclear as to whether the weapons attacks were necessarily part of a Shiite resistance. Considering criminals or an Iranian/Saudi/etcetera jihadist element simply taking advantage of unrest is important to deciding whether this is really "resistance" or external threats to security that are quite independent of the people who matter most to this argument - law-abiding, Iraqi citizens.

So this may not be about extra-triangle resistance. Even the ostensibly popularly contrived murder of British MPs in Majar al-Kabir seems a little fishy, what with a distinct Iranian presence onsite. We're really talking about invasion - a contingency that was not only predicted from day one, but is perceived under the developing "flypaper" ethos to be a potential bonding agent between Iraqis and Allied troops, even through the worst of times.

Everyone knew the Near East, while capitulating in some respects, would initially throw its dictatorial weight into defeating a free Iraq. The worst possible reaction to the continuing disarray is pessimism and expectations of disaster.

No, Saddam's weapons potential wasn't a figment of anybody's imagination:

U.S. intelligence suspects Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have finally been located.

Unfortunately, getting to them will be nearly impossible for the United States and its allies, because the containers with the strategic materials are not in Iraq.

Instead they are located in Lebanon's heavily-fortified Bekaa Valley, swarming with Iranian and Syrian forces, and Hizbullah and ex-Iraqi agents, Geostrategy-Direct.com will report in Wednesday's new weekly edition.

U.S. intelligence first identified a stream of tractor-trailer trucks moving from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon in January 2003. The significance of this sighting did not register on the CIA at the time.

U.S. intelligence sources believe the area contains extended-range Scud-based missiles and parts for chemical and biological warheads.

Two challenges here. First, following through on a cited justification for war in spite of Saddam's trickery (and the hedging of those eager to believe him); second, continuing to prosecute the war on terror by confronting the terrorist state of Syria. If the Bush administration feared it lacked political momentum to accomplish these goals, it certainly has quite a bit now.

In-country chaos is not equal-opportunity:

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers raided a northern town on Tuesday in a bid to smash a crime ring wanted for murder, gunrunning and a terrorist attack on a police station that killed an American soldier earlier this month.

[...]

"Their primary focus is probably criminal activity, but they have attacked coalition forces through direct and indirect means," [Col. David] Hogg told The Associated Press. "As long as [criminal leader Lateef] is in place we will not be able to establish the conditions for the Iraqi police to establish law and order in the area."

Just why is this mobster on the streets?

Lateef was imprisoned and serving multiple life sentences for murder until Saddam Hussein granted amnesty to all prisoners in October as the United States ratcheted up its case for invading Iraq, according to U.S. intelligence officers.

Only so many hardened gangsters and Ba'athists are alive in Iraq; because Allied forces are operating militarily and not as law enforcement, few domestic obstacles prevent them from shattering the most active and destructive groups. Slow and steady - with luck, the only threats to Iraqi security will be "jihadists" who, from Iraqi accounts, stick out like sore thumbs.