Not Good

The situation in Iraq is just flat bad, and there's no point trying to sugar coat any of it. All we can do is wait and see how things break.

Update: That said, it is important to note (as the Post does) that this marks the distance the country has come since 2004. There would have been absolutely no way, during that earlier crisis, for the American military to step back and let Iraqi forces take the lead in restoring order.

Side note: this current crisis might be easier to deal with if, during that one, Sadr had been dealt with in a more permanent manner. (Say, by having the original arrest warrant against him for murder served.) He always managed to back down at just the right moment to preserve his options and keep himself in play, and he's never been anything but an enormously destabilizing influence.

Update: Compare the Post's reporting to this hyper-descriptive wording from the Times, which seems to me to leave the conventions of calm, objective news reporting behind in the first sentence:

After a day of violence so raw and so personal, Iraqis woke on Thursday morning to a tense new world in which, it seemed, anything was possible.

Only in paragraphs 12, 13, and 14 do we get this:

Still, the neighborhood itself did not divide along sectarian lines: Shiite residents also condemned Wednesday's assaults. Neighborhoods all over Baghdad reported similar camaraderie.

"As a Shiite, I do not accept this," said Saadiya Salim, a 50-year-old homemaker. "These acts will lead to violence, because the Sunnis will attack" Shiite mosques.

As the afternoon dragged on and law enforcers were nowhere to be seen, neighborhoods seemed to shrink into themselves, setting up makeshift roadblocks out of the trunks of palm trees and, pieces of castaway metal stoves.

It's clear that Shia restraint is barely holding, but this observation is important:

Many Shiites condemned Wednesday's violence, while at the same time acknowledging that their sect had been responsible for it.

Comments

[biwah]

In an interview on NPR, a Sunni politician said that Iran was responsible for the Golden Dome bombing.

The bombing was directed right at Sadr and Mahdi army, and Sadr directed the calls for revenge at the U.S. Who would want this?

[davod]

Should we read anything into the fact that sadr was out of the country when this happened.

[Dusty]

While your choice of contrasting articles accentuates it, still it reaffirms my general opinion after years of reading that the NYT's is now more the Institute for Budding Novelists than it is The Newspaper of Record.

[Susan]

Sadr may be an "enormously destabilizing influence" in your eyes, but he is quite popular in Iraq. If the US forces arrest him, a large part of the country will errupt.

Sadr was out of the country because he is visiting the neighboring countries. This is a pretty common thing for elected politicians to do after they come to power. And he does have power in Iraq. Not as much as Sistani, but he is probably in second place.

Freedom and democracy means you elect your leaders by popular vote and foreign country butt the hell out.

[hhhhh]

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