Terrorists can destroy trucks delivering new Iraqi coinage to the country's south, and attack Iraqi National Guardsmen delivering heaters and supplies to schools, but they do not enjoy sanctuary:
An early morning raid on Jan. 11 netted Task Force Baghdad Soldiers six possible insurgents suspected of involvement in the assassination of the governor of Baghdad province. A military spokesman said the raid culminated from tips from local sources."The information was pretty good," said Maj. Web Wright, public affairs officer for the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team. "We were able to act on this intelligence and detain these guys without firing a shot. The citizens of Baghdad are really starting to turn over good information that we can put to use. They are obviously fed up with the violence that the terrorists are causing."
That Baghdad is predominantly Sunni further contradicts the characterization of fascist sabotage in Iraq as an ethnic "civil war."
The sense and confidence of public duty shown by civilians is the latest sign of Iraq's democratic society gaining strength while authoritarian influence wanes. Tattlers exist in dictatorships, of course, but in post-Saddam Iraq it is the doors of policemen and soldiers that get the knock. If political crimes and murders are not allowed to go unpunished of the people's volition, not out of fear for collective punishment but demand for justice and order, Iraqis are sociologically ready to take the mantle of their new nation. So it is even more telling that the state continues to establish itself as guardian in spite of murder, intimidation and damage. Terrorist or Ba'athist, new foe or old, fear is fear and rising above it to win freedom for the first time can become deep-seated in a people. If this course continues, those thugs who are not ratted out today will be cornered and set upon soon enough.
Ignoring the static injected by those who oppose the liberation of the oppressed, the act or the ones who carried it out, we can hear a radio drama slowly approaching its climax: it's a convention we know well, the moment when the ruthless Operator is finally confronted by his former patsies, and he sputters the old threats to no avail as the crowd closes in.
IDEAS AS CLAY PIGEONS: Former Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer took up at the firing line with a commentary piece in today's Wall Street Journal and hit squarely the poorly supported case for retaining Saddam's primary instrument for rule through strength. In Baghdad, Mohammed draws a bead on the "civil war" theory.