Is This Iraq's Tipping Point?

Let us assume, for a moment, that the bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra was the work of terrorist leader Zarqawi. Let us assume that the purpose of the attack was to ignite a general civil/religious war between Sunni and Shiite.

That is the US line, as reported by The Washington Post.

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalizad, speaking at a news conference held on the telephone because of the driving ban, said it was "a moment of danger, but it is also a moment of opportunity" in Iraq. "In crises such as the one caused by this attack, there is an opportunity to bring people together and defeat goals of those who want to promote civil war in this country."

We are at a crucial tipping point. For the question is, does the government recently elected have the “soft” power, and do the security forces trained up by the United States have the “hard” power to hold the nascent Iraqi polity, the fragile modern government of laws, together. Or will they fail and surrender Iraq from civilized government (using the word in its strict sense of citified)
to the pre-civilized rule of local warlords and their militias.

You can complain all you like about the mistakes of the Bush administration, but that is the bottom line. The Bush policy has always been to erect in Iraq some sort of political structure based on the rule of law, which we know is the way, the good way, the only way yet known to mankind, that people get to live and prosper in the city.

Naturally, into the power vacuum created by the deposition of Saddam Hussein stepped the forces of pre-civilized culture, the culture we experienced in Europe as feudalism, the bygone era in which the barons of the land were more powerful than the merchant princes of the city.

So our policy was to build up a new political and power structure that would have a chance of introducing civilized governance into Iraq.

As some point the forces of pre-civilized power would make their supreme effort to defeat the forces of civilized power.

We will doubtless find out, in the next few days, whether the new power structure will hold. Let us pray, for the sake of the Iraqi people, that it does.