Coming Problems

For some time, I've been meaning to check out Iraq'd, the blog for liberal hawks who got burned. Today they had a good post explaining the implications of an ominous development from recent days, the tacit support given to Sadr by the coalition-trained Iraqi police:

"Among the most important is that the U.S.-trained police force opted, generally speaking, not to challenge the rioters. This is a prologue to what Iraq will look like on June 30: numerous militias--Sadr's is called the Jaish Al Mehdi, or Mehdi's Army--of varying strength and agendas challenging each other or local Iraqi authorities for control of certain pieces of the country. The police, if today's chaos is any indication, won't stand in their way."

As I said below, thinking of this "The Shi'ite Uprising" is (so far) off the mark. It is at the moment only an uprising led by a Shi'ite faction which has now joined forces with the Sunnis who benefitted from Ba'ath rule. However, even if it is crushed - and I suspect it will be, albeit after much heavy fighting - it will be plain to everyone that Iraqis as a whole tolerate the occupation as better than the alternatives rather than endorse it as the means to a prosperous future. In short, that it is the Iraqis, particularly those who are well-armed and organized, who rule Iraq. Containing the tensions of Iraqi society will require a very careful development of the political system. There are ways to get it right, but there are also many ways to get it wrong. We cannot afford the consequences of the latter, which could include a truly mass uprising against the coalition followed by a descent into civil war among the armed factions.