Passion of the Iraqis

Juan Cole posts about Iraqi Shi'ites comparing the U.S. to Yazid, the Umayyad caliph implicated in the death of Husayn at Karbala. Al-Jazeera reports on al-Manar's take-off on the Passion trailer to place Iraqis in the position of Jesus and Americans as his tormenters. Neither of these is particularly good. Since Americans are attacking Karbala and torturing people, however, it is inevitable, something I hope the administration is taking into account. They will probably accuse the media of inflaming the situation, and al-Manar is a Hizbullah outlet, but here I suspect they're just saying what's on everyone's mind in the Arab world.