# Posted 1:43 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

IRAQ BOMBING: Ninety-five men and women, including Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, lost their lives in Najaf today. They were the victims of a car bomb placed outside the Imam Ali Mosque by unknown terrorists.

The death of Ayatollah Hakim is a major setback for American efforts to cultivate and cooperate with a moderate Shi'ite leadership. Perhaps the best one can hope for is that Hakim's martyrdom will enshrine his non-violent and pro-democratic approach to reconstruction as the reigning standard for Iraqi Shi'ites.

The prime suspects in the Najaf bombing are renegade Ba'thist forces. After the bombing, Najaf police officers arrested four men in connection with the bombing, all of them former members of Saddam's intelligence services. According to scholar-blogger Juan Cole,

this bombing was the work of Saddam loyalists. Baqir al-Hakim had waged a long terrorist and guerrilla war against the Baath. He cooperated with the Americans. When Saddam called on Shiite clergy to declare jihad on the US a couple of weeks ago, Baqir and others rejected the call forcefully and attacked Saddam as a tyrant. No believing Shiite would blow up a huge bomb right in front of Imam Ali's shrine. The truck bomb has become a signature of the remnants of the Baath, as with the attack on the United Nations HQ. The Saddam loyalists may hope that Shiite factions will blame one another and fall to fighting an internal civil war, adding to the country's ungovernability for the Americans.

I myself am wondering whether the Ba'athist were hoping to provoke a Shi'ite-Sunni conflict rather than a Shi'ite civil war. After all, it is hard to imagine that Iraq's Shi'ite wouldn't unite in the face of an external attack. And this afternoon, a Shi'ite protest march made its way into a prominent Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad after a Shi'ite imam called for vengeance. Fortunately, there was no violence.

It is hard to know how the bombing will affect the relationship between Coalition forces and the people of Iraq. Matt Yglesias writes that

One thing the hawks are right about, is that Iraq is not another Vietnam and it's not going to be one in the future, either. On the one hand, the US has gotten much better at avoiding things like the slaughter of innocent villagers. On the other hand, our military opponents do things like blow up mosques that will almost certainly not endear them to the broad mass of Iraqis. But as I said before, each unhappy intervention is unhappy in its own way. The risk in Iraq is not that things like blowing up mosques is going to drive us out of the country. Rather, the risk is that mosques (and oil pipelines, and police stations, and UN buildings, etc.) are just going to keep getting blown up because the occupation authority is understaffed, underfunded, and led by a group of men in Washington DC who've evinced an utter inability to manage public policy. Infrastructure may continue to degrade and central authority may become utterly ineffective. Just like in the last country we invaded.

Kevin Drum shares Matt's concerns about security, writing that

I wish we had a better idea of just how strong these remnants of the Baathist movement are these days. For all the talk about how we're making progress, they sure seem like they're still able to cause an awful lot of damage.

I suspect that this will not be the last attack on a Shi'i holy site. As the NYT noted about the shrine in Najaf,

There were no American forces in the vicinity, as senior Najaf clergymen had made it clear they did not want troops patrolling anywhere near the holy site. A compromise proposal to train a 300-member local police force has been awaiting financing, a Marine officer said.

As was the case with the UN bombing, it seems that Ba'athist insurgents have become adept at locating high-profile targets that are not protected by American forces. Perhaps that is an indication that the Ba'athists no longer believe they can achieve significant success against Americans, with success defined as inflicting more than a handful of casualties at once.

Of course, the security of American forces will provide little comfort to vulnerable Shi'ites. In the aftermath of the bombing, it became apparent that some Shi'ites held the United States responsible for the lack of security. Thus, the challenge ahead is for the occupation government to forge an agreement with Shi'ite leaders that can ensure the security of their gathering places without relying on either an intrusive American presence or an independent Shi'ite military force.

Will that happen? According to an NYT news analysis, today's bombing exposed a disappointing lack of leadership ability on the part of both the occupation government and the Iraqi interim council. The article makes a strong case that a stalemate has resulted from both the Americans insisting that the Iraqis become more assertive while the Iraqis counter that the Americans haven't given them enough power.

Regardless, I think this bombing demonstrates the need for greater Presidential leadership on Iraq. It is time for President Bush to deliver a simple and powerful message to the people of Iraq: "We share your desire for an end to the occupation and the return of self-government. The faster that you demonstrate your commitment to democratic ideals and institutions, the sooner our day of departure will come. The harder you work to fulfill Ayatollah Hakim's vision of an Islamic democracy, the sooner you will be able to honor his memory through the establishment of a free Iraq. God bless and good night." (0) opinions -- Add your opinion