My old friend Sovay has been worrying about the Shrine of Ali. The US military has been given permission by the Iraqi government to enter the shrine, if necessary to arrest al-Sadr. Since the US military often issues arrest warrants attached to TOW missiles (e.g., the Hussein brothers), I suppose there is some reason to be concerned.
However, I think we've passed the point at which we ought to refrain from returning fire, or chasing fugitives, just because they enter into an Islamic holy building. I have heard, and I have understood, the objection that damaging these holy buildings will create new terrorists and raise the level of hatred for the US in the Muslim world. I have heard, and understood, that this particular building is especially sacred. I'm simply no longer convinced that we should consider these objections to be a primary concern.
What I suspect is the greater producer of terrorists is the sense among radicals that the West is afraid of Islam. What we have been pursuing as an act of decency has been taken as a sign of weakness. Weakness is even more provocative than wrath.
Bin Laden himself wrote that when people see a strong and a weak horse, they naturally like the strong horse. During the war and the initial stages of the occupation, the US military shied from any confrontation that would involve a mosque of any sort. We searched them only with apologies, bombed them only by accident. The result was not a recognition by our enemies that we were fundamentally decent: it was a further endangerment of the innocents in Iraq, as the insurgents integrated their operations into these areas where people lived and prayed. By leaving these holy sites untouched, we left them lawless. By leaving them lawless, we left the people who use them in peril.
The Shrine of Ali has been the scene, since the lawlessness began, of knife-murders, assassinations of high clerics, and bombings -- sometimes all at once. Blood has darkened its stones regularly, and the honest people of Najaf are in danger every time they go there because of the Medhi army and the international villians who are disguised in their uniform.
The Marines took out the tower of a Mosque in Fallujah that was being used as a sniper tower, and rightly so. The eruption of anger was short, and quickly forgotten.
It would be worse, louder and longer, in the event of damage to the Shrine. But it would also pass. In the time beyond, people could return there in safety, under no threat from followers of braying clerics promising to shed their last drops of blood upon its stones.
We have heard that this would be worse for Shias even than the shelling of the Vatican for Catholics. Perhaps. But what if the Vatican had already seen the Pope assassinated in the street before St. Peter's? What if it were now occupied by those same criminals, now armed and defying the world to try and bring justice to them? Sanity demands a cleansing of such places: first by fire, though holy water may follow if it will.
Better, I agree, if Iraqis would do it. Better, I agree, if Sadr would come out and give a stand-up fight. Better to damage it than to destroy it; better grenades than missiles; better knives than grenades. Yes, yes.
But worst, worst by far, to leave such a place in the hands of the wicked.
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