The Golden Holy

The bombing of Askariya mosque — the Golden Mosque — in Samarra, Iraq seems to have set off more dispair in the American press than in Iraq. Not even Max Boot is immune. It certainly ticked off a lot of Shiites. Everybody in the media, and a bunch in the blogsphere, here is running around screaming "Civil War!!! We're doomed!"

One thing I noticed about the pictures is that the building had a lot of concrete with re-bar in it. Doesn't that seem pretty modern to you? Like this mosque has been rebuilt before? That doesn't allay the insult to Shia Islam, but it does seem that this isn't the big failure of Bush's Iraq policy that people think. The fighting will continue awhile, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. It puts some heat on the Sunnis to deal with their own "insurgents" who would have a harder time operating if people started reporting them to the authorities. Any Iraqi who really cares about Iraq could go undercover and help shut these networks down.

Victor Davis Hanson and Ralph Peters are both trying to calm the hype, too.