PATIENCE, BUT NOT LIMITLESS:

Back in Baghdad (Steven Vincent, January 30, 2004, FrontPageMagazine.com)

Another element shoring up Iraqi goodwill and patience is Grand Ayatollah Ali Husani Sistani. Spiritual leader of Iraq’s 15 million Shia Muslims, Sistani has instructed his followers not to oppose the U.S. They continue to obey: last week, I attended a Shia political rally, and was probably the only Westerner at large religious festival—in neither did I detect anti-American sentiments. As we sat in Friday services at the al-Gailani mosque in central Baghdad, an Iraqi friend informed me that the sheikh was cautioning his listeners against violence. As he paraphrased the cleric’s words, “Anyone who shoots an American will be cut off from the people.”

Shia tribal leaders I’ve met seem willing to cooperate with the U.S., too. “America came and finished Saddam—that has changed our minds about them,” said Abdul Wahab Abdula al-Robeiey, chief of a council of 3,400 southern tribes. This support, they stress, depends on Uncle Sam’s trustworthiness. “If Americans are truly interested in the Iraqi people, then we are together in one body with them,” declared Mohammad al-Razzie al-Abdudi, sheikh of a 2,200-member tribe situated around Najaf.

The peace is eminently winnable.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 30, 2004 7:44 PM