November 12, 2003 - Nassiriya had been quiet for a long time. Not since the live version of Saving Private Lynch was filmed on April 2 had the Shiite holy city been the scene of serious conflict, and there is some question on how serious the conflict was then. The town is not part of the Sunni Triangle. It is part of the Shiite south and is occupied by international troops under the command of our British allies. There is no question that Nassiriya is the scene of serious conflict this morning. Eleven Italian military policemen are dead and more are said to be trapped in the rubble of a police station destroyed by a car bomb last night.

Before the war we were told to expect that the Kurds in the north would be allied with the American forces and that when the Sunni oppressors were driven out the Shi'a in the south would be cooperative. Other voices, those who warned that the removal of the Sunni controlled secular government would result in chaos and civil war, were either ignored or drowned out in the enthusiasm of the invasion. In the short term it seemed that the Shiite south was quiescent. But that was before the Shiite cleric, dissatisfied with the makeup of the American appointed National Council proclaimed his own government for Iraq. It was also before the occupying Americans killed the American appointed head of the Sad'r City Municipal Council, the Shiite enclave on the east side of Baghdad.

The British have had somewhat more success in pacifying the areas of Iraq that are under their control than has the United States. But then the British have much more experience in occupying overtly hostile territory than do we. Neither in Germany nor Japan did we experience the overt resistance that the British experienced in their long occupation in the Middle East, or indeed in Northern Ireland. With the attack on the Italian detachment and the Iraqi deaths in a mortar attack in Basra the Ramadan Offensive has extended into the Shiite south.

General Sanchez, following the 4-a-day toll of the first 10 days of November has announced that the military's policy will be to crack down hard in Iraq. That policy follows the model established by the IDF response to the Indifada and, indeed the military policy of the British in Northern Ireland. It promises the same degree of success.

Paul Bremer is saying that things will get worse before things get better. He rushes back to Washington while the administration tries to work out a new plan to Iraqify the occupation of Iraq. If we have finally come to bringing government of the Iraqi people, for the Iraqi people and by the Iraqi people as the justification for and the objective of the Second Iraqi War; then we have a long and bloody road to travel before we achieve that end.