This excellent piece by Edward Wong, the story of the casual assasination of a Sunni woman, is heartbreaking. It speaks to the difficulties in stopping the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods, even though the Shiite militias have gone to ground. Note that the Iraqi troops involved are Kurds, not Arabs. Kurds are not native Arab-speakers, which doesn’t help in trying to police the streets.
And then, there’s this epitaph for the war, from an unnamed U.S. Army sergeant, trying to console his anguished Captain:
“What can you do?…It’s their problem. This is their country, and they need to work it out among themselves. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
Bless the New York Times for its non-stop excellent coverage of this war.
