Mark Steyn, on Fallujah:
The Iraqi people don't want to be on the American side, only on the winning side. Right now, those two positions happen to coincide; 99.99 percent of Iraqi Shiites aren't involved in the troubles of the last week. This guy Sadr is a junior-league blowhard. ''If they come for our leader,'' says one of his commanders, ''they will ignite all of Iraq." No, they won't. The vast majority of Iraq will remain un-ignited.Posted by dan at April 13, 2004 12:22 AMLook at those pictures of the atrocity in Fallujah: the remains of four corpses, and a bunch of savages dancing around them. In all those photographs, can you add up more than a hundred men? And half of them are punk kids under 11. There are 300,000 people in that city. A few score are depraved enough to cheer on the killers of four brave men; 299,900 of the town's population were either disapproving or indifferent.
And in the Arab world, the indifferent are the biggest demographic. They sit things out, they see which strong horse has jostled his way to the head of the pack, and they go along with him. The Turks. The British. The British-installed king. The thug who murders the king. The thug who murders the thug who murders the king.