What now.

When none other than William F. Buckley Jr. says we have failed in Iraq then I have to take notice. In an NRO article he states that the underlying postulates governing our Iraq policy are flawed.

One of these postulates, from the beginning, was that the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom.

This goes farther than Iraq, can Arab Muslims anywhere suspend sectarian and tribal hatreds and form a government that respects the rights of others or is the only workable solution a dictatorial strongman than can ruthlessly suppress any opposition? Buckley refers to one soldier lamenting the fact that he can understand why Saddam Hussein was needed to keep the Sunnis and the Shiites from each other’s throats.

Sunni Blogger GQ illustrates this hatred on his site.

I just got home and one of the first things my father told me that the Shia masjid/shrine is blown up. As soon as he said that, I had the BIGGEST smile on my face. LOL ALLAHU AKBAR!

I am so happy. May Allah reward the ones who did it. Ameen

These retarded scumbags need more of this. May Allah guide them or destroy these little dogs. Ameen

Go to the comments section to see saner Muslims condemn his vitriolic reaction. Such hatreds are not mainstream but in a country of 26 million if only a conservatively estimated 20% hold to these feelings that is 5,200,000 people ready to create havoc.

Add to this the usual blaming of the US. There are some that actually think the US committed the bombings or allowed them to take place. Obviously Americans did this. That way a sectarian civil war can break out with our troops in the middle. The tons of blood and dollars spent to build a Democratic Iraq can then go down the tubes in an orgy of Muslim against Muslim fighting and American influence in the region will all but be destroyed. Sure pal, makes sense to me. Certainly Iran, Sadr (same thing), or Al Qaeda have nothing to gain by a civil war but the benefits to the US are numerous and great. In the convoluted Middle East such conspiracies abound, I'm guilty myself by suspecting Sadr of being involved. Others agree. From The American Spectator:

The coordinated Shia-based assaults on hundreds of Sunni mosques that followed was directed by Iranian agents or fellow travelers. Signals source suspects the Iranians are using captured Salafists from Pakistan, men who are devoted to murdering Shia.These surrogates are captured by Iranian forces while en route to Iran and given a stark choice: conduct this murder campaign or we will just kill you where you hang.

Note that Mookie Sadr was in Beirut when the detonation triggered the so-called spontaneous lynch mobs. Sadr was put on an aircraft filled with special operations teams from Shia HizbAllah, along with communications and intelligence equipment to be used in the weeks ahead.

Mohammed at Iraq The Model also sees the Salafists as being the actual bombers:

It's not a secret who was behind the attack on the shrine and I am sure that who did it were the Salafi/Wahabis whether Iraqi or foreigners and with external support from parties planning to disrupt the political process in Iraq. The reason I believe it's the Salafis who did it comes from their own ideology which considers all mosques built upon tombs as places of polytheism and infidelity and thus must be destroyed. This also applies to Sunni shrines like Abu Haneefa and al-Gailani; Salafis consider the Shia and the Sufis their worst enemie and they commonly refer to them in their speech with the term "tomb worshippers" or Mushrikoon Quborioon in Arabic.

Regardless of who carried out the bombings the reactions were predictable. While Mohammed points out that just as with the cartoons when the bombing first happened everyone did not rush out and form a mob. Like so many sheep everyone waited till their Imam told them what to do.

So…the protests were not spontaneous like clerics want us to think; in fact the only spontaneous protest was the one in Samarra itself! I live here and I've seen the whole thing. The demonstrations in Baghdad began after the fatwa and I saw how shop keepers unwillingly closed their shops when the men in black with their arms and loudspeakers ordered them to do so "in the name of the Hawza" and I saw the sad look on the faces of people abandoning their only source of income for a time that could go indefinitely.

No matter how many votes you got in the last election if ain’t got a militia you ain’t nothing and the militias come out of this as being the only force that can protect the Mosques. Another result of this sad play is that Sunni participation in the Ministries of Defense and Interior is all but a dead deal. Just as Americans are leery of an Arab country managing our ports the Shia were not ready to allow the Sunni to be involved in the higher level governance of the Army or police. Some even went so far as to say our insistence that they be allowed to resulted in the bombing. In a way maybe it did. Such is politics in the Middle East.