Doesn’t anybody recall the Black Panther Party, with its school lunch and other social service programs, political coverage for a murderous street gang? Has anyone out there heard of Hamas: a non-governmental turned quasi-governmental social service delivery system, replete with food and school programs, that also happens to fire missiles (or at least lacks political will to control some of its adherents who love to fire missiles) into Israeli neighborhoods?

I doubt very much that the Mahdi Army will be disbanded, or could be disbanded, even by al Sadr’s order. (There is always a potential rival to lead a violent splinter, a little more hothead than the erstwhile hothead who’s now looking to legitimate himself, is there not?) No, I suspect Sadr is merely changing his business model, a shrewd move which will make it politically still more difficult to control “charitable” donations from within the U.S. and other countries, which will continue to buy explosives. Boys and girls, money is fungible, and accountability is something that barely exists in certain of the G-7 countries, let alone in the Moslem world. Let’s not forget these things.

One expects sentimentalists to fall for this sort of thing, but I’m surprised to see the Wall Street Journal susceptible to it. Pity.