Off to hell

Despite simplistic accounts in the media, Sunni opinion in Iraq is not a monolith. Crushing the Fallujah rebellion will, the administration and Allawi hope, allow moderate Sunnis to be able to participate in the political process without intimidation.

That process is in better shape than is widely acknowledged. The Shia and the Kurds are 80 percent of the population and broadly on-board the new Iraq. Elections will be crucial to providing legitimacy to the new order and creating a measure of political stability. But elections have powerful enemies. The word is that the U.N. bureaucracy in New York is doing all it can to delay or derail them, although the U.N. official on the ground in Iraq, Carlos Valenzuela, is doing heroic work.

When Allawi addressed some of the Iraqi troops, telling them they need to liberate a city held "hostage" by radicals and terrorists, they yelled in response "may they go to hell!" "To hell they will go," replied Allawi. Victory in Iraq depends on that kind of national will prevailing in a battle for the country's, and the region's, soul.