21st-Century Barbarism

The deadliest attack to date in the Iraq war is aimed at defenseless civilians.

ONE REASON the debate over Iraq can seem so perplexing at times is that the nature of the violence can be so horrendous as to be nearly unfathomable. The inexcusable killing of civilians by insurgents and militias is so common as to go almost unremarked upon. But four simultaneous truck-bomb explosions in one small community in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday night, all directed against defenseless civilians, provided a savage and jarring reminder.

The suicide bombers targeted members of the ancient religious sect known as the Yazidis. Women were killed at market; children were buried as clay and mud houses collapsed. At least 250 people were killed and hundreds more wounded, according to Iraqi officials, which would make the attack the deadliest of the war. Gen. David H. Petraeus, U.S. military commander in Iraq, blamed al-Qaeda in Iraq for the "horrific and indiscriminate attacks." Another U.S. general called the bombings "an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will, almost genocide." Extremist Sunni elements have been targeting the Yazidis at least since the spring, when a cellphone video was widely circulated on the Internet showing -- also unfathomable to most Americans -- a 17-year-old Yazidi girl being stoned to death because she had fallen in love with a Sunni man.

The bombings came as Gen. Petraeus and others claimed to be making progress in their campaign against al-Qaeda in Iraq. The general is expected to elaborate on that progress in a report to Congress in September and to ask for more time for his strategy to work, while acknowledging -- as he also said yesterday -- that the U.S. military presence in Iraq will have to be "a good bit smaller" by next summer.

U.S. troops are performing noble work in trying to protect Iraqi civilians from depredations such as Tuesday's barbaric bomb attacks. But as Gen. Petraeus also has said, there can be no military victory in Iraq without some political accommodation, and Tuesday's attacks on unprotected communities far from previous combat zones were a reminder of that, too. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the bombings on "terrorism powers who seek to fuel sectarian strife and damage our people's national unity." True, no doubt, but there seems at the moment to be precious little unity to be damaged. The prime minister was in the midst of meetings aimed at putting his coalition government back together after recent defections. Tuesday evening's vicious attacks ought to spur all the parties in those talks to act with greater urgency. But recent history offers little basis to bet on such an outcome.