“Insurgents unleashed attacks across Baghdad on Tuesday night, setting off more than a dozen coordinated bombs,” reports Jack Healy for the New York Times. “It was among the fiercest assaults on the capital since the United States invaded in 2003. . . . At least 63 people were killed and about 285 were wounded. . . . The explosions — devastating car bombs and roadside blasts — struck . . . Shiite . . . Sadr City, a Sunni mosque, public squares . . . and middle-class shopping districts. . . . They tore across divisions of sect and class.” [Emphasis added.]

No group has yet claimed responsibility, but the U.S. military suspects Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group, also know as Al Qaeda in Iraq [AQI]). Why include Sunnis then? Healy writes that the attacks “took dead aim at the sheen of normalcy that had settled over Baghdad” and were an attempt to “undermine popular confidence in the government,” as well as “a bloody declaration of their ability to thwart the government’s efforts to secure” the city.

That’s it? Attacking your own people is supposed to undermine confidence in the government? Sounds more like a mindless admixture of anarchy and nihilism. I picked up this quote off the Internet by the nineteenth century Russian nihilist Dmitri Pisarev:

Here is the ultimatum of our camp. What can be smashed must be smashed; whatever will stand the blow is sound, what flies into smithereens is rubbish; at any rate, hit out right and left, no harm will or can come of it.

Besides, doesn’t attempting to make the case that the government is unable to keep the peace suggest that you’re an insignificant opponent that the government should be able to contain? Doesn’t that reflect poorly on your status as a threat?

Just for a moment, let’s set aside the role of the United States in lighting Iraq’s fuse by invading and occupying the country. Instead, let’s ask: Is AQI trying to alienate — sociopaths like themselves excluded — every last Middle-Easterner? If Focal Points readers have more profound insights into their strategy, or lack thereof, than the author does, he would be in your debt if you shared them with us in the comments column.