WHEN IRAQIS RIOT, it’s supposed to be a sign that the United States is blowing it, and doesn’t know how to operate in that part of the world.

The alternative explanation, of course, is that it’s the critics who don’t understand how things tend to work out in that part of the world:

BINGOL, Turkey, May 2 — Security forces clashed with earthquake victims protesting the government’s relief response today, but an uneasy quiet hung over a flattened boarding school on the outskirts of this regional capital as rescuers continued poring through the rubble for surviving students.

Gunfire filled the air outside the governor’s office as heavily armed troops tried to disperse rampaging protesters, upset at what they said was inadequate assistance for quake-affected residents.

Maybe the Turks just don’t have enough troops. As for the notion that Iraqi Shiites are turning against the United States, Amir Taheri begs to differ:

Throughout Arba’in, small bands of militants, some freshly arrived from Iran, were posted at the entrance of streets leading to the two main shrines. They carried placards and posters calling for an Islamic republic and shouted anti-American slogans. But it soon became clear that few pilgrims were prepared to join them.

All the pilgrims that this reporter could talk to expressed their “gratitude and appreciation” to the US and its British allies for having freed them from the most brutal regime Iraq had seen since its creation in 1921.

Needless to say, however, most television cameras were focused on the small number of militants who had something “hot” – that is to say, anti-American – to say.

After days of talking to Shiites in Karbala and Najaf, it is clear that there is virtually no undercurrent of anti-Americanism in the heartland of Iraqi Shiaism. Even some clerics who have just returned from exile in Iran were keen to advertise their goodwill towards the US. All that, however, could quickly change.

That last warning is something we need to take to heart, of course, but it’s hardly a harbinger of disaster, or a sign of bungling. Meanwhile, both Hossein Derakshan and Charles Paul Freund argue that a Khomeinist Iraq isn’t in the cards.