■"25 Killed as Insurgents in Iraq Carry Out a Wave of Attacks," by Edward Wong, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A1.

■"Two Enemies: Non-state actors and change in the Muslim World," by Michael Vlahos, Strategic Assessments Office, National Security Analysis Department, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, January 2005, 20 pages.

■"Talking with the Enemy: Inside the Secret Dialogue Between the U.S. and Insurgents in Iraqóand What the Rebels Say They Want," by Michael Ware, Time, 28 February 2005, p. 26.

■"The Trouble with Syria: An assassination in Lebanon focuses U.S. attention on Damascus. What price will Assad pay?" by Johanna McGeary, Time, 28 February 2005, p. 30.

■"Syria Vows to Quite Lebanon But Declines to Say When," by Joel Brinkley and Hassan M. Fattah, New York Times, 25 February 2005, p. A8.

I spoke about this last summer: you get the hand-off, eventually the elections, and then at some point it just stops being about us and starts being almost exclusively about the Iraqis themselves. Two are in (Kurds, Shiites), and one remains on the outside largely. The insurgency lives, but fundamentally in Sunni land. Iraqis mostly killing Iraqis, but the state getting stronger by the day, even as its writ may not extend too well in Sunni land.

Yes, Americans still die, but in side-light situations. We're not the main focus any more. As it should be, the Big Bang gets expressed primarily as a civil war. That's Michael Vlahos' point in his latest (and always interesting) analysis of the Global War on Terrorism. He says that the Big Bang hasóin effectóempowered two groups in the Middle East: the "Wilderness Ghazi" of al Qaeda jihadists and the "Civil Militia" that arise in Iraq (based on villages and tribal structures). In Mike's view, we need to disconnect and destroy the former while connecting and building up the latter.

So we keep Special Operations Command hot on the heels of al Qaeda, but we talk to the Sunni insurgents in Iraq. The former will never be converted or negotiated with, but the latter can and must be.

Beyond Iraq, the Bush administration really has Syria moving where it wants it to go, already talking openly of leaving Lebanon (although being clever enough to mimic the White House's own words on our troops in Iraq). Bashar Assad really could be a Gorbachev there, but it'll take both time (for him to move his younger generation of supporters into power slots) and outside pressure (he needs external excuses to force him into internal reforms, but this is tricky, because if we push too hard, he is compelled to push back out of political self-preservation).

The weird part is, as Middle Eastern expert Steven Cook points out, Syria's been using Lebanon as its portal to the outside world: "It is absolutely clear that over the course of the last 15 years, Syria has used Lebanon as its outlet to the rest of the world, as its economic life-boat, and I don't see them giving that up."

The disconnected society using a far more connected one to survive, living off it like a parasite, keeping it from its own, fuller connectivity. With neighbors like that, who needs imminent threats?

What will Syria demand for its withdrawal: that which it believes its domination of Lebanon provides it? The continued survival of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

In the short run, not a bad trade. An authoritarian regime, not a totalitarian one, we kill it with connectivity, the same as Iran. Roughly 600,000 Syrians work in Lebanon today, doing the menial jobs. Their remittances back home keep the economy from collapsing from the lack of any serious outside capital. Promise Assad continued access to this market for this migrant labor.

Yet again, the military-market nexus.