Antiwar.com Blog

Perry de Havilland has a solution to the Iraqi quagmire!

What seems to be developing into an open revolt in Iraq by Shi’a Islamists could be a Godsend to the coalition and secular elements of Iraqi society in the long run… in openly taking up arms against the coalition and its Iraqi supporters, radical leader Muqtadar al-Sadr has changed the equation: what could have been a long term intractable political problem has been turned onto a military problem with a fairly obvious and direct solution.

I can’t wait to hear what it is.

Here’s a discussion of Muqtada al Sadr from Raed Jarrar who posts on his Iraqi blog Raed in the Middle.

Muqtada, is younger than me. He is around 25 years old, spent all of his life in Iraq studying in religious schools, I think he is very introverted, defensive and acting like a rebel. Yet, he is very smart and pragmatic. He started working immediately after the war stopped, inherited the popularity of his father and used it as a starting point. He knows that his age and religious degree doesn’t allow him to represent himself as a leader for Iraq, that’s why he started and maintained strong relations with the Iranian very well respected religious personality: Al-Haeri.

Considering Al-Haeri as his religious reference gave him the chance to go ahead with his Anti-American, Anti-Saddam perspective with a strong religious cover.

AsSadr opened offices and mosques in the cities of the south and in Saddam city (Athawra) in Baghdad, which he managed to change its name to AsSadr city. AsSdr city is a huge gridiron city inside Baghdad that one million Shia people live in, it is the area of the poor, vulnerable and uneducated people, and it is the weapons market of Baghdad, you can get a grenade for $5 or a machine gun for $50.

He created a parallel Iraqi government, as an alternative option beside the CPA, he selected ministers too.

And, maybe the most important thing he could arrange, he controlled a very important part of the religious establishment of Shia Iraqis … (Al-Hawza).

Everyone was underestimating him; Bremer, political leaders, media, most of my friends, my parents. But I didn’t… at all.

From my frequent visits to the south, I could really feel and see the actual strength and authorities AsSadr have, and the real possibility that he will be a key person in the next stage of the Iraqi history.

White revolutions were happening in the southern cities, without anyone noticing that. A strong Shia-Shia competition, which reached to fighting some times, happened between AsSdr and Al-Hakim (assassinated last year in the huge explosion at Najaf). Cities like Amara, Kut, Diwanyya and Simawa were completely controlled by AsSadr party, and Nasryya had dramatic demonstrations that changed the Al-Hakim people in the governorate and replaced them with AsSadr representatives.

One of my dear friends at Najaf told me once that the “Najafians” call Al-Hakim party: the rational stream, and they call AsSadr party: the chaotic one. For sure Al-Hakim had decades of experience and political work, and a strong backup and support from the Iranian government, but AsSadr was just starting.

Then, AsSadr established his own militia: Al-Mahdi Army, with blessings from AyatoAllah Al-Haeri… tens of thousands of Iraqis joined the new army under the eyes of everyone.

The thing that I want to make obvious here is the well designed political and military steps of AsSadr, that I’m sure no one even heard about.
Do you know why you didn’t hear much about him earlier?
Because AsSade wasn’t noisy enough to drag the attention of Bremer and the international media, the undesigned explosions of Falluja did.

When the CPA decides to close the AsSadr newspaper and arrest his assistant, they should expect to have real clashes… I mean REAL ones.

Can’t everyone see how much is the American administration lost? Can’t you feel the lack of vision? Can’t you see the bloody results of the slow and stupid policy that has no orientation?

This is an excerpt; read the rest here.

Why do you run anything by Jonathan Rauch? I know you guys are more interested in promoting Big Macs and drive-thru abortions than you are in advancing libertarian foreign policy, but I have yet to read anything even mildly liberty-oriented by Rauch. The absurd and revolting premise of today’s article is that U.S. and Israeli goals should be inseparable. The hell they should! If Rauch wants to move to Jerusalem and join the IDF, I will buy his one-way ticket and drive him to the airport. But I don’t owe the state of Israel (or Egypt, or the Palestinian Authority) any goddamn thing except nonaggression, and that goes for moral support, too.

Rauch pitches a hissy fit about world reaction to Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Yassin. As I wrote at the time, nary a tear crossed my cheek over the killing. Israeli depredations against regular Palestinians are an outrage, but taking out a murderer doesn’t much bother me–nor will it if Hamas returns the favor directly to Mr. Sharon. But the simpering statist Rauch is distraught that the Bush administration didn’t plant a wet one on Sharon’s backside after the attack:

The United States vetoed the [U.N.] resolution [condemning the attack] but did not directly challenge its premises, which were that Yassin was a civilian, that civilians are subject only to civil punishment, and that extrajudicial violence of any sort is therefore illegitimate. Instead, the Bush administration said it was “deeply troubled” by the Yassin killing but that the resolution should also have mentioned Hamas’s attacks against Israel. See? Everyone is a terrorist, but the resolution should have named all the terrorists. Or something.

If those are the rules, then former President Clinton is a terrorist, for he, too, ordered a hit. Clinton attacked Osama bin Laden with a cruise missile and only narrowly missed. According to The New York Times, President Clinton’s national security advisers have testified to the September 11 commission “that Mr. Clinton wanted Mr. bin Laden dead.”

Newsflash: Clinton is a terrorist, as the Serbs and Sudanese can tell you. Sharon’s terrorism goes back decades, but includes such greatest hits as Sabra and Shatila. No decent person, ideology aside, should stick up for anyone who aggresses against innocent civilians. And let’s be clear about that term. Rauch:

Hamas’s civilian operations, however, hardly made Yassin a civilian in any sense that mattered. To the contrary, he was head of a terrorist organization that is well on its way to operating its own mini-state in Gaza. State sponsors of terrorism and terrorist sponsors of states (Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Al Qaeda in Afghanistan) are two sides of one coin. None of these entities are or were “civilian” in the sense of being ordinary criminals.

Agreed–so I suppose Reason will hammer the warbots for calling the martyrs of Fallujah “civilians,” too, smearing everyone who disagrees, and promoting the indiscriminate murder of that city’s actual civilians in retaliation?

Of course you won’t. You guys carry Rauch’s column precisely because he’s an establishment sycophant, er, Beltway authority who lends your magazine some mainstream respectability by lacking any libertarian inclinations. But if you’re going to run such soporific, predictable, rah-rah Israel, statist tripe in your mag, I’ll just read The New Republic instead–they do it far better.

Will the US assassinate al-Sadr? They’ve announced an arrest warrant for him, and called him a “terrorist.”

The White House accused Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr of being an ally of “terrorist organizations” on Monday and said the religious leader whose supporters fueled a violent weekend uprising was seeking to undermine the June 30 transfer of sovereignty.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan sought to cast the uprising among Sadr’s followers as an isolated development rather than a Shi’ite rebellion with sweeping public support.

“What you’re talking about is one individual who is seeking to derail democracy and freedom for the Iraqi people. This is one individual who is seeking to undermine the transition process to sovereignty,” McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Bush traveled to North Carolina.

“This is an individual, I would remind you, that has pledged solidarity with terrorist organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah.”

Bush, speaking at a political stop in Charlotte, said that despite “tough action” in Iraq the United States’ “will stay the course.”

“A free Iraq will make the world more peaceful, a free Iraq will make America more secure. We will not be shaken by thugs and terrorists,” he said.

In case anyone needed any proof that the White House is clueless as usual, and has no idea what is happening in Iraq.

Neocon warbots on the internet caught the logic of the arrest warrant immediately:

He should quit before he ends up like Ahmed Yassin.

The warrant should come AFTER our troops riddled him with bullets!!

True. Hopefully his followers will put up armed resistance. If he goes to jail alive, his followers will endlessly demonstrate to demand his release. In this case a dead martyr is better than a live radical cleric.

It is past time that Gods will is exercised and the mosque that this shitbird is hiding in explodes with him in it, inshallah of course.

I hope that jolly ole Sadr will end up a martyr soon. I think a MOAB would be my weapon of choice to deliver to his mosque and his neighborhood. A little shock and awe would be refreshing right about now.

The dangers that he presented were well known:
The Sadrist movement

Shows a lot about Sadr, the whole mess would be prevented if he were assassinated in time.
G-d forbid we assassinate “holy men”!
This is Ahmed Yassin all over again,
no actually this is not even a pathetic copy.

“In the particular incident with Sadr, this is one person who has decided rather than allow democracy to flourish, he is going to exercise force and we just can’t let it stand,” Bush said.

Bush noted that an Iraqi judge has issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr. Al- Sadr has been charged with murder.

Setting Al-Sadr up for a hit? Time will tell.

“Iraqi Army” turns on the Americans

Watch for more of this to happen:

US Apache helicopters sprayed fire on the private army of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr during fierce battles today in the western Baghdad district of Al-Showla, witnesses and an AFP correspondent said.

“Two Apaches opened fire on armed members of the Mehdi Army,” said Showla resident Abbas Amid.

The fighting erupted when five trucks of US soldiers and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) tried to enter the district and were attacked by Sadr supporters, Amid said.

Coming under fire, the ICDC, a paramilitary force trained by the Americans, turned on the US soldiers and started to shoot at them, according to Amid.

The soldiers fled their vehicles and headed for cover and then began to battle both the Mehdi Army and the ICDC members, he said. Their vehicles were set ablaze.

Classic guerilla tactics. Watch for the same thing to happen in Fallujah today. Reports like this are all over the wires:

U.S. forces ready Fallujah crackdown

Some 1,200 U.S. Marines and two battalions of Iraqi security forces were poised to enter the city to arrest suspected insurgents

For an example of how well the Americans are doing getting the Iraqis to fight for them:

Members of the new Iraqi army and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps were to play support roles in the operation, but some had to be sent home today when they reported without their uniforms or ID cards, Marines said.

Sadr’s Al-Mahdi army has taken over some “government buildings” in Basra and are currently in a pitched battle with UK troops.

UPDATE:

As the US troops moved into Falluja, there were reports in Baghdad of fighting and demonstrations in all quarters of the capital.

Heavy fighting between Mr Sadr’s Mehdi Army and the Americans was raging in Shualla district, which has been locked down. Weapons were reportedly being stockpiled in a Shiite mosque in Kadamihya, and Iraqi police in the same area are said to have reported to Mr Sadr’s office, volunteering to fight with his men. Several loud explosions could be heard from the city centre.

There were heavy tank movements and aerial surveillance of trouble spots, and reports from Basra, in the south, said that as many as 1000 al-Sadr supporters had taken over the governor’s residence.

A look at Egyptian political theater, with valuable insight into what often cannot be otherwise openly expressed in the Middle East.

U.S. Marines, actors armed with wooden assault rifles, storm into the theatre cafe even before the audience has taken its seats, harassing, searching and intimidating them to set the mood for a performance meant to raise the spectre of American occupation.

Elsawy’s agitprop production, ”Messing with Minds,” is now in its third month at a small stage in the grounds of the Cairo Opera House … the play, which is running well past its original slot in the theatre’s programme, reflects the deep scepticism in the Arab world about U.S. intentions in the Middle East and goes way beyond what Egyptian politicians are willing to say in public.
… read more