This isn’t remotely the last one, or even the worst that we will face. Resolve and sitzfleisch are what’s called for at this point.
Here’s where it started:
In an ominous development that threatens to widen the rift between Iraq’s Shi’ite majority and the occupation forces, Sadr told his supporters yesterday to “terrorise” the enemy as demonstrations were now pointless.
“There is no use for demonstrations, as your enemy loves to terrify and suppress opinions, and despises people,” Sadr said in a statement distributed by his office in Kufa, south of Baghdad.
But Shi’ite spiritual leader Ali Al Sistani appealed for calm and urged Shi’ite demonstrators to resolve their differences with coalition forces through negotiation.
More as it develops…and my thoughts are with the troops and innocent civilians. May this pass quickly and safely for them.
Amen, AL.
Once of the Iraqi bloggers, Sun of Iraq, IIRC, was talking about this, and said that it was pretty bad. I don’t don’t if it has cooled down or not, but one thing is for sure: Sadr is toast. Sistani is doing the smart thing and showing a moderate edge. No doubt about it, he is definitely the smarter of the two.
Sadr has been the Iranians’ bitch since day one. This day was coming. Was always coming.
Dan Darling has been particularly good at noting the setup of Hezbollah, Iranian Badr Brigades, et. al. At some point, it was crystal clear that this would have to be dealt with.
So he has picked this time to have it out, has he? So be it. Time to remove him from the board as a player who matters. Or maybe just remove him.
Why are casualties so high? 7 is quite few for gun battle in Iraq.
From my reading up on FR, there was a relief column of troops that was headed to one of the occupied police stations in Sadr City. They walked into an ambush.
There is a reason the Marines didn’t go charging into Fallujah four days ago. Now we know what it is.
The goons create incidents, then set up ambush points and wait for our guys. We have to respond by cordon and search, as Wretchard has indicated is in the works in Fallujah.
This is a genuine question, not a troll:
When the marines go into Fallujah, how do they identify the perpetrators of the attacks, assuming that they play dumb? True, some faces were caught on tape, but not many, and they’re kinda blurry. Do our spies already “know” who’s behind the attacks based on previous information?
Fallujah was the opening strike in a battle that has been in preparation for a year.
It is the Tet of Iraq.
If we do not lose our nerve this will end badly for those behind the attacks.
The interesting thing here is the cooperation between groups that are “antagonistic” to each other.
My guess is this: drive out the Americans then fight over the spoils.
Problem #1 – Americans are not leaving.
Problem #2 – Americans are not running into the ambushes.
Yes, the Iran link to al-Sadr is close and has been public for some time.
The timing of Sadr’s attempt is tied to two things, I think: the Iranian mullah’s stated preference to have Kerry elected and the impending date when they will have sufficient enriched uranium for a weapon.
The motives are several and inter-related: above all, to prevent a secular, mutli-party representative government and functioning market economy from taking hold in Iraq; second, to continue the Islamacist expansion that dates back to Khomeini’s days; third, to strike at the US for standing in the way of that expansion and fourth (a summary of the other three), to try to bleed off pressure from their own populace for reform by removing external examples.
I’d watch for the administration to hold Iran publicly responsible for the unrest. I wonder how many of Sadr’s men are home-grown and how many are recent arrivals from Iran.
I’d also watch for Shiite on Shiite violence as homegrown militias loyal to Sistani and other mullah’s take action against trouble makers from Sadr City.
It seems that Sadr is making a huge gamble by tipping his hand this early in the process. Our challenge is to help round up Sadr’s men without hitting friendly militias in the process.
I think I found the answer to my own question:
“If they find more than one adult male in any house, they arrest one of them,” claimed a resident [of Fallujah]
This is no longer a war against an insurgency. Now it’s a war against the entire Iraqi population.
Ummm,,,Josh “True, some faces were caught on tape, but not many,…”
The faces on the tape are not the perpetrators. Those are the brainwashed punks the acts are intended to influence. We’d like to “de-program” them, not capture or kill them.
The true perpetrators are the target.
Yep, they’re going to be hard to identify, which is why terrorism is a difficult tactic to counter.
In the long run it’s going to take dedicated IP, local officials and reasonable clerics. The clerics have already begun denouncing this atrocity in the mosques.
Elsewhere, Sadr’s arrest warrant is now being pursued.
kh,
Good point about the Iranians moving too soon. They must be under very intense pressure from special ops. and the locals.
*is a good place to watch what is going on in Iran* of course the bloggers are better.
Josh is picking up one piece of the situation, extrapolating it and making outrageous claims.
The commanding general for that part of Iraq has already made public reference to intelligence information about the core members of the Fallujah resistance. That information would have been gathered from many sources, including Iraqis in the area.
What this cordon, and the detention of some men for questioning, will do is to force those on the fence to choose: will they identify with the attackers and thereby risk being caught up in the Marines’ response? or will they take action, either by giving useful and verifiable information or by giving up offenders?
Josh – you just don’t seem to get it. If we wanted to “declare war on the entire Iraqi population” there would be far easier ways to do so. To be crude: lots of smoking holes in the ground, fewer US deaths.
The Marines are executing this cordon and tightening it in the KNOWLEDGE that they will suffer Marine deaths precisely in order to deal with the attackers and the underlying resistance WITHOUT declaring war on those Iraqis who want to contribute to a productive and peaceful future for their country.
Josh,
So far it is only a war against at most 2/3 of the Iraqi population. The Kurds are still on side.
It may turn out that after we arrest the thugs that we get a lot of those 2/3s back on our side.
The mistakes of Vietnam will not be repeated. The military has learned its lessons even if Kerry has not.
> Josh – you just don’t seem to get it. If we wanted to “declare war on the entire Iraqi population” there would be far easier ways to do so.
I’m not saying that we’ve declared war on them. I’m saying that they’ve declared war on us.
Take the revolt in Sadr city: 5,000 demonstrators. Are those 5,000 demonstrators “the enemy” now, or just the people they’ve currently chosen to lead them? After we take out their leaders, and they choose new ones, and we kill those leaders, and they choose some more, and then we kill them too, and some more arise, who’s the enemy then? If all 5,000 of them are the enemy, what about the 50,000 people who will go berserk after we kill the 5,000? Are they the enemy too?
Can anybody explain why we did so little to counter Iranian influence for about a year? Why do we have to read stuff like *this*?
This is no longer a war against an insurgency. Now it’s a war against the entire Iraqi population.
I’m not sure that I agree with this statement as put. But I understand what you mean. I can’t see that a country so divided along sectarian lines and badly in need of peace and economic development has a viable alternative other than some form of liberal democracy that guarantees majority rule with strong institutional protections for political and ethnic minorities as well as women. I am pretty sure that “local forms” of liberal democracy or an “Islamic form” of democracy is an illusion. The other way of course is some brutal form of autocracy with one group having oppressive powers over another group. What is (was?) the alternative?
I’m also getting the impression that the Iraqis themselves – those who are opposed to the U.S. presence and thus the U.S. democratization and development project (if you believe in that) – or at least a great deal of them, do not really see their own interests in a democratic order. I recently read an Iraqi Marxist-Feminist site (linked by HealingIraq) that was all about resisting the brutal U.S. occupation – as though the end of the occupation was going to bring about the flowering of Marxist feminism. I have to wonder – these are educated people.
Maybe all of those people in the 70s and 80s who insisted that Latin Americans were too “primitive” for democracy were right? Back then, it was the realpolitikers, the conservative right, and local privileged elites close to the dictators in power who took that view. Today, sadly – or maybe not? – it is most Europeans and a great number on the left who are taking that view.
Nobody really seems to want democracy or human rights in Iraq. Not our European allies, who are carrying out a propaganda campagin in the media against imperialistic, greedy, oil-obsessed, unilateral Americans. Not the human rights organizations, who have undermined human rights by posing a moral equivalency between loss of Baghdad television during a war, the supposed pillaging of artefacts, or the (relatively benign) treatment of Guantanamo prisoners of war and comparable wrongs such as the “disappearing” of political opponents and mass genocide. Not Shirin Ebadi, who thundered against the U.S. occupation in Iraq, the Israelis and (yet again) the Guantanamo prisoners as the main human rights offences on the planet (as the mullahs cheered from the sidelines). Not even the Iraqis themselves. Or so it would seem.
This is a long rant, but to me it all comes down to “legitimacy”. I wonder how much all of the propaganda spewed forth day after day by our “allies”, the worldwide political left, the human rights organizations, etc. melds into Al Jazeera and filters down to the average Iraqi, who now believes that we have removed a dictator and occupied his country for the sake of oil, contractors’ fees, and Halliburton?
Let us never seek to “free” a people again when so many would prefer they remain “legitimately” enslaved.
> I can’t see that a country so divided along sectarian lines and badly in need of peace and economic development has a viable alternative other than some form of liberal democracy.
There, we agree. The problem is that wishing doesn’t make it so. For the US force the Mideast to reform is like a psychiatrist trying to force an alcoholic to reform. Therapists know that it doesn’t work unless the alcoholic is willing to cooperate.
In other words, it was always an impossible task. They hate us. They have always hated us. They will never listen to anything we say. Last pew poll, 47% of them felt that they would rather be ruled by a dictator in the short term. Many of them want an Islamic theocracy. To abuse the alcoholism analogy, Iraqis are in denial that their culture is sick. They will never recover until they accept that they are sick and that they need help.
> I wonder how much all of the propaganda spewed forth day after day by our “allies”, the worldwide political left, the human rights organizations, etc. melds into Al Jazeera and filters down to the average Iraqi.
It’s gotta be the liberals fault that the occupation isn’t working out, right? I’m amazed at how conservatives can control congress, the executive, and the supreme court, and the three governorships of the three largest states, and claim that liberals still have any power. We’ve been reduced to sitting on the sidelines and impotently critiquing your actions. If that’s the only power we have left, the power of criticism, then somehow, that power of criticism must be what’s causing the occupation of Iraq to fail. Amazing how you guys can rationalize things.
I would submit that any plan so fragile that it can be destroyed by simply criticizing it, wasn’t a very solid plan to begin with.
> I have to wonder – these are educated people.
The war has been extremely hard on professors. Approximately 1 in 15 professors has been assassinated. So: if you’re a professor, and you’re facing a 1 in 15 chance of getting shot next year, do you support this continued chaos? Or would you rather have any stable government, as long as you don’t get shot, pretty please?
It’s gotta be the liberals fault that the occupation isn’t working out, right?
1. I actually am asking this question in earnest. If “legitimacy” is important, it is so because presumably it has real world effects. I could very well blame the Bush administration (and do in no small degree) for its handling of the diplomacy and relationship with “allies” concerning Iraq.
2. Also, who is the “liberal”: you, me or some other guy?
As long as Sistani remains against confrontation, the situation has not become outright conflict with the majority of the Shi’ia.
Questions:
If Sadr (or his sucessors) manages to keep the clashes going, how will that affect Sistani’s political position?
Is Sistani perhaps even the main target, to shift his position, or marginalise him.
What would be the result if someone managed to assasinate Sistani?
Is Sadr responding of his own accord to recent measures to curb him, or has had orders from Tehran?
If the latter, why now? Perhaps an attempt to take advantage of the situation re. Fallujah.
If that, was it opportunistic, or was Fallujah and Sadr’s move planned in coordination?
If coordinated, how solid is the Saddamite/al Qaeda/Iranian cooperation, and who is in the driving seat?
If the coordination is at an international level, was it also intended to coincide with a major outbreak of terrorist attacks in elsewhere, possibly hampered by the recent security sweeps in the UK, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere?
(Which might indicate increasing penetration of the international networks.)
If coordination is going on at the international level, and the Iranians are now directly implicated in al Qaeda’s world-wide activities, is it time for an ultimatum to Tehran?
Is this the end?
typically find Salam and Raed somewhat annoying because they seem to jump to every paranoid perception of how the US operates, and because they have, so far as I’ve been able to tell, never acknowledged the fact that Saddam would have strung them up for what they’re doing now.
That being said, they’re on the ground and they’re clearly not idiots, nor is Zeyed.
If all of these three otherwise average guys could see what was coming with Sadr, how come we let it get to this point? And despite their misgivings about us, none of these bloggers like Sadr or seem to want to see him come to power, which suggests there would be support (or at least not mass opposition) prior to this point for confronting him. Whether we win this battle or not, it appears to me the fact we’re fighting it is a failure in itself.
Gabriel, Iran is making its move. As for why we didn’ stop it earlier, simple: This is going to be a HUGE mistake for the Shi’ite radicals in Iraq. By coming out in the open against us we can easily target and eliminate them. That is why the troop rotation was so important, to bring fresh troops in just in case something like this happened. Sadr has volunteered for the chopping block. This is wonderful news, as it means that he won’t be a problem come election time. The more “bad people” we can deal with before the elections the better.
As for it being the The End, no. It is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it just might be the end of the beginning.
Mike,
We will not know what the real agendas are for 10 to 40 years.
So far I trust Bush. A weak reed to be sure but so far he has surmounted all the obstacles. Perhaps lacking in grace but to even perform the manuver at all requires great skill.
The action right now is designed to make us think it can’t work so we will quit.
That tells me we are close to success.
As to “why now”, that’s pretty clear. It’s not hard to identify several factors (and there are more):
(1) The Governing Council continues to pass laws that will support a structured, open representative government. Google on “Iraq” and “banking” for instance. Sistani supports them, with some caution.
(2) The Islamacists from outside the country are failing in their efforts to provoke an uprising they can control, leaving a vacuum for other groups.
(3) The announcement by Spain’s new PM that he will probably withdraw troops, combined with the series of attacks, arrests and their ties to al Zarqawi, encourage Islamacist violence by a variety of groups like al-Sadr’s.
(4) Most importantly, the mullahs in Iran who are al-Sadr’s sponsors are in big trouble domestically, but also on the verge of having enough enriched uranium for one or more weapons. Both issues make them favor an uprising in Iraq right now.
(5) So too does the disarray in the Arab League, which emboldens the non-Arab Iranians to make a power grab in Iraq.
etc. etc. It’s really no mystery at all.
Hey M. Simon,
I have to disagree that this is a move of desperation on Sadr’s part. Rather, if you look at what Iraqi bloggers have been saying (I put together some snips on this), this guy has been gathering strength for quite a while, and has judged that he’s strong enough now to take us on. Of course there’s some element of desperation in that he had to move sooner or later lest widespread prosperity break out, but it seems to me that he’s tried to take the offensive rather than moved from absolute need.
That doesn’t mean that he’s correct in his judgement that he’s strong enough, and it doesn’t mean he’s going to win, just that I don’t think maybe we would have been better off if Sadr had been taken out six or eight months ago when he hadn’t built up such a following. That’s not so much a criticism of Bush as it is the guys at the theatre level. They’re the ones evaluating the threats, and it looks like there was plenty of evidence all along that Sadr was a bad guy. Like I said, I don’t think this is going to crush our effort in Iraq or anything, but my sense at this point was that it was probably avoidable. 😐
Mike,
He has moved from absolute need.
30 June.
Read the Zwahari (or is it Zakari?) memo again.
Then review 3/11. Following that think about Nov04.
What I would expect if our generals and president know what they are doing is an Iran counter stroke.
The #1 goal right now is to peel off the weaker allies. Which is why the Italians are getting hit so hard.
Mike,
Taking out Sadr after he has a following is better than taking him out before.
1. It gathers malcontents
2. It identifies malcontents
3. It demoralizes malcontents
Fighting this war is more about psychology than massed power.
Another reason: Spain is on the run. Panic has set in.
They gave Al Q what it wanted and the truce is now off. Following orders gained them less than a month. The Spanish are panicked:
Thousands of people marched through Leganes Monday evening to protest against terrorism. Some turned their anger against the outgoing Popular Party government they say invited trouble by sending troops to Iraq.
“Most of the blame is due to the government for having put us in the firing line,” said Manuel Cobo, 58, a car factory worker.
From:
*Spanish go into the coward mode*
Steven den Beste’s top post right now is on this point. In a nutshell, the reason we did not take out Sadr before now was because he had not militarily committed himself or his followers. Now that he’s in a state of armed rebellion, we can take him out. The advantage of waiting was the general lesson to the Iraqi people as a whole–we tolerate free speech, which Saddam would never have done, but attacks on coalition forces will be crushed utterly. Sadr very clearly moved from Column A to Column B, and as a result, will soon move to the Obituary Column.
Taking Sadr out? You are talking about eliminating a Shi’ite leader… Let me explain what that means.
Every Shi’ite has to find a spiritual leader, to follow in all of the religious aspects of his/her life. This person is called “The Object of Emulation” and has the final say in matters related to religion and when it comes to it, politics as well. Sadr is not officially an object of emulation, but so was not Khomeini. I suppose Sadr might become an object of emulation soon, and then getting him will be equivalent to, for example, going after the Pontiff in Vatican, only slightly harder, because of the differences between Iraqis and Italians.
Sistani is an object of emulation, and the greatest[!] one according to many, and he comes from a school of Shi’ism [an older one] that believes that politics has to be separated from religion and because of this is hated by the Qom school of Shi’ism in Iran, for obvious reasons.
The problem now is that Sistani cannot really do anything except preaching for calmness, since according to his own principles he cannot oppose Sadr, as it would be considered political. His followers also, are peaceful for more or less the same reason. Unfortunately the followers of Sadr are not so peaceful and they are the ones that are going to give everyone a hard time.
I can only wish America good luck this time.
Ps. I am not sure the Mollahs would like Kerry over Bush, because of their never-ending need for someone to represent the great Satan as the enemy of the nation, Kerry will not do.
PPs. Well maybe deep in their hearts they prefer Kerry after all.
M. Simon,
I don’t mean to make this sound like a cause for panic. I don’t think the current battle with Sadr changes the basic equation, and I agree with guys like you and Belmont and Den Beste that there’s a good likelihood we can wipe them out and perhaps come out better than we were before (because we’ve demonstrated our strength and destroyed a powerful but unpopular extremist movement). But it’s a risk. We shouldn’t be overconfident on the battlefield and assume our opponents are as stupid as past opponents have been. Presumably they’ve been watching us just as we’ve been watching them. And even if they are stupid, they could get lucky. And while the military situation in the long term is well in our favor, a stroke of misfortune on our part, such as a large number of our soldiers being killed, could change a very fluid political situation. I don’t think it will happen, but it does appear that another Tet is at least a possibility.
Given that risk, the best alternative would have been to not get in this situation in the first place.
Kaveh,
I don’t think Sadr was very anything close to a Sistani or a Khomeni. Everyone in Iraq but the poorest most desperate folks (who are most prone to buying into what demagogues sell). I’ve got a couple links from Iraqi bloggers on my site (click my name if ya want) that talk about him. Basically, even though guys like Raed and Salam Pax don’t like us very much, they all have agreed for quite a while that Sadr was a dangerous thug. Given that he was also linked to stuff like the bombing murder of Ayatollah al-Hakim, it seems likely to me that we might have been able to bump him off last summer (before he really gathered strength) without offending the sensibilities of lots of folks. Given the distate he’s been viewed with by the Shiite establishment all along, I think it could probably have been done. Of course, I could always be wrong 🙂
Sam Barnes: we tolerate free speech, which Saddam would never have done
Actually, den Beste’s post completely ignores what al-Sadr claims to be the reason protests are no longer effective.
Per the Economist:
Mr Sadr ordered the attacks after the arrest of one of his senior aides, Mustapha Yacoubi, and the closure of a pro-Sadr newspaper which the Americans accused of inciting violence.
So I don’t think we can spin this to Iraqis as an example that we tolerate free speech but not violence.