Apr 01 2008
If Sadr Won, Where Is The Dancing And Cheering In The Streets?
So many armchair experts (or propaganda artists in the fashion of Nazi Joseph Goebbels) have been claiming al-Sadr’s capitulation in the fighting in Iraq was a blow to Maliki. Strange logic there, but one indication of a Sadr win would be dancing in the streets of Basra and Sadr City in Baghdad. Where is it? I see reporting that shows government supporters in the streets marching in Basra:
But where is the victory celebrations? Here is what the NY Times reported:
Militiamen with the Mahdi Army, the followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, mostly vanished from the streets of Basra on Monday, a day after he ordered them to lay down their arms and also insisted that the Iraqi government grant a general amnesty for his followers, and made other demands.
Iraqi Army and police forces immediately moved into Basra neighborhoods abandoned by the Mahdi Army, which is the armed wing of Mr. Sadr’s political movement, setting up checkpoints and searching for roadside bombs. As helicopters continued buzzing overhead, shops began to reopen and residents ventured out into the streets.
…
The streets remained extremely tense on Monday in both Basra and Baghdad.
As a dark Toyota sedan approached an Iraqi Army checkpoint on Monday afternoon just outside Sadr City, the huge Baghdad slum that is Mr. Sadr’s power base, a soldier in fatigues and a mask that covered most of his face pointed his weapon and shouted, “Get out of the car!â€
The occupants, including a reporter for The New York Times, quickly complied. It turned out that the soldier suspected them of being members of the Mahdi Army, which tends to prefer black Toyotas.
Is that the picture of victory for Sadr – Iraq security patrols taking over again? The media is so invested in Iraq going bad they have turned from reporting to conjecture and speculation. At best this is a stand off. Sadr is hold up in Iran in exile and there doesn’t appear to be a lot of celebrating in the streets that violence has returned to Iraq.
People here in the West forget that Iraq is full of, well … people. And while there are some excited young men with rifles and a lot of testosterone flowing, the majority of the people don’t want any more gun battles. They want to raise their families. You think Americans are tired of watching the bloodshed in Iraq? Trust me, the people of Iraq are tired of living through it.
There was a reason Sadr stood down and cried for conditions to his surrender. And it was not because he was winning anything.
Gertz reported that the reporter for the New York Times, the paper of record, was a big time official in Saddam’s army.
For the purposes of a gracious argument, Strata, let’s call it a draw.
The rules of guerrilla warfare postulate a draw, for the home team insurgents against the occupier, is a win. Kinda like, the boxing challenger fights the world champion in his home town, he’s gotta knock him out to take the belt from him.
Analogy complete. Iraq War winners thus far vis a vis
America:
1.Sunni insurgency, which has fought the US to a five year draw.
It still must carve out a draw with the Iraqi Shias however.
2.Al Sadr, who fought Maliki to a draw. (Incidentially, disarming the huge Mahdi Army, which Bush vowed to do in 2003, is no more possible than disarming the huge forces of Hezbollah in Lebanon, another American project.)
3.Iran which is balancing aid to both al Sadr and Maliki.
The losers, America –and Israel because of an increasingly powerful Iran and destabilization providing more opportunities for many
opposing forces. Let’s fold the cards , cut losses and support our troops by bringing them home.
Thuthy…..your idea of letting the various Islamic factions fight it out is quite good logic…….Israel is a pain in everybody’s side and it is a great way to help us become energy independent, windmills and solar should spring up everywhere in the next 5 to 10 years. What a deal!
The thing is that Sadr’s guys have melted back into the population with their weapons. They can re-appear at any time at any place. They can allow government forces to come deep into the neighborhoods only to be ambushed later. But most importantly, they have deprived Maliki of a decisive battle. By not fighting, they have conserved their forces and their weapons and the government forces have no idea where they are.
This has put government forces into a position of having to do house to house searches to MAYBE find weapons. This won’t win Maliki any popularity in the upcoming provincial elections. In fact, it is looking like Sadr loyalists will take the area around Basra without any trouble at all. Maliki wanted to provoke them into coming out and fighting. They apparently didn’t go for the bait.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JD02Ak02.html
Another perfidious blunder, as Petraeus and Bush sanctioned Maliki’s strike believing al Sadr had been weakened. Blunder because Moktada faked them out, perfidious because he’s arguably more popular among Iraqis than Maliki, at the very least, a hugely popular leader.
Truthtard, it is my understanding that Maliki did this on his own with no coordination with Patraeus and Bush.
Also, that atimes article is written by Gareth Porter, not by a journalist. Porter is an activist and propagandist. He often appears in such places as antiwar.com
Please, if you are going to cite an article, please don’t cite articles by known partisan propagandists with a clear agenda who are not interested at all in getting at facts as much as they are furthering their agenda.
Delineation is, your propagandists had the war over in 2003, Porter was a “shade” more “pessimistic,”–and correct from the get-go.
And don’t give me any bull-when Cheney and Rummy for example say “weeks or months” and no insurgency was planned for, it’s obvious we need Porters to tell the truth.
AJ,
So now you are judging how the Iraqi occupation is going based on who is dancing in the streets? Are you kidding?
The Iraqi government did not achieve any of its objectives for the offensive – namely disarming the Sadr militia. Our own military commanders in Iraq are acknowledging that the miltia held off the Iraqi security forces (even with US military assistance). So how do you feel about your claim yesterday that they were going to crush the Sadr militia? Your claim that Sadr begged for a truce is joke – if so, why did the high-ranking Iraqi government officials request the meeting and travel to see Sadr in Iran? What about all of the missiles being loobed into the green zone with immunity? Both of the newspaper articles you reference, and virtually all of the news agencies reporting on these events, are reporting that Sadr was strengthened and Al Maliki was weakened by this failed operation. Even McCain said yesterday that it was a mistake. But I guess we should ignore all of this because it is easier to pretend like all is well in Iraq so your hero Bush looks good.
Let’s face it AJ, you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to Iraq. For years you have been projecting victory right around the corner only to have reality come down raiding on your parade. For months you have been saying that Al Qaeda is the real threat in Iraq and that the surge is a success. What you are starting to see is what most of us have known all along – the Shite militias and Sunni insurgents are the real danger. The surge has not resolved these problems. That is why Petraus is not willing to reduce the troop level. You ought to stop listening to Bush talking points and start thinking for yourself.
Petraeus is not willing to so reduce because he is a Bush sycophant and has been tagged as such by rivals within the military and retirees ,to boot.
I really had hoped Americans were over the Vietnam syndrome of various war self-delusions. Today on a radio talk show I heard the stepfather of a soldier who was killed in Iraq, himself an Iraq vet, say he had no regrets, that the MSM was conning the public about the progress of the war, and that all the Iraqis except a few bad guys just loved our occupying their country.
I would have loved to asked him, if it’s just the MSM, what about all
the soldiers coming back who say quite the opposite poll thge opposite attitude, and what about the polls of Iraqis since 2004 showing a majority approve of insurgent attacks on American occupiers?
God the trolls have really infested Aj”s site.
The amazing thing is that the Democrats want to do what the British did and back off and they want the Iraqis to do what Maliki did and take matters into their own hands…and still they bitch.
They say Iraq is a failure and so they mourn for the Butcher of Baghdad, disgusting little traitors that they are. They just want to see Bush hurt, if some Iraqis have to die, who cares?
The thing is alSadr called for a cease fire, this is not something that is done by a winner, it is something that is done by a loser.
And while it is true that the militia was not destroyed, it seems to me that too many pundits left and right forget that there are civilians living in that city and the Iraqi Army can not just destroy the place.
The truth is the left considers any kind of fighting to be a sign of much sought after failure, and the right considers anything short of complete destruction of the enemy to be failure. In fact neither of these outcomes are realistic under the circumstances.
I would say that this is something of a stand off, but it tips toward Maliki. I would recommend this piece from the Long War Journal, note the casualties, it was not Maliki’s forces that lost more than a thousand people.
BTW, I have discovered that if you just ignore conman and truth it saves a lot of time and aggravation.
http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/3970
Don’t Believe the Hype – It’s a Sequel
Eric Martin Apr 1 2008 – 2:07pm
I suppose it’s not surprising that so many right wing pundits, politicians and bloggers are clamoring to declare the latest anti-Sadr operation a success and (yes, yet again) a sure sign that Sadr is finished. Once President Bush signaled early on in the campaign that the resulting action would prove the “success of the surge,” those onlookers that were still committed to defending the prolongment of the Iraqi occupation became invested in this narrative. Then again, declaring the death of Sadr has been a sort of preoccupation for many of those same observers, regardless of the fact that by their count, Sadr’s got more lives than an alleyway teeming with cats giving birth to kittens.
But contrary to the beliefs of those deeply enthralled with “Green Lantern Theories” of geopolitics, and other assorted subjectivists, blind cheerleaderism in the face of contradictory empirical evidence does not lead to victory. Quite the opposite in fact. Belief alone does not create reality, it gets demolished by it.
Read it all.
Then consider also, Maliki has been begging Basra citizens to return
50 Army vehicles “stolen” as the debacle ensued, promising an
automobile in return.
AJ,
You know you’ve made it when all the ignorant trolls come out to try and hijack your thread…It’s fear…pure fear.
Whippet is right.
Do not pay any attention to them. Trolls? What trolls?
BTW, I think that we will know in the not too distant future who the winner is, if there was one. Sometimes it is a good idea to sit back and watch and listen.
The trolls will move on.
MoveOn.Troll.
Just like every conflict – it all must be resolved yesterday for the libs to be satisfied. There is nothing worth a long conflict of ideals. Including a conflict between a government, head choppers, and/or morons running around with assault rifles and pretending to be in charge. I wonder if either the Poet or the ‘Anonymous One’ or the ‘Truth is Very Difficult‘ guy would accept Californians running about with assault rifles. Maybe if the State of California cracks down on some gun toting morons trying to intimidate a city we can call it politics or something. Very dark. Very sinister. I sense the presence of the Free Masons or Bildeburgers or Tri-Latteral Commission or the now bankrupt – but all powerful – Carlyle Group.
At some point the government has to assert control over the whole country. This could very well be the beginning. Let’s see. Al-Sadr loses over 500 dead, the ISF fatalities seem to be in single digits. The ISF has 202,000+ military troops, 214,000+ police, 28,000+ border patrol. There are 165,000+ coalition troops still in Iraq. Al-Sadr has how many???
And, al-Sadr sues for peace. And it is a peace that allows the ISF to deal with the ‘rogue elements’.
I kinda like that deal. The Sadrists that have a chance to be incorporated into civil society don’t have to be wiped out. But, the Iran backed slugs can be targeted. If they pop up in mighty minuteman violence they can be targeted with extreme prejudice.
Plus, like Terrye stated: What’s the rub. We all want the Iraqi government to deal with Iraqi problems. They make a move and the libs over here rend their clothes. Whining and crying.
Lot’s of leaps to conclusions on both sides here. I see no fat lady singing on stage for a conclusion in Basra, nor on Iraq’s future. Certainly their success in tamping down their mobsters and cartels in Basra cannot be pronounced as absolute one way or another by any of us here… nor is it likely to be over for some time. But they are certainly off and running on trying to control their own…. *with* their own.
Future historic perspectives hinge on what happens to this new government… do they survive, and become a western tolerant nation, friends in intel, and trader in world’s free markets for their resources? Or do they fall to jihad movement thugs who ignore their elections and voices, and be herded into Islamic law and raped of their resources?
One can hope that the US is not the cause of their failure simply because a new POTUS forms his/her foreign policy based on poll opinions of a nation who’s citizenry enjoys only 60-70% of it’s high school students being graduated. Frankly, I do not want my future being decided by so many that are so clueless.
Iraq deserves every opportunity to make a success of their nation. And the US owes them whatever assistance they ask of us to do so. This behooves us all. And as of Nov 2007, the Iraq President asked us to stay another two years. So for those concerned with mending fences with the int’l community, I suggest that doing so doesn’t include abandoning a fledgling democracy after they have requested help.
But be not so immediate to prounouce absolutes and predict history. It has surprised us all before, and lays in wait to do so again over time.
Mata,
No absolutes.
Its just that these Defeatists always want to quit. I am just pointing out that they even want to quit when they have absolutely no skin in the game. March Madness must be tough on them. This is a case of Iraqi government forces against some brave, but misguided, Minutemen wandering around with assault rifles and intimidating the city of Basra. There are no coalition forces in danger. Even if Bush followed the Dali-Bama and bailed out last year there would be conflicts like this. Too me, it is very nice to see independent movement by Iraqi government forces. They will win. Numbers are on their side. Training is on their side. Supplies are on their side. And, who the hell would want to be ‘secured’ by a thuggish protection racket.
So, I say wait and see.
If Iraq wins the government forces will remain in the city. If Iraq loses this battle they will look like the Russians retreating from Afghanistan. My money is on the government forces. So is my hope.
Hope.