Apr 06 2008
Moqtada al-Sadr Isolated In Iraq, Some Fear US Will Teach Iran A Lesson
Major Update: I note in the post below from this morning how Iraqis have decided to side with Prime Minister Maliki and authorize the government to dismantle radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s militias. I proposed one reason this was happening was due to the heavy hand of Iran and its role in giving Sadr support and sanctuary to control his thugs in Iraq from the safety of Iran. Now more news is coming out about how the fighting in Basra could be seen as an invasion of Iraq by Iranians, under the cover of the Sadr Militia:
IRANIAN forces were involved in the recent battle for Basra, General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, is expected to tell Congress this week.
Military and intelligence sources believe Iranians were operating at a tactical command level with the Shi’ite militias fighting Iraqi security forces; some were directing operations on the ground, they think.
I am pretty sure if this claim does come out they will have Iranians in custody to show to the media. The administration will have a tight case against Iran if actions is required. And if Iran is invading Iraq and guiding efforts to kill Iraqis and our soldiers there in country, then action will be required. – end update
I noted in previous posts (here, here and here – thanks LJStrata for reminding me to put the links in!) that Moqtada al-Sadr actually was losing the fight for Iraq with his militia’s. I noted if the West is tired of dealing with the religious violence from afar that the Iraqis are likely to be completely fed up with living through it directly. And I noted the fact Iran is not an Arab culture but Persian, with centuries of strife between the two cultures which would spell the end of Sadr’s support in Iraq since he was hiding out and running his surrender operations from Iran. And it seems all of that speculation is turning out to be partially correct (which is as good as it gets in the fortune telling biz).
This weekend the various Iraqis leaders and political groups threw their support behind Prime Minister Maliki and are authorizing the dismantling of the militia’s:
Iraq’s political blocs backed a government crackdown on Shiite militias and a demand by the country’s political council for parties to disband their militias as a condition for participation in a key local election, an Iraqi lawmaker said Sunday.
In a meeting on Saturday evening, Iraq’s political council of national security gave its backing to a government offensive against Shiite militants in oil-rich southern Basra province and other areas, MP Fouad Masum said.
The council representing the country’s sectarian, ethnic and political groups is made up of the Kurdish president, his two Sunni and Shiite vice-presidents, a Shiite premier and leaders of major political blocs.
The council endorsed a statement supporting the crackdown in Basra and other provinces and urged all political parties to disband their militias as a condition for participation in the political process, Masum told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.
‘All political parties and blocs are urged to immediately disband their militias and hand in their arms to the state and switch to peaceful civilian activities as a condition to participation in the political process and election,’ the council said in a statement.
Only the Sadrist bloc of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr objected to the council’s support for the government offensive and its call for disbanding militias, said Masum from the Kurdish Alliance bloc.
Sadr is isolated now. He has let his thugs do to him what al-Qaeda’s thugs did to Bin Laden – where al-Qaeda is now the enemy of Islam across Iraq. Thugs do not create followings, the create uprisings and backlash. And Sadr is now exposed as a thug in hiding in Iran (though Iran laughingly denies this).
What this also means is Sadr probably won’t get his million man march this week. Not with the violence going on in the last remaining strongholds of his militia:
The death toll in fighting between U.S. troops and Baghdad militants rose to 20 Sunday as police reported the abductions of 42 college students near Mosul.
At least 52 people were injured in the battles between U.S. troops and Shiite insurgents that broke out Saturday night in Baghdad’s Sadr City, CNN and the Kuwait News Agency KUNA reported.
Everyone is getting spent. People are too tired of the fighting for some vague future when the path they are on is looking better than anything the people of Iraq have seen for 3 decades. It is only that 1% of the population which must be genetically maniacal that continue to dream of jihad (Update: Geez, talk about your coincidences). Everyone else is losing interest – which is clearly what the Iraqi government signaled, and I am pretty positive their backers support the move.
And the other potentially huge loser in all of this is Iran. Iran has been waging war against the US and other western fighters with their training of terrorists and equipping them with the material to get through our defenses. There have been numerous legitimate reasons provided to send Iran a strong signal to butt out or pay the price. And now some in the UK see the stage being set for such a signal being sent:
A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US allies.
The outbreak of Iraq’s worst violence in 18 months last week with fighting in Basra and the daily bombardment of the Green Zone diplomatic enclave, demonstrated that although the Sunni Muslim insurgency is dramatically diminished, Shia forces remain in a strong position to destabilise the country.
“Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on the American effort in Iraq,” a British official said. “Iran is waging a war in Iraq. The idea that America can’t fight a war on two fronts is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves,” he said.
This is not an ‘idea’ or some kind of maneuvering, it is a fact of life. And if we want peace in Iraq, safety for their forces and ours, so we can finally draw down our forces we are going to have to deal with Iran. And it might as well be now before anymore bloodshed happens in Iraq.
The Mahdi Militia think Iran is capable of standing up to our forces. This blind belief in their puppet masters needs to be destroyed so they start thinking about their survival and not killing others. The resolve of the rest of Iraq to line up against Sadr and the militia’s could even be seen as a signal from the Iraqis it is time to send Iran a message. Iran cannot stand up to our forces – they cannot stop our attacks. And the difference between Iran and Iraq is we are working to rebuild Iraq and bring them into the modern world. Iran better understand no such promise is coming for those who attack us. We invaded Iraq with the intention of having to spend the time and money to change its future. Iran is an enemy agent, we will just bomb them and leave them to pick up the pieces. There will be no occupation of Iran – just a busted up military and an very, very angry and anxious population facing beaten leaders.
And it is about time to end the madness that thinks the US will roll over when attacked, even if it is against one individual. People need to be aware that there are legal ways to challenge America and those which come with deadly high price.
Update: Much more here on what is happening in Iraq:
In Baghdad, US forces are pushing Shiite militias farther from the Green Zone in an attempt to put the area out of range for rockets and mortars that have recently pounded the diplomatic and government enclave.
The strategy — which targets the southern outskirts of the Shiite district of Sadr City — began as part of a wider crackdown on armed Shiite groups that left Iraqi leaders in disarray after strong resistance and protests from the powerful Mahdi Army militia.
But for American commanders, the showdowns offered an opportunity to move against the launch sites, known as “rocket boxes,†which soldiers previously had not reached through the teeming Sadr City streets.
US troops reinforced positions on the edges of Sadr City — an 8-square-mile slum with about 2.5 million people — and have battled their way into suspected launch sites.
“We’ve seized the ‘rocket boxes’ and pushed them north,†said Col. John Hort, commander of the Third Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.
Still doesn’t look like victory for the Mahdi forces to me. Looks more like defeat. Which is probably why I don’t work for the SurrenderMedia, I just can’t see what they see, and I am sure they want to keep their ‘visions’ intact at all cost.
AJ, you definitely should be writing as a syndicated columnist. This analysis of the current Iraq-Iran situation vs. the US is very well done. Thank you for writing more clearly than 99.9% of the MSM.
Tony
Thanks Tony. If you know how to make that happen let me know!
AJStrata
Luckily , there are a few expert military and ex-military like General Odom and today Jim Webb, on This Week, who urged negotiation with Iran, realizing that Iran could, put charitably, fight depleted and sapped American forces to a draw while destabilizing the entire region. Ex-intelligence men like Phillip Giraldi and Scott Ritter have also written in detail how Iran could withstand, and worse, any
self-defeating military moves of the kind which Strata promotes.
From Strata\’s own first favorable cite:
A senior Iraqi official who met Petraeus last week said, “It will be difficult to show that the situation is improving.â€
Kind of destroys AJs claims of surge \”progress\”
Abu Ahmed, a senior military commander with the Awakening, the Sunni tribal movement cooperating with US forces, said progress was largely the result of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army ceasefire.
“When the Mahdi Army decides to resume its activities, neither the American troops nor the Iraqi government will be able to stop it,†he said.
I guess Strata has a trained eye to only see what he wants to see.
http://www.juancole.com/2008/04/rich-mccain-and-coming-heartbreak-ridge.html
Cole takes McCain’s plans for Iraq apart as self-defeating in the extreme. But more pertinent to Strata’s post is the acknowledgement that the (phony) right is lying about al Sadr’s alignment with Iran, while ignoring the fact that Maliki is even more aligned with Iran.
AJ: Everyone knows Iran has a part in the violence that happens in Iraq.
Perhaps Iran stopped Sadr, so chaos didn’t cause Iran to lose control — and maybe it was also in exchange for a Fourth Round meeting.
The struggle for defeat on the left is breathtaking… the grasping, clawing, lying and fear…
Motives are the key. The side who choses the negative outcome as a hope for survival is the one suffering from desperation.
As with the Clintons, the left is finally realizing what the right has known all along…Hopefully the left will learn sooner rather than later that the right has been right all along about the War on Terror and that their lying comrades were just using them for their own ulterior motives.
Our friend, Truth, makes three exceptionally dumb comments. He first quotes Webb on a Sunday morning news show. Webb was on ABC and was merely trying to support Pelosi. Webb also said that the Senate did not need to hear from Petaeus, but rather from “people like Admirals Mike Mullen and Bill Fallon”. So, Webb is so sure of himself, he would rather listen to the Navy than the General in charge. It figures Truth would think that is a brilliant idea. Webb also claimed that even thought the services were meeting their enlistment and reenlistment targets, they were really showing love of country and were not at all influenced by Iraq. Maybe that makes sense in Trurth’s world, but nowhere else.
Finally, Truth goes out of his way to quote one Sunni in the North about conditions with the Shia in the South. If AJ tried that, Truth would be all over him.
Truth also gives great weight to Juan Cole, not even John Cole, and Frank Rich as some kind of geniuses of military analysis. Of course, to Truth, neither Rich nor Cole could possibly have any agenda.
After all Truth’s claptrap, it seems quite strange to see claim AJ is guilty of seeing only what he wishes to see: mote, log, eye.
Rick
http://www.antiwar.com/updates/?articleid=12639
Big talk for a guy who doesn’t notice 5 US troops killed today,
several killed and wounded in the heavily protected Green Zone.
Polls of troops in Iraq verify Webb’s statements–the Zogby Poll
demonstrated only modest , minority support for Bush’s Iraq policies. Most said America should have been out of Iraq by
January 2007, if Iraq was not pacified by then.
Petraues was a replacement for others who opposed the surge, he is a sycophant of Bush and the supposed goals of the surge have not been met. Now Maliki is condemned by
his own Shias as an American puppet, as American troops
fight in Sadr City. Let’s hope another war crime isn’t committed,mirroring that of Fallujah.
Truth,
“When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, when you wish upon a star your dreams come true.”
Keep wishin, Truth…it’s all you’ve got left.
Whipped says:
The side who choses the negative outcome as a hope for survival is the one suffering from desperation.
This means the Vietnam War protestors were desperate and we won? Tell me more, whipped.
“Big talk for a guy who doesn’t notice 5 US troops killed today,
several killed and wounded in the heavily protected Green Zone.”
Oh great another fucking ghoul jerking off to troop deaths. Go clean up truth, you don’t want a sticky keyboard.
I suppose the correct analogy is, you are a neuter when it comes to troop loss.
truthhard2take.
That’s a good title for you.
From Truthslayer: “This means the Vietnam War protestors were desperate and we won? Tell me more, whipped.”
Yes. That’s exactly it. It’s even documented on PBS, with interviews of NVA generals, who admitted that they knew the only way they could win was through “intellectuals” such as yourself.
That they could win through propeganda. They had an entire office devoted to it. They met with such groups in Europe and advised them. They did not have free media. But, they used “ours” to propogate their message and influence young people who were drunk enough, and high enough on freedom, to believe in supporting their cause against their own gov and soliders/miltiary.
They laughed about it. They have a museum in Hanoi devoted to it. With all your pins and posters and pictures of Kerry and Jane Fonda, etc on display for their great contribution. Everybody knows about this contribution…save the people who did it…who in their own attempt at denial….would try to do the same again…in some sort of “retro” peace.
No thanks. Been there, done that.
Iran has to be sorted and all of it’s nuclear facilities destroyed
before someone like Obama becomes President, if he becomes
President.
If the US were to have fought the Vietnam War until a strong,stable pro-American South Vietnamese government could be installed capable of holding off the North, we would still be there fighting with hundreds of thousands of casualties, and anyone who says different is lying or ignorant of the facts.
hard2take,
You are as ignorant of history as you are of the present day. Congress (a democrat one) defunded our support to South Vietnam that would have allowed them to secure themselves, which is why it collapsed.
Damn, your moniker should be ignorance_is_bliss!
You haven’t even read the Kissinger and other pertinent memos, obviously, which conceded the facts and the “decent interval” strategy, which of course cost thousands more American lives unnecessarily,precisely as General Odom has predicted will occur in Iraq should America stay on a Vietnam-like trajectory.
hard2take,
Why would anyone read an outdated and wrong prediction when the facts on the ground speak for themselves? LOL! You can pretend all day long things are not working in Iraq, but your little 0ld mind is no match for reality.
When you finally wake up, you are really going to hate yourself.