Clueless in Baghdad
Juan Cole on the Secretary of State playing “the dozens” with al Sadr:
Rice has her ‘bring’em on moment’ in Iraq, talking trash to the Mahdi Army and calling Muqtada al-Sadr a ‘coward.’ Muqtada al-Sadr eluded Saddam Hussein for 4 years after Saddam killed his father and two elder brothers; and in 2004 he twice took on the US military. He may be a lot of things, but he is not a coward. Has Rice ever said anything about Iraq that was true or useful? Even as she was talking up ‘improved security’ in Baghdad, mortar shells were falling about her in the Green Zone.
These people keep woofing, and they aren’t impressing anyone. They let their ‘gator mouths get them into situations their canary butts can’t handle. She just added thousands of people to the al Sadr movement with her statements, and made Maliki look like even more of a loser. Throwing insults is not very effective against people who lob mortars in response.
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Not to mention that al Sadr isn’t even in Iran anymore. When Iran decided to support Maliki, they deported al Sadr to Najaf. Which is *not* a safe place to be right now, it’s sorta like Fallujah with more mosques and a few more intact buildings (a few more, not a lot — we pretty well rubbelized the place back in ’04).
In other words, Condiliar “Mushroom Cloud” Rice proves either that she will stop at no opportunity to lie, or she proves that blond is an attitude, not a hair color (i.e., is willfully stupid and incompetent). Or both. The Busheviks have certainly proven that evil and stupidity are not an “either/or” thing…
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
All I’m concerned with are the US positions that are going to get overrun if the Mahdi Army launches an all out assault. The Iraqis will withdraw, but the US will try to hold, and will be calling down supporting fire on their own positions if things go bad.
A city is no place to maneuver if you don’t know the terrain instinctively, and we don’t.
Well, the good news is that Sadr isn’t going to order an all-out assault. He’s neither stupid nor crazy — anybody capable of evading Saddam’s secret police for four years after his father and his brother got killed by said secret police has more than a few marbles rattling around in his head. He knows that the U.S. is going to withdraw from Iraq within the next ten years, and getting his men killed attacking the U.S. means that much fewer men to take on the other factions once the U.S. leaves.
In short, it is in his best interests to tip-toe around the U.S. military right now, and by and large he is doing so. That is why the Mahdi Army seems to just melt away whenever the U.S. comes to the aid of an Iraqi “Army” unit that’s in trouble in a fight with the Mahdi Army — Sadr’s fight is with the Badr Brigades and the other factions within Iraq, not the United States.
But if the U.S. *forces* a fight by threatening his power… well, he will do what he has to do. You know it. I know it. Our generals know it, I hope (hard to tell, since most of the intelligent ones got purged for ideological reasons by the Busheviks). The Busheviks, of course, don’t know it. All they know is their precious ideology, which says “Sadr evil. Ugh. U.S. fight Sadr. Ugh.” Like I said, the Busheviks are perfect proof that perfect stupidity and perfect evil can exist in the same group of people…
Sadr is definitely holed up somewhere in Iraq, because the Iranians know he won’t dance to their tune and they don’t want to give anyone an excuse to launch a raid. The US seems to be the only people who didn’t get the memo, because it was an open report.
I agree he doesn’t want a “fight to the death”, but he doesn’t have the control over the Sadr movement that his father did, and it’s hard to tell how much what he says is what he believes, and how much is what he has to say to remain as the head of the movement. There are a lot of Twelver True Believers in the Sadr movement, obviously concentrated in the Mahdi Army, and they are no more rational than the End of Time Evangelicals, so it is a delicate balance to keep them from exploding. Having the US Secretary of State call them cowards was definitely not a good move.
At this point I would assume the important talks are going through the Quds between Hakim and Sadr, to find a balance between the Badr Corps and the Mahdi Army. I seriously doubt Iran wants this to explode on their door step, and the Quds would have the best idea of the relative strength of the two forces.
The US is just standing in the middle, and if Sadr loses control, we are in deep yogurt.