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October 10, 2007Cheeky BullSpeaking of "Mission Accomplished", it's rather cheeky of Bartle Bull to declare another USS Abraham Lincoln moment on the basis "Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq's most successful, popular and important politician, has underwritten Iraq's progress towards legitimate politics since late 2004." (Hat Tip: Gideon Rachman) This is why 200,000 plus Iraqis died, several thousand U.S. troops as well, 4 million refugees and IDPs are struggling, and half a trillion dollars (and counting) was spent? C'mon! P.S. Though yes, ironic isn't it, if we're looking to maximize the chances of a unitary Iraqi state, and minimize Iranian influence, we'd be less keen to hop in bed with Dawa and SCIRI and more apt to forge understandings w/ Sadr. But he's a "bad guy", Hez-lover type and all, so don't hold your breath...My larger point, however, is that any rational cost/benefit analysis of this bungled adventure (Saddam out, Sadr in!) would have had us staying well clear of this fiasco... Posted by Gregory at October 10, 2007 10:55 PMComments
Oh, come on, Greg. Don't you recognize that he's the most promising potential figure to unify Iraq since Ahmad Chalabi? The trouble with people like you is that you insist on thinking of the glass as 95% empty rather than 5% full. Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at October 11, 2007 02:48 AM | Permalink to this comment
Meanwhile, back at the Anbar Awakening... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21164128/site/newsweek/ Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at October 11, 2007 03:25 AM | Permalink to this comment
It's too bad Saddam is gone. He'd have those Iraqis unified in no time. Posted by: LL at October 11, 2007 05:31 PM | Permalink to this comment
100 %, right L.L.; if one believed the CNN reports proferred by Eason Jordan. SCIRI & Dawaa were the lead political factions
> most promising potential figure to unify Iraq since Ahmad Chalabi Hehe, good one -- and also the 95%/5% joke was funny :)
Not nearly as funny (in a morbid way) as that Newsweek piece on our new Good Buddies among the Sunni Sheikhs -- most of whom, it turns out, openly regard Saddam Hussein as a role model. And the seasons they go 'round and 'round
Narciso: "The reference to MSNBC leaves me nonplussed. Well, Narciso, that might possibly be because they themselves cheerfully refer to themselves as such: "Iraqis, [Kanan] says, are once again looking for the kind of martinet he knew as a boy. 'They want somebody strong like Saddam,' Kanan told NEWSWEEK last week in an interview near Tikrit. 'Power and money—that's how you [rule] Iraq. If I became like the Prince of Dubai, I would control Iraqis like a remote control.'... "With Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's central government weaker than ever—unable to provide basic services even to Baghdad—power brokers in the provinces are enjoying something of a renaissance. That's fine with Kanan al-Sadid. 'We have to get rid of central control,' he says, exhaling a cloud of French-cigarette smoke... " 'If nobody wins, you could end up with different groups in charge of different cities,' says Vali Nasr, an Iraq expert at Tufts University. In a sense, it's happening already. Even as Iraqis furiously denounce the nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution that suggested dividing their country into three relatively autonomous parts, Iraq has splintered into a hundred pieces... "[Kanan] spends a lot of time in Syria—the better to stay above the fray, he believes... "In other parts of Iraq, working closely with U.S. forces has clearer advantages. Consider Gen. Qais Hamza Aboud, the local police chief in the mostly Shiite city of Hillah, about 50 miles south of Baghdad. A former fighter pilot in Saddam's Air Force, Qais is now probably the most powerful individual in Babil province—more influential than either the governor or local Iraqi Army commanders. He was working as a car salesman in 2003 when U.S. military officials helped him form an elite paramilitary police unit, now known as the Scorpion Battalion. Flush with American cash and weapons, Qais's Scorpions have since swelled to roughly 800 troops. U.S. officers in Hillah refer to Qais simply as 'the Godfather.' Asked about the nickname during a recent visit to a U.S. military base outside Hillah, General Qais stared down a NEWSWEEK reporter for 10 seconds or so, and then replied: 'Yeah, that's right.'... " 'What we're seeing is the de facto establishment of a militia,' said a State Department official at the meeting, who declined to speak to NEWSWEEK on the record without embassy authorization. 'We need to be very careful that we remain constitutionally correct.'... "American officers mostly consider [Qais'] personal bravado endearing. Yet they also recognize that relying on charismatic individuals for security carries its own risks. Qais's authority derives largely from 'a personal allegiance to the general,' says Lt. Col. Thomas Roth, an American officer who works closely with the police chief... "Last week NEWSWEEK visited one of [Basra's] most powerful young warlords, an Islamist in his early 40s named Yussef al-Mussawi, who leads Basra's Thar'Allah ('God's Revenge') Party. At the organization's heavily guarded complex a couple of miles north of the city, bodyguards milled about carrying Iraqi-made Tariq pistols; one guard had stationed himself inside an air-conditioning duct above the building's front door. In a reception room near the parking lot, supplicants queued up to ask the leader for favors. A group of four young men said they had come to get his help in finding their kidnapped brother. Upstairs in his office, Mussawi—dressed entirely in black and wearing a pinkie ring—sat at a desk covered with letters from petitioners asking his help. 'The Iraqi government is weak and the Parliament is shallow,' Mussawi told a caller. Later, when another caller asked for the Islamist's advice about a property dispute, Mussawi replied: 'The sword is the solution' —meaning he believed force was the only thing that would get the man's property back. "Even to ambitious local sheiks like Kanan al-Sadid in Tikrit, the warlords' rise is a troubling development. 'What century are we in?' he asks. 'If we go back to the tribes—say goodbye to democracy.' The businessman says he would prefer to hold an elected position in a modern, liberal state—provincial governor, perhaps. Yet he also acknowledges that with Tikrit's security still in chaos, that prospect seems a long way off. 'Since the beginning,' the sheik explains, 'the tribes have depended on weapons. At first it was for the wolves. Then it was for humans.' He smiles to himself, stamps out a Gauloise Blonde and then steps into his nearby BMW, which is always occupied by three armed guards." Building democracy from the bottom up, yes indeedy. Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at October 13, 2007 04:32 PM | Permalink to this comment
"...My larger point, however, is that any rational cost/benefit analysis of this bungled adventure (Saddam out, Sadr in!) would have had us staying well clear of this fiasco..." O Fearless Host, I bow and scrape in appreciation of your wise counsel prior to the invasion... gag me with a frickin spoon
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