Sadr Calls off Demonstration;
Threatens to End Cease-Fire;
McCain confuses al-Qaeda with Shiites (Again)
Iraq Hearing follies. John McCain just can't keep the branches of Islam straight. He said to Gen. David Petraeus:
' SEN. MCCAIN: There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?
GEN. PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was, say, 15 months ago.
SEN. MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi'ites, all overall, or Sunnis or anybody else. '
What does that even mean? Do we really need another tongue-tied president who says incoherent things about the most important challenges facing the US? McCain keeps thinking that al-Qaeda is a Shiite, Iranian plot, when in fact its leadership is hyper-Sunni Egyptians and Saudis. As for al-Qaeda not being an obscure sect, well I'm not sure about the obscure part. But it is certainly a tiny fringe in the Muslim world, analogous to the far right gun nuts and white supremacists that formed the context for Timothy McVeigh. There is no prospect of the Qutbists or "al-Qaeda" as McCain is pleased to call them, taking over Iraq! They are not even popular in most Sunni Arab areas. As for the Shiites, they are a majority of Iraqis and they hate al-Qaeda (which has massacred Shiites), and they would just crush it if given the opportunity.
McCain keeps making this elementary error.
Muqtada al-Sadr called off his million-man march, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, saying he feared Iraqi government and American violence against the demonstrators.
He also hinted heavily that he might call off the freeze on the activities of his Mahdi Army.
In a statement released by his office, Muqtada complained of the stationing of security forces throughout Baghdad by the al-Maliki government. "It is as though the Iraqi people is in part or whole a wanted criminal." He said that "one of the tyrants" had "made the Iraqi people in its entirety a dependent on the Occupier, unfortunately."
He expressed his admiration for the Iraqi army, offered it an olive leaf, and called on it to help end the siege of the Sadrists. He said neither democracy nor elections could divide "us."
"If this spreading out of the security forces suggests anything, it is that the government remains under severe American pressure and its deceptive, worldly, hateful policies, and remains under its tyrannical authority. For this reason, it attempts to stop the annual million-person demonstration against the Occupation, and forbids believers to participate in the elections, and strives with all its might to implement the American plan to partition Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines."
Tom Engelhardt introduces a piece by Patrick Cockburn to launch his book on Muqtada al-Sadr.
Gary Kamiya quotes me in his Salon article, "The Iran Bogeyman is Back."
Fred Kaplan sees the Petraeus/ Crocker testimony as a plea for more of the status quo and as a signal that nothing much will change before next year this time.
Veteran journalist Richard Reeves comments on the issue of torture and the Bush administration, taking some passages from my Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East as his starting point.
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 4/09/2008 12:30:00 AM
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7 Comments:
The Sadrists and other nationalist Shi'as have been cementing ties with the Sunni nationalists for many months. Given the aggregate of the people who will support them in elections, it is almost a foregone conclusion that the next Iraqi government will be anti-American.
Will the election be allowed to take place? If not, what kind of an erruption would we see in Iraq?
All the shenanigans of the last few weeks are attempts to distract and hope for a US-Sadr fight where the superior weaponary of the Americans can play the major part, which failed.
Also, the hilarious plot by Maliki and his ilk to "isolate" Sadr and others they don't like, by not allowing them in the "political process", which Maliki owns! Given that these people actually pulled out of the process in disgust, what does isolation actually mean?
McCain't Keep His Thoughts Straight
(As if he ever could!)
We have to recall that McCain didn't have his puppeteer in the form of the crypto-Likudnik Lieberman to help him out as he did in one other instance. While they may have been in the same room (perhaps not at the same time), the high-signs were not transmitted nor received as perhaps intended. We have to recall that McCain is being strung along by those who share his stated goals of eradicating manufactured foes in the Middle East and Persia. Perhaps even strung-out.
There are a couple of interesting linques that indicate what the true intentions of McCain and his kibitzers have in mind for the future, should they prevail in the election. One site shows 'Songbird' paying homage in much the same way as he did when embracing (literally) Younger George, embracing in a different way the malevolent martial madness that has gripped the Middle East for some eighty or so years.
Your future president
http://judicial-inc.biz/83your_future_president.htm
Israeli minister threatens “destruction of the Iranian nation”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/apr2008/iran-a09_prn.shtml
While some may point to some immediately handy label, we must recall that the role of the United States is to be an impartial arbiter in the World's affairs, not unfairly taking arbitrary sides where some concerns are felt best served, especially by various nefarious influences that involve coercion or kickbacks to individuals, something that BillJeff Blythe IV Clinton found himself by which entrapped in the the last two years of his Presidency, namely by Lewinsky and Rich. We might also recall that religion is not a test for political office in the United States, even if the god in which one trusts comes in denominations of $1, $5, $10, $20, or any amount increased by the numbers of zeroes after them.
McCain has yet to divulge his real intentions should he swear allegiance to the Presidency (which should be fun, knowing his penchant for all kinds of swearing) and to the Consitution (his own, unknown).
Yet, we must wonder if he intends to redeem hisself like his potential predecessor attempted when he, Younger George, sat out the Vietnam conflict, flying one barstool after another, perhaps pretending his nostrils were the intakes of some high-powered jet engines. I have a nagging feeling that McCain feels something of a lacking in that he was not really part of any victory parade following his voluntary incarceration in Hanoi (and recall that 'Stalag 13' and 'The Great Escape' both predated his capture), only to be rewarded for his being able to demonstrate some innate bravado for the folks back home. I feel that he needs to do this conflict thing in order to make up for how he failed to follow in his fathers' footsteps, not unlike Younger George who never quite made the grade, nor the team, nor the battle, nor the family, nor anything much else. John was what? An O-4 to his fathers' four stars?
We know at what cost Younger George gained his position. At what cost will Older and Moldier John get his? And, in MAD Magazine tradition, what he worry? Mania solves that problem, at least for the foreseeable future.
"Will the election be allowed to take place?"
I think preventing the elections was the whole point of the Basra offensive. If free and fair elections are allowed, Maliki may as well start furnishing that house in France he no doubt owns. (wonder where the Iraqi "budget surplus" is going?)
I think the desired outcome of the offensive were, in order:
1. Destroy the Mahdi Army and remove Sadr as a rival -- didn't work.
2. Use it as an excuse to disenfranchise his followers -- that's what they're trying now.
3. Create such a security crisis that elections cannot be held.
The third is the least desirable outcome from our viewpoint, because providing McCain and the Republicans with an "October surprise" purple finger moment to campaign on is the whole point of the exercise. But it requires the cooperation of the Iraqis, and we're not likely to get it.
Juan,
On your observation in Salon about Iran's inability to dominate Iraq:
I remember talking about the Iraq war with an old Iranian friend of mine about a year into the thing. She looked at me incredulously and said, "You can't conquer Arabs."
McCain has no confusion about Sunnis and Shiites.
Republican foreign policy has been reduced to portraying the entire Muslim world as a bunch of bloodthirsty savages just itching to get over here and kill us in our beds. Thus, they work assiduously to convince the credulous that all Muslims are the same.
As Republican policies, both externally and internally, have led the country into one disaster after another, this fearmongering is all they have left. They certainly are not going to give it up before November.
In listening to the testimony of General Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker, it was impossible to miss three aspects.
1. The persistent use of the phrase "al-Qaeda" and the absolute insistence on fusing the organization of Bin Laden with what is called "al-Qaeda in Iraq." Petreaus did this repeatedly and it went unchallenged.
2. It appears that we can expect an attempt at a major media event around Iran's support for armed actions in Iraq by Petreaus. He stated a number of times that he intended to present his evidence at a later date.
3. No one mentioned the enormous amount of bombing that took place last year and Petreaus went out of his way to say what a success the operation in Falluja has been. By all accounts, that city was demolished. Simply put, there is no acknowledgement of what our military has done to portions of Iraq during the occupation.
These witnesses kept describing their practice as reacting to current conditions--"conditions-based" is the phrase they use. Is that a strategy or even a tactic? This is like saying, "Life goes on," when life is what goes on. Day-by-day and moment-by-moment actions are always conditions-based.
Fred Kaplan correctly points out that they repeated throw out scientific sounding phrases using mathematical words like "geometry" and "calculus" and then immediately deny that they have any equation with coefficients that tell them how they are doing.
My impression is that both these speakers have been drinking their own bathwater for far too long. They are talking and acting like career bureaucrats, "just doing their job as best they can." All meaning has been drained from many of their favorite phrases and words. Worst of all, this is still being called a war when it has been an occupation for nearly five years now.
I take Dr. Cole's self-identification as a "classic liberal" to refer to the attitude of someone like John Stuart Mills, who wrote in the 19th century. Mills might argue that these hearings -- and the way they are covered in the press -- are seriously flawed. Mills argued at length that it was most important that the non-mainstream view receive the most airing and attention. It is difficult to imagine how the public can possibly develope a reasoned understanding of our foreign policy if all they hear are snippets from this hearing. Mills believed that that passionate discussion was essential to a healthy political life. I don't think he had hours of fawning praise and scripted responses in mind as a way to provide what is necessary for others to form an informed opinion.
Cockburn says:
"The Arab Sunni states were aghast at the sight of Iran's defeat in the Iran-Iraq war being reversed"
This is a surprise to me, I thought Saddam started the war, but even with active USA help (e.g., satt images of Iran's troop deployments), it was a 10 year stalemate. Iraq gained nothing, not even the strategic Gulf area at Shatt al Arab which was Saddam's principal objective.
Cockburn also says:
"The first time I thought seriously about Muqtada was a grim day in April 2003 when I heard that he was being accused of killing a friend of mine, Sayyid Majid al-Khoei, that intelligent and able man with whom I had often discussed the future of Iraq."
What Cockburn does NOT say is that his friend al-Khoei was a resident of London for 12 years prior to the Bush/Blair invasion or 2003, having left Iraq when Sadr stayed in Iraq; that al-Khoei was also a "friend" of Blair's; that Bush/Blair provided al-Khoei with a private militia for his grand entrance into Iraq along with Chalabi; that al-Khoei went to the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf on 10 April 2003 with his militia and with the full intent of taking the mosque over as his new turf. Unfortunately for al-Khoei, he was unable to take his armed militia into the mosque, they waited outside while he sought to take it over inside.
Is it really any surprise that this agent of Bush/Blair was killed in his attempt to take over the most holy shia shrine?
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