Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 35, April 5, 2004

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I had planned to regale all of you with what my campaign speech would be if I were John Kerry, but events in Iraq have suggested another topic.

Just today I downloaded from the U. S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute an article on "The United States and Iraq's Shi'ite Clergy: Partners or Adversaries?" Published two months ago, it outlines with eerie precision exactly the morass the U. S. has now got itself into in regard to the Shi'ite leaders in general and with Muqtada al Sadr in particular.

al Sadr is the cleric we now issued an arrest warrant for. He has long been a strong critic of the U.S. occupation and has rejected the authority of the US selected governing council. All observers, including the SSI essay written by W. Andrew Terrill, describe al Sadr as young (maybe not even 30 years old), of low theological rank (perhaps only a student, and certainly not an ayatollah or even close to it) and the leader of a militia army of the poorest which includes a substantial number of petty criminals and thugs. He owes much of his standing to being the son of a famous leader who was murdered by Iraq security services.

After a time of relative peace, al Sadr recently escalated his rhetoric and now advocates violent resistance to the US occupation.

In short, he is not a helpful force on the Iraqi scene. However, as outlined in the Terrill piece, the US has chosen a course of action against al Sadr designed to maximize his effectiveness. Al Sadr, Terrill points out, was a very controversial figure in Iraq totally outside of any issues concerning the occupation. He is no ally of Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who is both a genuine scholar and someone who has earned his rank among the clerics. Al Sadr has offended Sistani and his followers repeatedly by his open desire to grab power and his attacks on Iraqis he finds too secular for his tastes. And he has been linked to the murder of Mohammad Hakim, leader of another Shi'ite faction.

But, these divisions and internal disputes will fade, Terrill warned two months ago, if the US comes down on al Sadr and turns him into the defender of Iraqi freedom against a heavy handed occupation.

And what did we do? We shut down al Sadr's newspaper, thus teaching everyone about civil liberties. We arrested an aid and put al Sadr's offices under siege, tactics that generate a rallying point for his supporters without being particularly effective. We issued, or caused to be issued, an arrest warrant, but delayed executing it, giving al Sadr time to hole up in a sacred shine so our arrest of him, when it comes, will be associated by ordinary Iraqis as desecrating a holy place.

Terrill advocated avoiding a direct confrontation with al Sadr, and urged the US leadership to have confidence in the divisiveness of al Sadr internally being effective in keeping him from grabbing power.

But now, the confrontation is on and it will likely lead to further destabilization of Iraq.

So what do I think we should do? We need to step back here and remind ourselves what the goal is. The goal is not stability, or getting them to like us or teaching them a lesson. The goal is to get out. At least that should have been the goal, but the Bush administration has gone down a different path. While they 'remain firm' that June 30th is the deadline for a (symbolic) transfer of power to the governing council that we selected, US troops are slated to remain in Iraq for years.

Both Sen. Lugar and Sen. Biden, the ranking Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Affairs committee said tonight on the PBS News Hour that they have no idea what the administration's plan is for getting to June 30th, nor the plan beyond that point. The civil police is not ready, there is no army and there is no agreement with the governing council on what the US role is to be after June 30th. After June 30th, the US proconsul Bremmer will leave to be replaced by a US Ambassador (not yet selected) and 3,000 staff (who aren't in Iraq yet). Both senators predicted this massive US transition at a time of maximum vulnerability for the Iraq leadership will not lead to happy things. Apparently the Bush administration is fighting amongst itself, like various Shi'ite factions, over what to do.

And after June 30th, when the US forces are nominally taking direction from Iraq civilian authorities, but actually going their own way is a situation almost guaranteed to produce incidents that lower the authority of both groups. Either we'll make the Iraq leadership look like puppets by appearing to ignore their authority, or we'll be forced to do things (like enforce Islamic law) that we will be clumsy at. Good soldiers make bad police.

But remember, the goal is to get out. The longer we stay the more unstable Iraq gets. The longer we stay, the more we are blamed for and the less convincing our high-sounding objectives appear. The longer we stay, the more internal disagreements get artificially fused into uniform hatred of infidel outsiders. The longer we stay, the more Americans die (now more than 600 soldiers). Unless of course, the goal of the administration was, in fact, never to get out. We're not out of Kosovo, we've got no public plan for getting out of Afghanistan, so maybe we're not getting out of Iraq either. Perhaps the goal is just to mimic the British occupation of India and set up local clergy as maharajas. We all know how well that went.

Getting out will be very difficult now. But staying and adding Iraq to the American Empire will only mean a more bitter struggle later.

Using ordinary police tactics, the British appear to have scored a major victory against terrorists, stopping a bomb plot and arresting the leaders. They've arrested people for what actions they were preparing to do, not for their ethnicity or rhetoric. The police have certain fixed deadlines for charging the men or convincing a judge why they need more time. They have evidence and the accused will be tried in regular courts with the usual protections. Now that is a victory.