Sunday, April 08, 2007
Our favorite member of the coalition of those willing to buy into Iraq's government has spoken out. (Via Atrios)
Muqtada al-Sadr is the Shia cleric who hates America, and has a large base of support. He operates out of Sadr City. It is widely suspected that his supporters were the ones who made such a mash of Saddam Hussein's hanging.
The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate their attacks on American troops rather than Iraqis, according to a statement issued Sunday.
In the statement, al-Sadr — who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government — also encouraged his followers to attack only American forces, not fellow Iraqis."God has ordered you to be patient in front of your enemy, and unify your efforts against them — not against the sons of Iraq," the statement said, in an apparent reference to clashes between al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters and Iraqi troops in Diwaniyah, south of Baghdad. "You have to protect and build Iraq."
I am sure that the Bush administration's response will be that this is good news, because it means the terrorists are getting desperate; which reminds me of something. Why does the media allow the Bushies to go unchallenged when they say peace means success, and violence means success? Perhaps we need to have success defined first before the White House P.R. machine spins anything into a justification for their policies.
Back to the point though, this should create an upswing in violence. Sunnis are the ones blowing up Al-Sadr's fellow religionists at this point, and now in response he wants them to attack Americans instead of Sunnis. Bush probably can follow this logic. 19 terrorists mostly from Saudi Arabia blew up the World Trade Center, so we had to attack Iraq to retaliate. If Cuba ever attacked us, I think Sweden would be invaded.
The violence in a way is going to be a symptom of a larger problem. The government in Iraq will collapse if we go after Al-Sadr. We are in a quandry. In other words, our troops will be sitting ducks for random attacks, or we can help destroy the last fig leaf propping up the fantasy that a stable government is in place in Iraq.
George Bush is in charge though. Don't worry, he will do something spectacularly stupid and fail. I have faith in the man.
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