As always Cernig has the most thorough rundown of developments in Iraq. Go read.
Meanwhile, I have a couple of questions for the people who think that Sadr lost something.
* Which goal did Maliki accomplish? Did the JAM disarm, lose territory, surrender any leaders? Unless you count retreating to Baghdad, watching his most disciplined combat division disgraced or releasing Sadrist prisoners en masse as “goals” it is hard to see where Maliki came out ahead.
* Sadr issued a list of demands and Maliki accepted. Presumably if Maliki’s government wasn’t getting violated over a barrel it would have its own list of demands. What were they? Did Sadr accept?
Prompt reply appreciated.
YHS,
TF
mellowjohn
so al-maliki surrenders to al-sadr.
surely this is the proof we need that the surge is working.
demimondian
Damn it, people, it’s simple. You’ve simple permuted the words — where you’ve been reading “Bush’s statement ‘the surge is working'”, what was actually written was “Bush’s ‘working the surge’ statement”. Why is that so hard to follow?
4tehlulz
In before leftist cheerleading for our (lol, our) enemies.
dbrown
Its all part of bushie’s (via cheney) to get Iraq to setup the dems as fall guy’s – didn’t want a stable Iraq before Novemeber … then the dems could claim victory and pull out. American blood = repubic votes
Notorious P.A.T.
How DARE you question the great and powerful General Petraeus?????!?
mikesdak
This was posted on Crooked Timber three days ago….
On past performance, the likely pattern will be one of initial success, followed by a lot of tough talk, and then a bloody stalemate, ending in a patched-up compromise.
I think that’s more or less what happened, although it looks like Maliki got the short end.
jake
Oh Tim. No Right thinking American has time to think about Sadr’s defeat is actually a defeat.
They’re too busy celebrating the fact that once again the dirty rotten defeatocrats must be sobbing into their tofu lattes because more American soldiers didn’t die.
GSD
We know full well that it is the GOP and the Bushists who are most invested in the continued deaths of American soldiers.
I mean Cheney says “so” and Bush thinks it is “romantic”.
Most Americans wanted US soldiers out of that morass back in 2006.
Most Bushists and McCainistas want US troop deaths for 100 more years.
-GSD
Jay McDonough
from swimming freestyle:
“So, who did win this week? It’s probably fair to say losers don’t issue demands and winners don’t accept those demands so readily.”
http://swimmingfreestyle.typepad.com
TenguPhule
A few more victories like this and we’ll need to start boning up on the Koran.
jake
[Cue shrieks of outrage from the Brown Squirts]
That might not be a bad idea.
Todd D
The deeper question is how much control Sadr really has over the Mahdi Army. Sadrists have been carrying out attacks for months against his orders. He’s more of a symbol than a commander, and it’s possible that he has no real authority to enforce such a deal. It sounds like conditions are getting pretty bad inside Basra, so that may have more influence on what happens than any kind of decree from Sadr.
It’s hard to look at this objectively and see any victory for Maliki. His forces are deeply infiltrated and have “loyalty issues”. There was virtually nobody in Basra taking orders from the government. And the cash-generating oil exports came to a halt, and will be reduced for some time even in the best case. Maliki is already having a hard time paying the “Awakening” (Sahwa) forces, and if he can’t pay his own troops on time there could be more trouble.
nabalzbbfr
More desperate spinning from those rooting for an American defeat. Try explaining this away:
Sources in Basra tell TIME that there has been a large-scale retreat of the Mahdi Army in the oil-rich Iraqi port city because of low morale and because ammunition is low due to the closure of the Iranian border.
It seems the Iranians are also seeing the writing on the wall, little good that it will do them.
demimondian
What is it about right wing trolls that they quote anonymously sourced and widely discredited reports and expect us to refute them again?
athensboy
Makiki couldn’t do shit if the US wasn’t taking care of his logistics, sending US Special Forces to babysit the Iraqi commanders and having the US Air Force bomb and strafe Basra. With all that Sadr still controls 70% of Basra. Maliki isn’t taking on Sadr, he’s taking on a movement of poor Shia people. Sadr’s esteem went up 10 fold with Shia’s. The Iraqi Army is a joke…even with US support. Maliki is and will always be a puppet of Bush….how sad.
w vincentz
Nabal,
You continue to amaze me.
joe
Well, if an anonymous person in the comment thread of a blog quotes an anonymous source quoting anonymous “sources in Basra,” that’s good enough for me.
You know, it’s one of those victories where you leave you enemy in control of the cities you’ve been fighting over, and agree not to go after him anymore. That kind of victory.
nabalzbbfr
Iran should realize that now they are in VERY deep S**T. They have now activated the Bush Doctrine: the US will treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups (to wit Sadr and his Mahdi army) as terrorists themselves. They are now precisely in the same position as the Taliban was on 9/11.
Dug Jay
It’s not surprising to see that the Keyboard Commandos of the Left know almost nothing about what is happening in Iraq. This brief excerpt from the NYTimes web posting of earlier today illustrates some of this:
athensboy
Hey Nabal, we can’t control a country of 30 million, how the hell would a genius like you control Iran which has 80 million people? Are you by some chance related to Shrub?
demimondian
Interesting, isn’t it, that Dug Jay’s piece was written some days ago, before everything fell apart in Basra, and the whole “happy talk express” is based on a report at second hand sourced on an anonymous source to the Istanbul bureau chief of the NYT — who speaks neither Arabic nor Turkish, and who parrots the standard lies, even as the Iraqi Army was being routed in Basra.
It’s a pity that the truth is real, isn’t it, Dug Jay?
joe
Iran should realize that now they are in VERY deep S**T. They have now activated the Bush Doctrine: the US will treat countries that harbor or give aid to terrorist groups (to wit Sadr and his Mahdi army) as terrorists themselves. They are now precisely in the same position as the Taliban was on 9/11.
Muqtada al Sadr and the Mehdi Army are Shiite faction with the worst relationship with Iran, you tool. SCIRI and the Malaki government – those would be the “good guys” in your juvenile understanding of the foreign policy – have much stronger ties with Iran.
But, other than that, great comment.
athensboy
Hey Dug, according to that logic wouldn’t Maliki be attacking Badr Brigade members in Basra who were also involved in criminal activities? Oh, thats right, those Badr people are aligned with Hakim, a big ally of Maliki. I guess Maliki’s attacking Sadr in Basra has NOTHING to do with provincial elections in October that Sadr’s people were predicted to win? Try your neo-con bullshit on people less informed than me. That horseshit don’t fly, I don’t care what blog you got it from.
jake
More likely he’s related to Dug Jay. Brother, cousin, uncle, all three at once. The possibilities are endless.
nabalzbbfr
Hey Nabal, we can’t control a country of 30 million, how the hell would a genius like you control Iran which has 80 million people? Are you by some chance related to Shrub?
Unbiased public opinion surveys show that Iran’s population is one of the most pro-American on this planet, let alone the Middle East, who are chafing under an oppressive theocracy. Polls show that President Bush has far higher public approval in Iran than in the US. And you personally might learn a lesson from that — at least show a little respect for the office if not for the man.
joe
Before the invasion of Iraq, the streets of Tehran were full of hundreds of thousands of protesters. The anti-government, reformist protests (which included soccer fans chanting “USA! USA!” after a victory) became so popular that the government had to imprison some of its own security personnel for attacking protest leaders, because they realized the protests were so popular and the backlash against the government was growing so large that they needed to save their own skins.
Since the invasion of Iraq? Nuthin. Between the “rally ’round the flag” phenomenon and the free hand the government has been given to act, the opposition has been silenced.
These hawks, they like to throw around phrases like “democracy” and “liberation,” but they really have no effing idea what those concepts mean, or how they work.
4tehlulz
Until we bomb them.
demimondian
A citation might help you here.
Establish the truth of the statement? Hell, no! Tt will help you establish your comic premise!
w vincentz
Nabal,
Got a link to the “unbiased public opinion surveys”?
Thanks in advance.
spanielboy
Which army is going to show up to do this fighting? Is it the army that you give support to by your words? Or are you willing to put a gun in your hand and help out? My gosh, it is like a game to some people to get goosebumps by sending other folks to to war.
Back to MAS. For those who think the Iraqi government came away with a win, you are wrong. MAS is still alive. MAS is still in control of his forces. MAS is still in control of land in Iraq. So how does one determine on a scorecard to who gets point for this plan? The Iraqi government probably took a few steps back with this stunt — the Sunnis and Kurds are watching this with much fascination wondering when the government will try something similar to them in the future. By the way, did I mention that the US Army couldn’t stop MAS in 2004 — and he ‘gave up’ then also.
jake
There seems to be a correlation between the number of posts on BJ and the lameness of the trolls. By the time John et al hit 20,000 this is all they’ll be able to manage.
ploeg
Unfortunately, we are not anywhere close to the same position that we were in in October 2001.
And granting that the Iranian public is the most pro-American public in the Middle East (I have not heard anything to the contrary), there is a limit to how far that gets us when the bombs start falling. Or when we start propping up the same sort of kleptocrats that we propped up in Iraq as our idea of a post-theocratic Iranian government.
Cernig
Nabal “at least respect the office if not the man”.
I’ve never understood why some idiots expect an oddly shaped room to work a magical alchemy. If the person was an asshole walking in, then they’ll be an asshole sitting behind the desk. I don’t have to respect assholes even if they have fancy titles. That’s called freedom.
But believing in magical transformations is what the 20-something-per-centers are all about.
Regards, C
TenguPhule
Yes, the lesson is Bush needs to thrown from 20,000 feet to Iran. Without a parachute.
TenguPhule
The kicker is that under the Bush doctrine, assassination of leaders of countries funding terrorists is okay.
The wheels of justice grind slow but fine.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
Dugjay, reality’s anti-particle.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
Dugjay, reality’s anti-particle.
TenguPhule
Corrected.
The only safe bet in Iraq is that Bush will back the wrong dog EVERY FUCKING TIME.
John Spragge
Nabal:
Joe’s got it right; a strongly reformist (and pro-Western) reform movement has virtually collapsed since the Iraq invasion, and it takes a die-hard ignorance of the realities of national feeling not to see the connection.
I believe you have a lot of residual good will in Iran. And a whole lot of history strongly suggests that the moment the first Marine recon platoon (officially) crosses the Iranian border, that goodwill will vanish, never (at least in American political time) to return. Iranians have a long history as a people and as an independent nation. They still have bad memories of Alexandros of Macedon, and he conquered them over four hundred years before Christ.
Respect goes both ways. If you want respect for your institutions after eight years of bloody blunders, how about a modicum of respect for a great and ancient civilization? Or if you can’t manage that, at least try some respect for the American soldiers on the line, should the (lame duck) Bush administration actually try another and even more dubious gamble by invading Iran.
b. hussein canuckistani
Hee hee. I like that. “They have activated the Bush Doctrine”, like some inevitable ass-kicking is now moving to destroy them like a city-sized Battlebot and it’s their own damn fault.
I’ve noticed that creationists like to argue with old-timey English that makes then sound biblical, but I hadn’t noticed before that the military-fetishists like to talk in that third-person Kremlin technocrat voice. It’s pretty funny when you start noticing.