Sadr orders militia to reject PM's call to surrender arms

Sunday 30th March, 07:02 AM JST

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Betzee at 06:16 AM JST - 31st March

[From Yahoo News AP}: The fact that al-Maliki apparently miscalculated the response casts doubt on his judgment and raises serious questions about his commitment to the U.S. goal of national reconciliation.

Despite the Mahdi Army's unsavory image, a number of key U.S. commanders and officials here have long maintained that it is a mistake to demonize the entire Sadrist movement, which enjoys a substantial following among millions of Iraqi Shiites.

It would be a mistake to assume that U.S. goals and al-Maliki's goals are fully aligned, said Middle East expert Jon Alterman.

"Our (the U.S.) preference is for many voices to be reflected in whatever Iraqi government emerges from five years of conflict," Alterman said. But, "al-Maliki is playing a long-term game for all the marbles."...

Power-sharing is a bedrock of democracy. In the absence of that Iraq's future prognosis for peace and stability are dim.
Taka313 at 06:28 AM JST - 31st March

Superlib, Why am I surprised? Like I said, I thought you were smarter than those who think the world is completely black and white.
I noticed that you offered no rebuttal to show me where my comparison was incorrect.

Funny that, huh?

Taka
mareo2 at 06:32 AM JST - 31st March

Sadr have support in Iran, if Iran think that the US is going to take him out of the picture and replace it with Maliki, is not impossible that they send weapons across the border again. Start a fight with millions of Shiites is not very wise move and something that only can benefits Al-Qaida. Is better that the Bush administration get rigth the priorities, the objective is stop violence, not start civil wars.
Sarge at 07:32 AM JST - 31st March

"Sadr is like the Iraqi Rosa Parks, standing up to an oppressive government that he did not vote for"

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
SezWho2 at 10:01 AM JST - 31st March

SuperLib,

You are right that I do not have any problem with the result. The result follows quite naturally from the actions taken. I would as soon fault an apple for falling to the ground.

Loss of life, whether of al-Sadr's maverick militiamen at the hands of US soldiers or whether of US soldiers at the hands of the militiamen, is not the point at issue. The point at issue is whether or not people who consider their government to be unrepresentative and who consider themselves to be patriots should give up their weapons.
DanManjt at 12:14 PM JST - 31st March
Sez Who

al-Sadr is not a patriot in any meaningfull way that Jefferson was a leading patriot. This is so in for two simple reasons:
1. There are few real patriots in Iraq. That's the problem. The whole insurgency in not due to the US being ubnable to contain the forces of nationalism, but rather because the US is unable to contain the centrifugal forces resulting from the failed state we call Iraq. People in Iraq have no meaningfull loyalty to their country, because they do not concieve of themselves primarily as members of nation.
And they certainly do not see their rivals, their enemies, and those of different ethic and/or religious groups as equal members of a polity or civil society (in the technical use of the term.)
1. Even if there were a Iraqi patriotism to which some may have alliegience, it would be at best " patriotism on the Russian plan" as Mark Twain put it. Certianly not Jefferson's patriotism, not the patriotism of Liberal democracy which demands active citicenship, promotes natural rights. And promotes individual conscience.
No, the Russian patriotism demand obediance, servitude and demagogery.

BTW You can simply call me DanMan.
outhousejt at 04:24 PM JST - 31st March

I think Americans are the least qualified people to say who is a patriot and who isnt. US is directly responsible for ruining this country first by a crippling embargo then a bloddy invasion.

The whole insurgery can also been seen as resistance towards foreign occupation. Just as the various resistance resited towards the Nazi occupation.

As long as US is in Iraq there will be no peace.
Betzee at 11:05 PM JST - 31st March

Hi Dan! I wanted to respond to your conception of the role of religion in society (made on an earlier thread). Your ideas seemed more akin to views drawn from the French Enlightenment, e.g., religion is an impediment to modernity and therefore must be kept out of public life. (Exemplified by state-sponsored secularism in Turkey.)

As Americans, by contrast, we view it through the prism of individual rights and most conflicts, including the one at Harvard which you wrote on, involve balancing the rights of believers and non-believers.

The problem with bringing this perspective to Iraq is that there are no non-believers, rather two schools of belief that have difficulty coexisting as equals. We've always viewed the violence as springing from the ancient Sunni-Shia divide and ignored the class aspects of what is going on. Now that we see Shia and Shia violence it may be time to move away from the religion paradigm.
SezWho2 at 12:13 AM JST - 1st April

DanMan,

I think that Jefferson was a patriot after the fact. If Iraq is a failed state, the US was a non-state. However, those people that we now call patriots did not have a common vision of the state they wanted to create.

The rebels of 1776 did manage to create a common vision without civil war--which has not been the case in Iraq. Nevertheless, the presence of restive factions in Iraq does not mean that the individual leaders have no sense of patriotism. It only means that they cannot agree on what being a patriot means.

Al-Sadr has a vision that is different than al-Maliki's and different still than that of many of the Sunnis or Kurds. Asking al-Sadr to have his militiamen surrender their arms at this time makes no sense. And it makes no sense precisely because it is the presence of those weapons which may make it possible for al-Sadr--whether he uses the weapons or not--to achieve his political objectives.
SuperLib at 01:02 PM JST - 1st April

"I noticed that you offered no rebuttal to show me where my comparison was incorrect."

There's incorrect and there's inappropriate. I mean one could argue that Sadr is like Martin Luther King in the way he inspires passion from his followers. And an unwaivering focus on the end goal could be a good way to say that Bush is just like Ghandi. Your "one could argue" and "prove I'm wrong" and "one could say" form of comparison is like putting lipstick on a pig.

But I'm sure having a lot of fun with it. One might say I'm like the Dave Barry of Japan Today. Prove I'm wrong.
Taka313 at 08:41 PM JST - 2nd April

Well this is rich, superlib.

Who was the first person to make the "inappropriate" comparison between al Sadr and Thomas Jefferson.

Well, I'll be darned. it was YOU.

Amazing.

Taka
DanManjt at 02:32 AM JST - 9th April

Hello Betzee.

Sorry for the delay. In response to your post::

I do not view religion as an impediment to modernity. I think Jefferson got it right when he famously wrote on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state

The question is how best to maintain the wall of separation between church and state, to, yes, preserve individual Liberty and a free republic. Robespierre was a monster like Torquemada; Communist tyranny as odious to democratic sentiments as the Inquisition. I believe we Americans have largely found a wholesome and productive balance between the secularism of the state and the religiosity of the society. We have taken religion out of the state, but not gone down the fools road of taking religion out of politics.

All this directly relates to our discussion of Iraq (the matter at hand): the problem is not only when the degree of ethno-religious division threatens the governability of land. Most nations struggle with such diversity. The problem is further compounded by the inability to ameliorate those divisions through power sharing in and through politics ( i.e a representative republic). In a country lacking power sharing institutions, power comes through the barrel of a gun.

And that is why a fellow like Saddam Hussein ran the place. His reign of terror was a natural, organic outgrowth of Iraq.

And Bush him. And put nothing in his place.
DanManjt at 02:33 AM JST - 9th April

woops

And Bush removed him. And put nothing in his place.
DanManjt at 02:46 AM JST - 9th April

SezWho

Many Americans may have been patriots (and traitors in the case of Torries who repatriated to Canada) after the fact. But not men like Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Henry and women like Dolly Madison. They identified the emerging American identity, and, critically, understood the necessity of articulating that identity and the justness of their cause. That is why we have the Declaration, which begins:

when in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

To compare the American revolutionaries with Iraqi power-brokers is misleading to a point beyond meaninglessness.

Its dangerous.

It supposes a commonality between our two nation's which simply does not exist. And this false presumption of the Iraqi yearning to be free in the way that we Americans concieve of freedom has and will only continue to lead to failed policies.

The rankling against a foreign occupier does not make one a patriot. The desire to replace the foreign rule over your brother with your rule does not make you patriot.
DanManjt at 02:51 AM JST - 9th April

woops

The desire to replace the foreign rule over your brother with your rule over your brother does not make you patriot.

It makes you a tyrant.