Anti-American Shiite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers Saturday to defy government orders to surrender their weapons, as U.S. jets struck Shiite extremists near Basra to bolster a faltering Iraqi offensive against gunmen in the city. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki acknowledged he may have miscalculated by failing to foresee the strong backlash that his offensive, which began Tuesday, provoked in areas of Baghdad and other cities where Shiite militias wield power.
Government television said the round-the-clock curfew imposed two days ago on the capital and due to expire Sunday would be extended indefinitely. Gunfire and explosions were heard late Saturday in Sadr City, the Baghdad stronghold of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. The U.S. Embassy tightened its security measures, ordering all staff to use armored vehicles for all travel in the Green Zone and to sleep in reinforced buildings until further notice after six days of rocket and mortar attacks that left two Americans dead. Despite the mounting crisis, al-Maliki, himself a Shiite, vowed to remain in Basra until government forces wrest control from militias, including the Mahdi Army. He called the fight for control of Basra "a decisive and final battle."
British ground troops, who controlled the city until handing it over to the Iraqis last December, also joined the battle for Basra, firing artillery Saturday for the first time in support of Iraqi forces. Iraqi authorities have given Basra extremists until April 8 to surrender heavy and medium weapons after an initial 72-hour ultimatum to hand them over was widely ignored. But a defiant al-Sadr called on his followers Saturday to ignore the order, saying that his Mahdi Army would turn in its weapons only to a government that can "get the occupier out of Iraq," referring to the Americans…
"…al-Maliki acknowledged he may have miscalculated by failing to foresee the strong backlash that his offensive provoked." There’s a pattern not lost on us. It starts with some bad idea, which is then badly implemented. Next comes the "underestimated the resistance" phase. Last, but not least, comes the "no plan in case things don’t go your way" period [in this case, we haven’t gotten to the last one yet]. One thread that runs throughout is the recurrent underestimation of the force required to achieve any given objective. The Iraq War will long be an example taught in West Point as "what not to do." Neither the American Forces nor al-Malaki’s Iraq Army will ever succeed against the kind of popular support al-Sadr has. The only way to do that would be to follow Saddam Hussein’s barbarism, and neither of these military organizations are up to the task [nor should they be]. It seems like our strategists keep thinking that Civil Order can return to Iraq if we can "win" against the forces that are tearing Iraq to pieces. That comes down to their original [and obviously fallacious] notion of "Regime Change." We destroyed Saddam Hussein, his government [the Baathists], and his Army. Now we have chaos. Someone now thinks we can improve things by destroying Moqtada al-Sadr and his Militia. Sounds like the same thing to me.
But the saddest piece of this fiasco in its present form is that we still seem to be running on the same subterranean motives that sent us there in the first place – oil and maybe American and Israeli safety. I’m sure it isn’t lost on anyone that this current campaign is aimed at control of Basra, the oil gateway in and out of Iraq. It is inconceivable that we were not involved in the planning and implementation of this operation. So it’s about what Cheney calls "vital American interests in the region" [meaning oil]. Were we to stop trying to direct the political process there, the argument is that it would become a "training ground for al Qaeda" or an Islamic Shiite Theocracy like Iran. What we are doing is actually forcing the Iraqis in the direction of one or the other of those possibilities. How can we get anywhere so long as our leaders spout the same hatred as our designated enemies? I doubt that we’ll get anywere so long as we have such an obvious self-serving bias in everything we do there. The Iraqis don’t give a damn about "vital American interests in the region." Frankly, at this point, I’m not convinced that we have any role in determining Iraq’s future…
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