George W. Bush made Moqtada al-Sadr
By mw | Related entries in Bad Decisions, Bush, Iraq
Among the unplanned and unintended consequences of the incompetent prosecution of the war in Iraq by this administration – and they are legion – is the elevation of Moqtada al-Sadr from a low-level Baghdad cleric and neighborhood thug, to a major player in Iraqi politics, an actor on the world stage, and potential future leader of Iraq. Bush may not like al-Sadr, but no one has had more to do with the meteoric rise in popularity and power of Moqtada al-Sadr than George W. Bush and his administration.
As this post is being written, we are escalating our military intervention in an internal Iraqi political struggle between Maliki and al-Sadr. Moreover, we chose to intervene on the side of the unpopular Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki against the very popular Shiite Moqtada al-Sadr, who helped put Maliki in power. And Maliki is failing.
When all is said and done, Nouri Maliki can only remain Prime Minister and stay in power with the political support of Moqtada al-Sadr -or- by using active US military support to quash and intimidate al-Sadr’s political base. 
By attacking al-Sadr, Maliki has abandoned the political path, and is attempting to preempt an unfavorable electoral result with military force. He made this decision immediately after a visit by Dick Cheney where he was presumably given the green light and the assurance that we will back him in this effort. So now the Bush administration has the United States taking sides in a internal Iraq political struggle, and putting us on the side of an unpopular leader attempting to subvert the popular will with military force.
Americans in general and the Bush administration specifically continue to underestimate Moqtada al-Sadr and the depth of his popular support in Iraq. No one should be surprised that Maliki (who did not even live in Iraq for 23 years before the fall of Saddam), has far less popular support than a nationalist Shiiite majority firebrand who both fought Hussein and now rails against the “foreign occupiers” of his country (that would be us). No one should be surprised that Maliki’s Iraq Army forces will switch sides when ordered to confront the Mahdi Army. We learned from Michael Totten last August that the Mahdi Army had infiltrated the Iraqi Army.
While we watch this disaster unfold, it is worth looking back at how the Bush administration helped provide al-Sadr with such an extraordinary career advancement opportunity. Let us count the ways:
1) Bush administration frees Moqtada al-Sadr from the oppression of Saddam Hussein.
Let us be clear. We in the US don’t like the Mahdi Army, we don’t like what they stand for, we don’t like their extreme beliefs, and we particularly don’t like their thuggish leader Moqtada Al-Sadr. However, it is important to keep these facts in mind: They are not Al Queda and they are not Baathists and they are not Sadaamites. They are not the people we went into Iraq to fight. In fact, they are the very Iraqi’s, the exact oppressed religious sect that we went into Iraq to offer the gift of democracy at the point of a gun. After we did not find WMD’s, imposing a democracy inspiring “regime change” became the rationale for the Iraq misadventure. So we succeeded. When the statue of Saddam Hussein was torn down in 2003, it was in the in the middle of what is now known as “Sadr City.” It was the supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr that we cheered dragging Hussein’s head through the streets. When Saddam’s portraits and statuary were ripped down during the fall of Baghdad, it was posters of al-Sadr that immediately went up in their place.
This post continued at Divided We Stand United We Fall
- A preview of additional headings and links on how Bush “made” al-Sadr – amplified at the the full post:
2) Bush administration indecision prevented al-Sadr’s arrest and capture in 2003
4) Bush Administration mandates Iraqi elections thereby providing Moqtada al-Sadr political legitimacy.
The reason why this war never ends, is that the Bush/Cheney administration specifically and the American people generally do not want to admit that the face of “majority rule”, and “regime change” and “victory” in Iraq is the face of Moqtada al-Sadr.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 and is filed under Bad Decisions, Bush, Iraq. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 30th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Who’s the jew that writes this stuff? Saddamite? Do tell, why did we go into Iraq? Bush, Cheney and the cabal that surrounds them should be hung for war crimes. God bless men who hold “extremist” views and recognize jewish democracy for what it really is.
March 30th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Oscar
MW Nice post. Oscar are you calling MW a Jew for writing this……as if that’s derogatory or something or did I mis-read that? Please don’t confuse Judaism with Israel – they are very different. Judaism doesn’t deserve your derision – Israel may, but I am in no position to tell you what to think about Israel – I have my own views there.
We are in the middle of a civil war and have been since the day Saddam’s statue was pulled down. All the facts indicate that this war of choice was engineered for no other reason than material and financial gain. The military is broken, our nation currently sits on debt in excess of 9 $Trilion. The victims are many…the Iraqi people, the American people, the US Army and Marine Corps, so many others. The only people to have been charged and convicted of crimes (and there are many) are a couple of low level grunts. We have a Federal election coming up and 2 of 3 leaders actually agreed with the execution of this crime. And the last thing anyone in power wants is for the nation to stay with this story, keep asking questions, and keep hammering.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Just for clarification on “Oscar”. Oscar Yeager is the name of a fictional character in a novel by the same white supremacist who wrote “The Turner Diaries’ – the book that served as inspiration to Timthy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing. In the book Oscar Yeagar embarks on a “heroic” assassination campaign against interracial couples, specifically to stir up a race war, which is a goal of white supremacists.
The link on his name is to the Institute of Historical Review run by Mark Weber, a group that promotes Holocaust denial literature and authors. I’d encourage you not to click on that link, as that is part of the purpose of his comment. If you would like to read more about IHR or Weber, I’d suggest links here or here
Oscar’s comment has nothing to do with my post, but is a first volley in a conventional trolling effort by an anonymous anti-semitic racist. If there is any rational intent behind the comment, it is probably an attempt to stimulate a debate about the “Jews controlling America.” Well we are not going to do that in this thread. I considered (for the first time in my experience at Donklephant) just deleting that comment, which I have authority do for comments in threads to my posts, but decided to leave it there, in order to explain what Oscar is all about. But the attempted threadjack ends here, I’ll delete without comment anything else along these lines.
Buh-bye Oscar. Take it elsewhere.
March 30th, 2008 at 11:33 am
al-Sadr made his point – nothing will happen from Baghdad and south without his personal approval. The tribe always wins in middle-eastern politics……..even when it looks like they didn’t.
March 30th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Terence,
I agree with your comment, but would put it a little differently. Not that al-Sadr made his point, but al-Maliki failed to make his. This was an attempt by Maliki to crush his primary political opposition militarily. He failed. In this particular game of political chess, al-Sadr is making all the smart moves, while Maliki and the Bush administration apparently think they are playing checkers. al-Sadr has much greater ambition that controlling what happens in the South. He publicly opposed partition, wants a single strong Iraq, and intends to lead it. If he is not killed, he eventually will. He is ambitious and smart and ruthless and popular and he’ll get there by means of the Democratic processes we mandated for Iraq.
All Bush can hope for now, is for it not to happen on his watch, so the Democrats can be blamed.
March 30th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Back in the day, I had hoped we’d move to squash al-sadr before his influence got too strong. But even so, I am compelled to wonder whether, if al-sadr had been nipped in the bud, someone else would have bloomed.
March 30th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Kritter,
Agree. On both counts.
March 30th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
This is a tough guy to understand actually. He was a low level cleric with out the decades of religious study normally associated with someone at his level – so he needs help to make the “proper” interpretations and understandings of the Koran – but most if not all his teachers in Iraq are either dead or they have left. Iran is the only other country with Moslem clerics at the level of study and understanding al-Sadr requires to progress in his understanding. So I believe al Sadr is close to Iran for religious reasons much more than political – although I see the government of Iran not above using he and his followers if possible. I have read in several periodicals that al-Sadr is a very serious religious student and only interprets the politics as much as the Koran (his understanding) allow………….he’s not a zealot, a jihadist, or even a trouble maker – but he’ll “throw-down” if his “flock” is threatened because the Koran tells him to. The Koran also tells him to make peace when his enemies ask for peace………I wonder what happened in Basra yesterday?
It would appear at face value that he is a guy who had responsibility thrust upon him when his Dad and 2 brothers were murdered in 1999 and is trying to do the best he can without helping to “blow up” the region from Baghdad to Tehran. The USA may not like this guy, what he stands for, or how he runs his mosque…….but he’s the power like it or not and we can either deal with him, martyr him, or deal with Iran when this thing falls apart completely. So if history always repeats itself where have I seen this before?
March 31st, 2008 at 1:16 am
Terence,
Plausible. You, like me, are speculating about al-Sadr’s motivations. Something that, in truth, neither of us can know. But what the hell – we are blogging here. If we were not leaping to a strongly held conclusion based on little or no facts, they would drum us out of the union.
My view – Moqtada al-Sadr is a garden variety, very ambitious, power hungry politician. Perhaps smarter and craftier than most. He wears a religious fundamentalist cloak to secure the support of his political base, not unlike Republican Presidential candidates will deny evolution to secure the support of religious fundamentalist constituency. Or like Democrats will kow-tow to Unions and pro-life groups to secure the support of their constituencies. I actually consider this a hopeful characteristic. You can’t negotiate with a religious fanatic. A power hungry pol will deal with anyone to meet their political aims. If al-Sadr thinks that working with the Iranians or working with the US will get him what he wants, he’ll deal. Quoting from the full post: