Basra

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Bruxley

New member
The fighting has stopped but the result seems to be a stalemate. The quick claims from the left that 'the surge has failed' and 'Iraq is chaos again' were premature (and distubingly gleeful). The fighting wasn't Sunni v. Shiite or AlQ v. Sunni/Shiite/US or insurgencey v. US. It was the Iraqi military v. an Iraqi militia, both Shiite (if you consider the Iraqi Army Shiite because of the majority Shiite Iraqi government). The US/British involvement was over stated.

What seems to have happened is that Iraqi President Maliki decided to make a move on the still standing militia headed by Sadr in their stonghold of Basra. Maliki's motivation seems to have been either to appear strong in the wake of the recent visit to Iraq of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, get control of the oil flow as Basra is the point of sale for Iraqi oil, or to effect upcoming Provential elections. Maybe all of the above. At any rate is was a bad move by Maliki. He likley did more to help Sadr's standing than he did to diminish it.

This looks like Iraq's President skowing some bad judgement and proves Iraq's young Army still needs some chest hair.

This article is good as it is journalistic vs. editorial.
The Battle of Basra
Lessons from this six-day conflict may decide if Iraq is to have a strong government.

Gen. David Petraeus needs to be blunt in his coming report on Iraq and say whether last week's battle for Basra has made it easier for the US to start pulling out. The six-day conflict in Iraq's second largest city could be a turning point leading to a stronger central government. If not, the US has difficult choices ahead.

The intense combat left hundreds dead. But it also was not the usual warfare between Iraq's rival Islamic camps of Sunni and Shiite. It was launched by a Shiite-dominated government out to break the local control of militias led by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

And it was a test for both the strength of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the cohesiveness and ability of the young Iraqi military, which fought with little US support.

The fact that Shiite-run Iran had to mediate a halt to hostilities shows how critical this inter-Shiite battle is. If Iraq's own majority Shiites and their various religious parties cannot hold things together in peace, Iraq surely won't be able to. But national unity is what is desired by most Iraqis – and by both Iran and the US.

The battle of Basra, and its spillover into Baghdad fighting, could end up having a similar effect on Iraq as Shay's Rebellion did on early America in its postindependence, preconstitutional years. It can serve as a wake-up call for strong government and an end to militias capable of insurrection. In 1786, an antitax revolt of Massachusetts farmers and tradesmen led to attacks on federal arsenals and showed the weakness of the national government under the Articles of Confederation. "We are fast verging toward anarchy and confusion," wrote an alarmed George Washington, who came out of retirement to help create the Constitution and become president.

Just why the Basra battle began and how it ended should contain lessons for Iraq. Tellingly, it started six months after most British forces gave up control of the port city and a few weeks after a historic visit to Iraq by Iran's president. That trip by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signaled Iran's interest in a stable, united Iraq – with some influence over its former enemy. And it may have emboldened Prime Minister Maliki to order the attack on Mr. Sadr's forces, many of whom had resorted to banditry and smuggling.

But also, with provincial elections tentatively scheduled for October, the battle may reflect a contest among Iraq's Shiite parties. If so, Iraq is still in that democratic half-way house where bullets are used to influence ballots.

The prime minister and Iraqi Army failed in their goal to force Sadr's militias to surrender. But under the new cease-fire, Sadr told his forces "to cooperate with the government to achieve security." This muddled end, and especially the failure of Iraq's military, does not bode well for the long-term struggle for Iraqi nationalism against Shiite sectarianism. At best, the battle was a stalemate, but one that should also force Iran, the US, and Iraq's political parties to seek the necessary compromises that can better unify Iraqis.

President Bush said last week that the battle was a "defining moment in the history of a free Iraq." It probably was. Now he and others must define the future for a less-than-free Iraq, and how much longer US forces must stay.
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Summary

Yes Baxley I'd have to agree with your overall commentary. The Iraqi army is not ready to do near what they are suppose to do in their country. The first day 40 (a small number) of the Iraqi army deserted to join the opposition. The lesson to be learned is not the number of deserters but the mind set that caused them to desert.


As for this being a defining moment. That phrase has been used more often in the last five years by Bush than almost any other. Every time the defining moment phrase is used it seems to lead to yet another defining moment.
 
Funny how when Al Sadr calls a unilateral truce, everyone thinks he won :)

How about he was getting his ass kicked and cut his losses...

WildniceanalysishuhAlaska ™
 
This just shows what would happen to the entire country if we pull out too early, it's still a possibility that it will happen no matter when we pull out.

unfortunately George Herbert Walker Bush didn't pull out early:D
 
more like it shows why we don't belong there

"This just shows what would happen to the entire country if we pull out too early, it's still a possibility that it will happen no matter when we pull out. " Caeser23


Why should the US become responsible to establish a government for a people who at every turn show they don't want it. Take a few billion dollars off the table to some of the Iraq leaders and see how long they are willing to support freedom and democracy. Trying to transform Iraq into an US territory with US rules and US plans is empire building.

When the only option is to remain in Iraq for some unknown time to keep our status quo its an indication that Iraq does not want our democracy. Let Iraq pay the 140,000 contractors being paid for by the US. It is thier country until its time to pay the bills. Then its our problem. One of the richest oil countries in the world is being managed by US tax dollars. Meanwhile the Iraq government gets a free security force and the oil revenues. Seems like a one sided deal to me.
 
WHodathunkit?

Powerful politicians with an army at their backs contending for control of a country with a power vacuum and trillions of dollars worth of natural resources at stake??

Nope, we've never seen that before.

The United States has one, and only one, national interest in the Middle East. Anything that furthers that interest should be pursued. Anything that does not should go over the side.

Tell me again why I should care who rules Iraq, assuming that we can do business with them after they win?

It's long past time to shift our relationships with that hellhole to a cash-and-carry basis. You've got oil? Fine... we'll buy it, while we work on developing technologies that don't require it. At which point, you become Madagascar... but without the tourist appeal. You don't have oil? Sorry. under the bus you go.

Cold-hearted? Yep. Naked self-interest can be that way.

--Shannon
 
Here is a pretty reasoned analysis, free of agenda driven netnoise:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/whittling_away_at_sadr.html

Whittling Away at Sadr
By Austin Bay

After his outlaw militiamen raised white flags and skedaddled from their latest round of combat with the Iraqi Army, radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared victory.

He always does. He understands media bravado. He wagers that survival bandaged by bombast and swathed in sensational headlines is a short-term triumph. Survive long enough, and Sadr bets he will prevail.

This time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a contrarian press release, however, calling the Iraqi Army's anti-militia operations in southern Iraq a "success."

A dispute over casualties in the firefights has ensued, as it always does. An Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman alleged that Sadr's militia had been hit hard in six days of fighting, suffering 215 dead, 155 arrested and approximately 600 wounded. The government spokesman gave no casualty figures for Iraqi security forces.

No one, of course, could offer an independent confirmation, but if the numbers are accurate they provide an indirect confirmation of reports that Sadr's Mahdi Militia (Jaish al-Mahdi, hence the acronym JAM) had at least a couple thousand fighters scattered throughout southern Iraq. This is not shocking news, but a reason to launch a limited offensive when opportunity appeared.

Numbers, however, are a very limited gauge. The firefights, white flags, media debate and, for that matter, the Iraqi-led anti-militia offensive itself are the visible manifestations of a slow, opaque and occasionally violent political and psychological struggle that in the long term is likely democratic Iraq's most decisive: the control, reduction and eventual elimination of Shia gangs and terrorists strongly influenced if not directly supported by Iran.

Other Shia militia and gangs confront Iraq, but Sadr is the most vexing case. His father, a leading Shia cleric, was murdered -- many Iraqis believe at the order of Saddam Hussein. That makes his father a political and religious symbol.

And Sadr knows it. So do his financiers.

For four years, the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi government have intermittently sparred with Sadr, sometimes in parliament, sometimes in the streets.

The Iraqi government's strategy has been to bring former insurgents into the political process. Since interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi articulated that goal in mid-2004, the central government's complex array of enemies has sought to thwart that program.

Saddam's old cohorts managed to convince themselves that if they spread enough money around, killed enough people and hammered the U.S. electorate with bloody headlines the United States would leave and the Iraqi government would eventually collapse -- and they would return to power. Saddam's capture, trial and execution has all but snuffed out the old-line Baathists. Recall Maliki stoutly defended his decision to carry out the court's sentence of capital punishment. He bet with Saddam dead the tyrant's cult of personality would wither. It has.

Al-Qaida pursued the same strategy of blood for headlines. Al-Qaida in Iraq tried to ignite a sectarian war -- its now-dead emir, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, made that goal explicit in February 2004. Al-Qaida massacred en masse, to the point that U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D for Defeatist) declared the war in Iraq lost. Then, the Sunni tribes in Anbar turned on al-Qaida. Sunni political integration is by no means complete, but al-Qaida has failed.

Now the Shia-led Iraqi government focuses on its chief Shia nemesis. How the Iraqi government handles Sadr matters. In August 2004, Sadr's thugs grabbed the Grand Mosque in Najaf. Sadr was counting on Americans to bomb the mosque. The United States opted to follow the political lead of Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Sistani's aides told coalition officers: "Let us deal with Sadr. We know how to handle him and will do so. However, the coalition must not make him a martyr."

The Iraqi way often appears to be indecisive, until you learn to look at its counter-insurgency methods in the frame of achieving political success, instead of the frame of American presidential elections.

In southern Iraq and east Baghdad, Sadr once again lost street face. Despite the predictable media umbrage, this translates into political deterioration.

Think of the Iraqi anti-Sadr method as a form of suffocation, a political war waged with the blessing of Ayatollah Sistani that requires daily economic and political action, persistent police efforts and occasional military thrusts.

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.


WildosorrybushliedpeoplediedAlaska ™
 
Unregistered said:
We're responsible for Saddam not following the UN cease fire agreement from Gulf War I?
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Of course not, and I'm glad to see you recognize why Iraq, and not the other State Sponsors of terrorism, became involved in the War on Terrorism Unregistered. Iraq had unfinished business with the US in the form of that cease fire agreement.

That Iraq's military is not yet ready is borne out in the Battle of Basra. That has been repeatedly told to us as the reason to remain. That Iraq is not yet stable and secure and able to defend it's self.

Sadr called for the ceasefire as soon as he realized he was in trouble. But remember, in their minds victory isn't only defined by defeating the enemy, it is also to resist and more formidable enemy and still be present. His standing up the the Iraqi Army and still being alive is all he needed to accomplish. It was icing on the cake that he got to point to American force also.

It will be difficult for the left to spin this into a 'see we told ya' thing given that it reinforces that we still need to be there. Iran's being complicit is also something that the left will want out of the discussion.

I haven't yet heard any comment about the further parallels in our own nations beginnings. In this event Shay's Rebellion was referenced.
The battle of Basra, and its spillover into Baghdad fighting, could end up having a similar effect on Iraq as Shay's Rebellion did on early America in its post independence, preconstitutional years. It can serve as a wake-up call for strong government and an end to militias capable of insurrection. In 1786, an antitax revolt of Massachusetts farmers and tradesmen led to attacks on federal arsenals and showed the weakness of the national government under the Articles of Confederation. "We are fast verging toward anarchy and confusion," wrote an alarmed George Washington, who came out of retirement to help create the Constitution and become president.
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The developing Iraqi government has seen alot of parallels to our own beginnings.
 
Funny, our bunch of homogoneous white guys steeped in Western Traditions of the Enlightenment took almost 200 years to get a truly just and free society, while we expect a non homogoneous bunch of social primitives with nothing but despotism and fanatacism in their past to get it right in less than 10 :)

WildunrealexpectationsAlaska ™
 
Of course not, and I'm glad to see you recognize why Iraq, and not the other State Sponsors of terrorism, became involved in the War on Terrorism Unregistered. Iraq had unfinished business with the US in the form of that cease fire agreement.
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I think the violation of the cease fire agreement though has been very underplayed by the Bush Administration. He mentioned it, but did not make that the primary reason for the war. Rather he spinned yarns of weapons of mass destruction and spreading democracy in the mid east.

WildAlaska makes a good point. The Iraqis have had little time to develop a free society. But the take home message from that should be that liberty is something that has to be earned, and cannot be given.
 
WMDs/ceasefire violations/UN resolutions were part and parcel of the same discussion. That they were also State sponsors of Terrorism, that Saddam was a continued threat to his neighbors and his own people and therefore needed to be overthrown and Iraq given back to the people of Iraq were the rest of our reasons for the invasion.

As for liberty, I would disagree with the earned not given. I believe that liberty is a human desire and yes, a right. To own one's OWN life isn't something to be withheld until earned. I suspect you may have meant something like it has to be fought for as it will not be given, but I could be wrong.

I would really like to hear from someone knowledgable about Shay's Rebellion. Does the analogy made in the article pan out?
 
I'll take a stab at "earned, not given"...

To me, it's this:

If Saddam was a brutal, oppressive autocrat (and he was), and if the citizens of the country he ruled wanted to get rid of him (some did, some didn't... depends on where they sat on the pyramid), then it was their obligation to do so.

They didn't.

The fact that the odds were overwhelmingly against them didn't seem to stop the Indians, or the Afgans, or any number of vastly overmatched guerilla movements in the last, oh, ten thousand years or so. Or US, for that matter.

A large majority held under the boot of a small minority is a fairly common scenario, but it's pretty unstable. Eventually, the majority becomes willing to die in sufficient numbers to overthrow that majority. Once that happens, they almost always win.

That's what I think was meant by "earned." Paid for, in blood, by those who benefit. The record of "given" is much less rosy. Compare the current state of former British colonies who were "given" their independence from the Crown, versus those who took it, by act of force, or by being willing to be the recipients of force while not submitting.

As to what's happening now in Iraq, I'm of the opinion that a nasty, multi-directional civil war would have followed Saddam's fall from power, however it happened. If he'd dropped dead of a heart attack, Iraq would be where it is now... with multiple armed factions contending for power, and none willing to quit until they win or die.

This is always what happens in countries ruled by the iron fist, whenever that fist looses it's grip. The usual outcome is that it's replaced by a different hand in the same gauntlet. The exceptions are few. We're one of them. Most of the time, you get Zimbabwe, not Japan.

To my mind, the central error of the academic neocons, (Perle, Wolfowitz, et al,) was in thinking that "it'll be different this time." It almost never is. History repeats itself because history is made by people... and Homo Sapiens hasn't changed much.

Somebody's gonna win in Iraq. I think it's unlikely to be Maliki. The Sunnis are out... there's not enough of 'em, and they have limited resources. The Kurds are already independent in all but name, and I expect that to change... Turkey notwithstanding. That leaves the divided Shi'ite majority to fight for control of the rest of the spoils. Me, I think Al Sadr's gonna win that fight in the end.

But I don't really care either way. And unless we make a full commitment to the losing side, (something we've done in the past, and it's always bitten us on the behind), I don't see how that decision affects the national interest of the United States... which is all I care about.

--Shannon
 
Couple things.........

The Iraqis have stood up to Saddam in the past, their entire villages were killed by poison gas.

The citizens of Iraq are the main combatants that chased out AlQ. The US military aided of course but look inti the role of the citizen groups in Iraq. You may realize how much they really are putting it out there.

The 'civil war' was one being instigated by AlQ. Bombing religious sites to provoke each side then selling the story that the US was going to make them live like Americans or leave and whoever got power has going to make them live like them. This has ceased. We don't see anything even near the sectarian violence or the AlQ presence. Why? Petraeus worked to assure them that they could live as they wanted as long as others they let others live who THEY wanted. Liberty didn't have to mean western religion/culture. if they wanted to be Muslim then fine. Just can't kill your neighbor for not being Muslim or Shiite or Sunni or Kurdish. Iraqis saw Petraeus KEEP THAT PROMISE took their own communities back from AlQ. Citizens did that. Iraqis did that. They did that with the knowledge that if it got bad for them the US military would come to fight WITH them for their communities. There are not "multiple armed factions contending for power, and none willing to quit until they win or die." today in Iraq. The Battle of Basra wasn't Shiite v. Kurd/Sunni/etc. or any inter 'faction' violence contending for power. It was the Iraqi military attempting to disarm a militia group.

Iraqis don't lack humanity. They want liberty the same as anyone. But How they use the ownership of their lives still has to be within the law.

As for the majority taking their liberty from a powerful tyranny, I don't know of any that did it without outside help from an already powerful ally, including us. This notion that a grass roots band of patriots has risen up on their own and taken the reigns of government from their oppressors without the aid of an outside ally being the only true 'earned' liberty isn't at all the norm.

Much Iraqi blood has been spilled to gain their liberty. Before and during Operation Iraqi Freedom. They now have the ally and stabilizer we had in France to get a foothold. The goal is to have the desire for liberty become the demand for liberty spread through the Middle East from the example of it being possible in Iraq like the demand for liberty spread through the western world from the example of America.

I'm still wondering about the Shay's Rebellion analogy. Does it pan out?
 
Or US, for that matter.
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Without the French (god I hate admitting that), and the total incompetence of the British Army our "revolution" would have fizzled like a gas shell in a Kurdish village.

It takes more than guts and a desire for freedom on the part of the populace to beat a dictator who has part of the populace on his side. Old Uncle Adolf and Iosef Vissarionvich are prime examples of that....

Wildimboredsoimpositngtillihit10KAlaska TM
 
Well, Adolph

was taken down by outside forces, true.

The Bolsheviks kicked Czarine butt without much active outside help (yes, I know that the Germans sent Lenin back to Russia, and gave him some money), but the outcome was pretty much "meet the new bass, same as the old boss"... which is how it usually goes.

But, and I keep coming back to this...

The Iraqis will decide, between and amongst themselves, what kind of government they will have, and within which borders it will hold sway. I really don't see how we can really control that outcome, nor do I see that our interests are changed either way.

And I, personally, simply do not care.

I just don't see anything coming out of this whole process that makes it worth the blood or dollars, for us. The whole "a democratic Iraq will flow out waves of liberty through the middle east" idea was, and is, a pipe dream, smoked up by a bunch of tenured academics, who committed the cardinal error of social "scientists" everywhere: If you wish hard enough, it'll come true.

Looked at from a coldly US-only cost/benefit perspective, weighted to the likelihood of all possible outcomes, when this is all over, will it have been worth it?

I just don't see it.

--Shannon
 
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