Anna Missed

seems an unlikely name, but what else could it be, even though she (?) posts to Mr. Badger's peanut gallery as "anonymous"? (The Bani Google might consider numbering the anonymice in any one sequence so you know that item eleven indeed came from the same undisclosed location as item three.)

I'm pretty sure theres not a lot of daylight between views here. I only jumped in because the two issues tend to drive me crazy: a) the tendency of the MSM to propagandise prefixed names and or notions, to foreign leaders or events -- that evolve into common assumptions and beliefs that are then exploited to serve U.S. "interests" abroad. It's regularly reported, and largely assumed that it was al-Qaeda in Iraq who bombed the mosque in Samarra, even though I've never seen any evidence reported it was so, Rather like the similar Saddam "kicked the inspectors out" legend these things weasel their way into even critical discourse. So exactly what did Muqtada al-Sadr do to have inspired such demonization? After all he's a nationalist, supports democracy, is a sworn enemy of al-Qaeda, is anti-partition, is less in Iran's pocket than the other Shiite trends, and no doubt to the total chagrin of occupation authorities, can call out up to 1/2 million flag waving Iraqis into the streets in a show of unity and peaceful resistance. You would think he'd be a dream come true for the Bush administration, seeing how he represents all of the above also happen to be in concert with them in what they say they want for Iraq. And in addition, Sadr is also against everything the administration says its against (but, surely is for), like enduring bases, partition, oil resources, etc. -- except for that one thing; that he is also anti-occupation. That he will never serve American interests in Iraq. So, in spite of all that, he's relegated as a "firebrand, radical, thug", and as Time would say "the most dangerous man in Iraq".

Where is "renegade cleric," my own favorite Homeric epithet for the Reverend Señorito al-Sadr? There's also "anti-American cleric," which nicely insinuates that Uncle Sam and GOP invasionism are more or less one and the same. Who knows, if the cowpokers had quit while they were ahead after deposing the Ba‘th, the lad might even rather like the holy Heimatland!

Frankly, I'm just sick of the hypocrisy and the transparent duplicity of just assuming the negative simply because those in the media say its so, especially when it happens also to be in their self interest to say its so. And while I may be overstating the point, or assuming too much, It just bugs me to see otherwise clear thinking to assume this trash-baggage stereotyping in their analysis, and inadvertently carrying water for the administration. And b), which is the that this entire notion that Iraq is/was to be a template for democratization of the Middle East has in fact been branded as a liberal enterprise. There is, preceding the above pattern of assumptions, the following assumption, that the ME can or should be given or want the gift of democracy as we know it -- imposed upon them. This being, albeit a perfect propaganda/justification tool for internal America, fails massively as a means to inspire interest in the program because of a fundamental cultural disconnect. Which has been generated historically in the west from the enlightenment on, with its emphasis on the individual at the expense of the collective -- seeing that how it is, that historically, the ME is the precise opposite, being essentially collectivist oriented societies -- where the clergy functions as the arbitrators/lawyers of the word and flows outward simultaniously on all cultural levels (politics included). To assume that these peoples would throw off their entire cultural milieu in favor of an occupier's (and a bad one at that) values is the unfortunate product of the present dilemma forged as it were, by liberal enlightenment [having been] rejected. And become a fool's errand. anna missed / 9:09 PM [11 April 2007]

The last paragraph gets a bit metaphysical or hazy, at least for me, but I believe we are meant to understand that "liberal" is a bad thing, as viewed from somewhere out towards the left edge of the world.

Still, AM is right about the basic facts, no matter what superstructure is subsequently erected on them. Sadr III certainly gets demonized a lot in the invasion-language press, and he does hold more or less the political positions attributed to him. The only nit I'd pick is about "anti-partition," which should be qualified a little, perhaps. There can be no question of admitting the legitimacy of any partition imposed by the militant Republicans, but that is a second-order point in the Sadrist system as I understand it, an obvious deduction from the primary premise that nothing whatsoevr done under an alien occupation can ever be more than provisional and temporary. When Iraq becomes a country once again, perhaps even partition may be considered by those who are alone entitled to consider the question, but meanwhile it would be outrageous if the Crawfordites were to make sure that there will be two or three statelets instead of one Iraq. Of course the invders intend nothing of the sort, but since Sadr's position begins by assuming the intolerable illegitimacy of precisely themselves, it seems reasonable enough that they do not applaud his ad hoc schizophobia.

The superstructural part, the explanation of why M. Sadr gets demonized, begins with "the hypocrisy and the transparent duplicity of just assuming the negative simply because those in the media say it is so, especially when it happens also to be in their self-interest to say it is so." This, too, sounds rather far off to starboard to me, but it is not quite as clear as I'd like. What is this self-interest, exactly? Are they afraid the Republican Party extremists will shut them down if they are too kind to the Sadriyya? Or that hooligans from Rio Limbaugh will come smash their windows or boycott their corporations? These dangers seem remote. If we really want to dodge all hypocrisy, shouldn't we state frankly that the "MSM" demonize Muqtadá and his merry men because they expect that is what will please their customers and sell more newspapers and lure more advertisers?

I don't propose to excuse them because they are only trying to please their own market niche. That might do for the journals and broadcasting of the rightist gutter, America's Moonpaper and the like, but I assume we speak of the sort of intellectually respectable "MSM" that professes, on the masthead of the whole armada's flagship, to furnish "all the news that's fit to print." Folks with lofty pretensions like that ought to know better and do better, no doubt about it.

But, although they should, do they in fact know better? AM makes it sound as if they know the real Sadr as well as she does, and then deliberately draw one of Mr. Badger's cartoons about him rather than sharing their own less exciting knowledge with us. I should guess that they do not actually have the knowledge themselves, which implies that they are less corrupt or hypicocritical than she makes them out, but at the same time more incompetent. The level of reporting from neo-Iraq in the Big Three -- the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post -- is abyssmal. Since I do not watch television, I am only speculating to say that they are probably even more so, but I think it's a pretty good bet. The Green Zone hotel-lobby journalists are at the mercy of the Proconsular Palace's civilian Republicans, and Five- O'Clock-Follies uniformed people, and such neo-Iraqi subjects as can address them in English, or maybe French, and are willing to do so. The Sadrists are not willing, so the lounge lizards know about them only by rumor. It is probably not an accident that the one interview by M. Sadr given to a European journalist went to La Repubblica of Rome and not to what we should consider a truly mainstream medium. After four years of lawless occupation, it would not be surprising if merely hearing anybody talk in the aggression-tainted tongue of Blair and Bush dangerously raises a Sadrist's blood pressure.

It is easy to see why the politicians and clergymen of the Sadr tendency disdain to bombard American journalists with their own tendentious accounts of the GOP occupation, as if they were M. Sálih al-Mutlaq or Dr. Ahmad Chelebi. And of course they do not have any powerful foreign friends to do it for them, no equivalent of the massed phalanx of the Sunnintern or all the international fans of "secularism." Even if they were on better terms with Iran than they seem to be, English-language propaganda for their cause emanating from Tehran or Qom would be worse than useless.

Hence the Wongs and Burnses and Taverneses and Rubins never hear the Mahdí Army side of the story even at New Baghdad itself except from sources that are at best neutral and more likely hostile. It might not make a great deal of difference if they did, to be sure, but if the rebuttals were readily available, I daresay that mechanical even-handedness of our MSM would require that a certain amount of it was adjudged fit to print. The customers might not like it much, actually, but I think the aspiration for intellectual respectability would come in at least slightly ahead of crude economic self-interest. As things stand, however, it is the path of least resistance to let M. Sadr and his juvenile delinquents be remembered by customers of the MSM almost exclusively because they formerly had the impudence to shoot at the alien invaders and occupiers of their country.

The (moderately) famous quotation

"If I were a Mexican, I would tell you, 'Have you not room in your own country to bury your dead men? If you come into mine, we will greet you with bloody hands, and welcome you to hospitable graves!'"

shows that persuading Yankees to see things from a more or less Sadrist point of view is not absolutely impossible, but it is certainly not easy. I believe Mark Twain was just as fierce against GOP invasionism in the Phillipines, but that is pretty well the whole repertory, as far as I know. Even if the Sadriyya were as helpful as possible and geniuses at propaganda to boot, neither of which even begins to be the case, getting an impartial hearing for their cause would be a hard uphill struggle. For that matter, Mr. Corwin of Ohio was not altogether impartial, for if the "slaveocracy" had not wanted to aggress against Mexico, his sympathy with the victims of invasionism would probably not have been so cordial.

The core of the problem is, unfortunately, us, and not our media. The thought that we are so badly in the wrong that lesser breeds without become justified in resorting to physical violence is so uncongenial as to be almost literally unthinkable. And the proper name of the problem is not "hypocrisy" or "transparent duplicity" or "self-interest," but more like "narcissism" or "self-esteem." If we are to think as well of ourselves and our Uncle Sam as we find comfy, Muqtadá al-Sadr has to be demonized. This necessity has very little to do with who the man is and what he stands for, the tale is really all about us. If he did not start by believing that we are shameless monsters of injustice for a long list of other reasons, he might complain about our bad attitude towards himself. As things are, he has no standing to file such a complaint, and those of us who consider that it is bad policy and bad morality to go about grabbing control of other people's countries would be wiser not to drag him in when we make our case. Invasionism would, after all, still be wrong even if nobody resisted it.


Meanwhile, there is the immediate stimulus that brought forth Anna Missed's remarks, and it goes like this:

Sounds like we could be headed back to a re-run of 2004, when Sistani was in the hospital, the Mahdi Army was in full revolt, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq appeared close to tearing apart. If these rumors are true, anyway. Especially if Sistani makes the big exit, that may be all the cue al-Sadr's crew -- and their Shiite rivals in SCIRI -- need to make a would-be preemptive move to fill the resulting power vacuum. (...) I remarked below that populist thug/cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's "rally in Najaf [today] is a raised middle finger to the Shiite religious hierarchy led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, which has often sought to tamp down Sadr's rising influence." I wonder how the learned and spiritually revered Sistani broke the news to al-Khoei -- the son of Sistani's mentor and predecessor as capo di tutti capi leading Grand Ayatollah -- that he should give up on pursuing his brother's murderers for the sake of family Shiite unity. (...) When Mookie -- or whoever is calling the shots in his name -- was more secure in his control, he was comfortable telling his followers to lie low in the first days of the escalated U.S. profile in Baghdad. A less stable and unified movement may be even more dangerous, as some faction may see a higher level of violence and chaos as their opportunity to take command, just as the Sadrists did in 2004 and again after the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra a year ago. That repeated tactic of leveraging militancy into greater clout has made the Sadr movement the equivalent of an 18-wheeler filled with dynamite barreling down Iraq's political highway. Now, though, the Americans are shooting at the tires, and there's fighting in the front seat over who's in control of the steering wheel. Oh, well, I'm sure there's every reason to think this will turn out okay.

This gentlepundit doesn't seem to like any Twelvers at all, and there is a lot of that going around also. AM might notice how he takes the MSM's word for the proposition that the Sadr Tendency is collapsing. 'Nuff said, except that we are pleased that Mr. Badger has returned to the fray.