| ... whether you think it was Washington that pulled the trigger on this, or whether you think it was Tehran, from both points of view a key irritant was the fact that Sadr was forming agreements with Sunni entities. Washington has always favored the crypto-separatist [0] Kurdish parties in the north, and the "federalist" Dawa-SupremeCouncil pair in the south, and the clear implication has always been is that Washington doesn't like the Iraqi-nationalist leanings of Sadr and those he has been dealing with on the Sunni side (including or course the demand for American withdrawal). What this Kuwaiti writer says is that those cross-sect moves by Sadr were a major irritant to Tehran too. This doesn't really help us figure out which side pulled the trigger, or whether it was a jointly-agreed thing to do, but it does help underline the importance of the cross-sect nationalist character of Sadrist thinking, as something displeasing to both Tehran and to Washington--which is the most important depending on where you sit. |
For a little comic relief before proceeding ever upwards along the Sunninterní Path, here’s one customer of the mu’ámariyya who understands these things a little differently, a little even-more-so than the factionalists of MJ:
| Kevin said... Now you are getting on the right track. This is an Iranian operation, probably Quds Force operatives are embedded into Iraqi Army units. It surprised me how blind Americans were to Iraq. I read over and over on the left leaning sites who Cheney and Bush are all-powerful and ordered this attack against Sadr. The sad truth is that the US lost Iraq long ago to Iran and now it's the Persians calling the shots. Remember the President of Iran just made a visit there a few weeks ago. He would have approved the attack on that occasion. |
(( Could Master Kevin be some sort of Sinn Fein artist, a left-over Fenian or Provo? Or is it/he only a false name to throw everybody else off that "right track," so as to have it all for oneself? Ah, well, that " doesn't really help us figure out," does it, Mr. Bones? And now, enough of ‘Kevin’! ))
Characteristically mu’ámarí is the total neglect or oblivion of the possibility that either poor M. al-Málikí, or the Rev. Señorito as-Sadr, or devilish "rogue elements" affiliated to the one or the other, might have pulled the trigger. Those are silly ideas unacceptable in gentry circles, where if it wasnt't the Bushies, it was the Qommies, and if it wasn't the Qommies, it must have been the Bushies. Though they might (a-HA!) have been workin’ together, the Bushies and the Qommies, that is.
But keep your eye on the ball, Mr. Bones, or rather on The Key: "Sadr was forming agreements with Sunni entities ... the Iraqi-nationalist leanings of Sadr and those he has been dealing with on the Sunni side (including or course the demand for American withdrawal)." "Entities" is a bit vague and misty, but one sees why the ideologue lapses into that rather than frankly admit how many pieces her Humpty-Dumpty has gone smash into. "This Kuwaiti writer" attaches great importance to cloakroom wheeling and dealing at the Council of Deputies:
| Sadr became stronger and stronger, and formed individual agreements with "enemy" blocs including the Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni) and the Dialogue Front led by Saleh al-Mutlak. And most seriously of all, the discussions that joined the Sadrists with their old enemy Iyad Allawi. |
With entities like that, who needs friends or enemies?
"Paper will stand anything," and video monitors are not bad either. M. Sarmad at-Tá’í [2] of Kuwait City considers that the Renegade Firebrand Cleric™ has been moving from strength to strength of late. An odd judgment, but of course he’s entitled to his opinion -- it’s still a free country, innit? M. at-Tá’í has even odder notions about the Trigger Question, although I can't quite make out whether Dr. al-‘Alláwí pulled the trigger or simply was the trigger with which the Firebrand Renegade Cleric™ shot himself, accidentally or suicidally.
The MJ ideogentry distance themselves a little from M. at-Tá’í: he "raised the whole attack-on-Sadr question in a somewhat different light from what we're used to reading (including here)." On the other hand, the following is summatorialized from the Free Kuwait journalist as if the customer is expected to accept it:
| After the Feb 2006 bombing of the golden dome temple in Samarra, in the dark and ugly period of organized sectarian killings, the other Shiite factions encouraged Sadr to take the lead, providing him with "political cover" and with practical items like police cars for travelling around Baghdad during the curfews, and so on. Sadr emerged stronger organizationally, and expected that his organization would be given greater importance politically too. This led to the series of political moves, eventually pulling his organization out of the so-called United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), which was supposed to represent the united Shiite front. And in this they were followed by the Fadhila party. |
Both police cars and parties of Islamic virtue are undeniably to be classified as entities, Mr. Bones. You certainly can’t deny that! (It looks like the former Iraq is overrun with the goddamn entity things.)
M. at-Tá’í's, or Ms. Lynx's, "political cover" I am not so sure about, in that a thing must exist in order to be a proper "entity." (Isn't that right?) What was it that the Clerical Firebrand Renegade™ needed to conceal and that the schizomaniac fiends of the Supreme Council and Da‘wa were, for a season, willing to help him cover up? Only that Master Muqtadae is soft on Sunnis? Possibly M. at-Tá’í is not as foolish as association with the vicarious chauvinism of Mu’ámara Junction makes one suspect. He may even understand that the heretics can not count for sixty percent of the population of ex-Iraq in any political sense unless they hang together. However the only "political cover" in sight in that direction would be the Gogolian overcoat of ‘Alí Cardinal as-Sístání (bhsp).
Still, M. at-Tá’í cannot be really good at political analysis if he supposes the Renegade Clerical Firebrand™ to have grown in strength by withdrawing from the Twelver Caucus in order to join that mere nonentity of a Patriot Opposition that overthrew poor M. al-Málikí, and forced the extremist Republican Party to withdraw all its troops, and saved the beloved watan from a partition worse than death, and all the rest of those splendid things that somehow never actually happened. (Thanks to the Konstitution of N. Feldman and Z. Khalílzád, the former Iraq is overrun by Bagehot-worthy nonentities of the "dignified" sort as well as by police cruisers and Virtutite political hacks.) [3]
_____
Some of the internal contradictions [4] of the chauvinist MJ gentry are revealed by the basic facts of the moment, quite apart from elaborate conspiratorialist elucidations of them. In particular, the TwentyPercenters and the Sunní International (plus our Ms. Lynx, and Mr. Badger, and Dr. Iconoclastes) are not going to lift a finger to assist the Sadr Tendency in any useful way. Perhaps they will shed a crocodile tear or two when it's all over and Godzilla wins, but that is about it. However they will presumably never admit that they could not have lifted a finger even if they had wanted to, nor will they frankly acknowledge that the former Iraq has been what Max Weber called "routinized," reduced to the same sort of normalcy as obtains in Gen. Mubárak's Egypt and the rest of the Greater Levant, Lebanon and the Islamic Republic to some extent excepted. "The Watan united can never be defeated!" will continue to resound from their covens and conventicles as if nothing much had happened, and in a sense, nothing much will have happened.
If there ever was a window of opportunity opened by the Big Management Party aggression of March 2003, it will now be slammed shut and firmly locked, and all the furniture in the parlour looks not much the worse for a brief exposure to wind and weather from outdoors. [5]
But God knows best. Happy days.
_____
[0] Crypto-?
[1] If anybody has a used Reichstag fire for sale, she might want to get in touch with the firm of Lynx, Badger, Iconoclastes S.A.
[2] What kind of Christian name is SRMD, for Pete's sake? And how does he vocalize it? Not a hard question!
[3] Poor M. al-Málikí's inner Hannibal has escaped from its cage, no doubt about it, but naturally few, if any, of its doings are at all likely to be Khalílzád-konstitutional. Fortunately nobody worth mentioning in Peaceful Freedumbia, native or invasive, gives a hoot about Rulalaw.
[4] Or mere "difficulties" if Marxish gives offense.
[5] The Invasion-of-the-Month Club will not have triumphed altogether. The evil Qommies and the God Party of Lebanon and the Zeal Party of Gaza will remain. Even the Fatáh of East Palestine might be added to the list of usual suspects, perhaps.
The true correlation of forces is impossible to assess when one's mind is full of bias and cant, whether it be the "Freedom means peace!" cant or "The Watan united can never be defeated!" cant.
No comments:
Post a Comment