One Utah

Juan Cole, almost alone among Iraq commentators, explains: Why al-Maliki attacked Basra. The entire article is a must-read, however here’s the bottom line:

If the Sadr Movement rules most Shiite-majority provinces, including Baghdad, that will make it difficult for the U.S. military to remain in the country.

Here are the facts:

• Provincial elections, now scheduled for October, could radically change the political landscape in Iraq. Both the Sunni Arabs and the Sadr Movement sat out the last round, in late January 2005.
• In the Shiite south, the ISCI, led by Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, is largely in power, even though probably a majority of the population favors Sadr.
• The Bush administration wants its current partners to stay in power, but cannot further postpone elections because the Sunnis want representation in exchange for dialing down their insurgency.
• The survival of the current Iraqi government, based on rivals to the Sadrists such as ISCI and the Da’wa Party of al-Maliki, hangs in the balance. Clearly, al-Maliki felt that the operation had to be launched, and may well have thought that it is better to do it now, so that it will not be fresh in the minds of the Iraqi or American electorate when they go to the polls in the fall.

It is reasonable speculation to wonder if the attack on Basra was launched at the urging of American politicians. Both VP Dick Cheney and Senator John McCain visited Baghdad just before Maliki made his move. Of course, McCain and everyone in the US government and military disavows any prior knowledge of Maliki’s plans, in the tradition of “Mission: Impossible.”

Juan Cole comments:

It seems to me that there are only two possibilities here.

Either McCain really did not know and did not anticipate the trouble in Basra, in which case he does not know much about Iraq and isn’t better qualified to deal with it than anyone else.

Or, he and Cheney helped put al-Maliki up to the whole thing while he was there, and now is petrified that someone will hang the fiasco around his neck.

This entry was posted Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 8:26 am and is filed under Disaster, Iraq, Mahdi Army, National Politics, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.