Richard WarnickIraq: ‘Bring ‘em on’ redux
The news from Iraq in recent days has gone from bad, to very bad, to extremely bad. Now it’s unbelievably bad. Here’s the headline: Secretary of State Rice Mocks Muslim Cleric Moqtada al-Sadr as a Coward. American diplomacy at work, as 107mm rockets and mortar shells rain down on the Green Zone.
“I know he’s sitting in Iran,” Rice said dismissively, when asked about al-Sadr’s latest threat to lift a self-imposed cease-fire with government and U.S. forces. “I guess it’s all-out war for anybody but him,” Rice said. “I guess that’s the message; his followers can go to their deaths and he’s in Iran.”
It’s hard to imagine any more irresponsible statement by an American official. Wait, no, it isn’t. In July 2003, President Bush taunted Sunni insurgents saying, “bring ‘em on.” We all know how that worked out.
On VetVoice, Brandon Friedman comments:
But it’s not just about Rice’s dismissive, provocative tone, either. It’s also this continuing, obnoxious Bush-brand of hypocrisy that the whole world sees: If Sadr had said the same thing of Rice–that she’s a Washington, D.C. bureaucrat who sends others to fight her own battles–the Bush administration would freak out. And that fact isn’t lost on Iraqis.
Meanwhile, the US military command is desperately trying to resolve the crisis by offering al-Sadr a political role if he reins in the Mahdi Army before it’s too late. Maj. General Rick Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, says “We’ve made it very clear that the Mahdi Army itself … is not the enemy.”
OK, so the Army is being far more diplomatic than our country’s chief diplomat. I think it’s because the generals realize, as Condi apparently does not, that the main reason the Bush administration could make the specious claim “the surge is working” is because Moqtada al-Sadr declared a cease-fire last August.
Today’s Washington Post notes that Secretary Rice’s six-hour visit to the Green Zone was interrupted three times by rocket attacks coming from Sadr City.
Consider that the vast majority of Iraqi Shiites are Sadrists or very sympathetic to the cause. To understand this, you have to know that al-Sadr’s father was Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr. While other Shiite leaders went into exile, many of them in Iran, the Grand Ayatollah stayed in Iraq and opposed Saddam’s regime. He was assassinated in 1999, along with two of his sons.
Sadr’s supporters are the very people that were supposed to greet the invading Americans as liberators. Yet our Army and Marine Corps has been fighting them on and off since 2004. It’s on again. The only way to resolve this: end the occupation ASAP.
UPDATE: Tom Engelhardt offers a first rate sitrep: 12 Answers to Questions No One Is Bothering to Ask about Iraq.
UPDATE: From firedoglake– All Out War For Anybody But Condi.
April 21st, 2008 at 8:44 am
Yeah Rice, it’s called fighting them “over there.” It’s the chickenhawk’s call. Want to see a real man. Look at Jimmy Carter.
April 21st, 2008 at 11:31 am
Dang! Could al-Sadr be Condi’s long lost brother?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187155,00.html
April 21st, 2008 at 11:41 am
Larry, since you’re up here now, the Rice bit about disarming the populace you wanted is: McClatchy,Washington Bureau, Sun Ap 20 “Rice praises Maliki after Sadr calls for an open ended war Para 6.
April 21st, 2008 at 3:31 pm
caveat, (I wouldn’t use my real name if I didn’t know how to put a link in a post either)
Just kidding!
You must mean this statement then:
~shoe lady
With all the gun people around here lately, this should cause a real sensation.
Or not.
April 21st, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Lar, I once knew how to do it but the ‘puter I normally use is a real clunker, so loaded with bugs and worms and such that it’s a surprize I can even log in. Til I get a newer one, I’ll remain C(anon)veat.
Thankfully, ours is not a functioning democracy, but the stir among the gun proponents can’t really be all that good for the neocons. I don’t think.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:25 pm
If Secretary Rice really meant to say that, it shows how little she knows about Arabs. All through the occupation, we have had a policy that every Iraqi household is allowed a reasonable amount of weaponry, including AK-47 assault rifles. When I lived in Yemen, those were ubiquitous, if you were an adult male Yemeni you had one.
I’m betting Rice really intended to say that the Maliki Green Zone regime ought to have a monopoly of military force, which is a basic requirement for any functioning, legitimate government. It probably came out wrong because she’s been hanging out with Bush too much and mangled the sentence.
Either way, ain’t gonna happen unless we elect McCain and stay in Iraq for a hundred years.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:47 pm
If anyone recalls the ‘Hundredth Monkey’ saw from about ten years ago, where two relatively similar groups of monkeys on two seemingly disconnected islands were supposedly linked by monkey world consciousness.
Well, I had a nightmare last night which I’ll call the ‘Hundredth Chimp’. My nightmare differed from the supposedly evolutionary processes speculated about in the monkey world and worked, rather the devolutionary impulses of the Chimpster in Chief and His. Torture, mayhem and pain inducing drugs were key features in this bit of paranoid mass consciouness threshold breaking. It really shook me.
I’m supposing the Hundredth Monkey scenario was shot down, but what if there’s something to this consciouness clustering threshold theory? Better hope it’s an upswing!
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:30 pm
[...] of State ever. Never has the acronym “SOS” been more appropriate. Just the other day, Rice issued an ill-advised challenge to Moqtada al-Sadr, who commands the most powerful militia in Iraq, the Mahdi Army. Her six-hour [...]