Richard WarnickSadr City: Why are we doing this?
Think back to when President Bush and the neocons wanted to justify the invasion of Iraq. We heard the same words over and over. The Iraqis were “terrorized, tortured, and brutalized” by Saddam Hussein. Saddam “used weapons against his own people.” After it was clear that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction, the alleged benefits of deposing a terrible dictator morphed into the number one reason for going to war.
Now, let’s observe the present situation. Iraq has no effective national government, but Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone regime has ordered the deaths of thousands of Iraqis in torture chambers and in the streets of Iraqi cities. Over the last two months, Maliki has advocated violence against his fellow Shiites. Many policemen and soldiers refused to carry out his orders. Now the battles in Baghdad, Basra and other cities are being fought primarily by American and British soldiers.
The US Army is building a wall to divide the densely populated section of Baghdad known as Sadr City, home to three million people and an unknown number of Mahdi Army fighters loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr. The wall is intended to keep the Mahdi Army from setting up Katyusha rocket launchers within range of the Green Zone. It is unclear how this is going to work. The wall is being built at approximately the 7 km mark and the 107mm rockets have a reported effective range of 9 km, however at the limit of their range they are accurate only to a 1 km radius of the intended target.
The Mahdi Army gets these rockets from Iran (either bought from arms smugglers or provided by the Iranian military). It’s worth noting that Iran has much longer-range rockets, such as the types they provide to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
As noted in a previous post, our attack on Sadr City is causing as many or more casualties among innocent civilians than among the Mahdi Army fighters who are defending the area.
Tahseen al-Sheikhly, the spokesman for the civilian side of Baghdad security operations, said Wednesday that a total of 925 people had died and 2,605 were wounded in Sadr City. A member of the Iraqi Accord Front (biggest Sunni bloc in parliament) Ahmed Radhi, who was in Sadr City on Sunday as part of the multi-party sit-in, said: “The majority of those who are being killed are civilians, and not armed persons.”
Helicopters were grounded by a sandstorm yesterday, so the US Army unleashed heavy artillery on Sadr City, using a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) battery. Each MLRS fires guided 227 mm rockets at a rate of 12 per minute. The barrage lasted for hours, killing 24 civilians and wounding 60. Most were reported to be women and children. The US Army reports that 28 Mahdi Army fighters died in the battle, some probably killed by the artillery.
The Associated Press reported that at least three buildings were destroyed by the heavy artillery fire.
AFP photo: An Iraqi cries over the dead bodies of his neighbors and relatives on the ruins of a house hit by US artillery.
AP Television News footage showed a school that had been badly damaged by an explosion on Tuesday. Parts of the two-floor building had pancaked as the result of the blast. Desks were hanging down from the slanting classrooms where the outer walls were blown out by the blast.
In Sadr City, the US Army is killing many more civilians than enemy combatants. This is an apparent violation of the law of land warfare, as explained in Army Field Manual FM 27-10 (PDF).
“[L]oss of life and damage to property incidental to attacks must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained.”
(HR, art. 23, par. (g); GC, art. 53)
This rule is based on prohibitions contained in international law, specifically the Annex to Hague Convention No. IV, 18 October 1907, embodying the Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (HR) and the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, 12 August 1949 (GC).
US military spokespeople always emphasize that our forces do not deliberately target civilians. However, as noted above, that is not enough. The prohibitory effect of the law of war is not minimized by military necessity. Every violation of the law of war is a war crime.
Why are we doing this? I got into a somewhat heated discussion yesterday on the The Long War Journal. Some said that the assault is being conducted at the behest of the Maliki Green Zone regime, which desires to defeat a rival Shiite militia. Others claimed that General Petraeus planned this, and he must know what he’s doing because he’s a four-star general. Nobody argued that anybody in Washington was in control, although I find it interesting that this fiasco-within-a-fiasco got started just after VP Dick Cheney paid a visit to Maliki.
See after the jump for updates, including links to video of the aftermath of the artillery barrage…
UPDATE: Via Raw Story, CNN has a video of the aftermath of the Sadr City artillery barrage. Warning- graphic and disturbing images.
CNN video showed the grieving survivors. “They all died, they all died,†one woman wailed. “My son, my son Allawi, I want you back,†moaned another.
“There was a girl. We only found her head,†said one man, lying wounded on a stretcher. “I kept digging, looking for her body, me and my friends. And then another rocket hit us.â€
At the hospital, a little girl cried as shrapnel was removed from her face. Nearby, a mother grieved over the body of her young son as a man off-camera asked sarcastically, “Does this look like a militiaman?â€
U.S. officials said all precautions are taken to prevent civilian casualties, but blamed the militiamen for taking cover among their neighbors and families.
UPDATE: Gorilla’s Guides has two gruesome photos of child victims from yesterday.
In this photo 2 year old Ali Hussein is seen being pulled from the rubble of his family’s home in Sadr City Tuesday, April 29, 2008. Ali’s home was one of four destroyed by U.S. missiles. Ali died in hospital a few hours later.
UPDATE: The Real News offers more video and correspondent Pepe Escobar tries to answer the question I posed in the title of this post.
These are innocent civilians-– poor Shi’ite Arabs living in the three million-strong Sadr City in Baghdad, one of the largest slums in the world. As The Real News has reported Sadr City is being walled in–- transformed into a gulag, and pounded relentlessly by US air strikes. The Pentagon-–and the Iraqi government–-say they are “protecting the Green Zone†by attacking Sadr City…
Over 400 people were killed in Sadr City alone. Only 10% were guerrillas. This carnage is a direct consequence of Dick Cheney’s recent tour of the Middle East, Iraq included. This carnage is a direct consequence of Gen. David Petraeus’ surge. These are victims of a vicious political battle between the al-Maliki government in Baghdad, supported by the al-Hakim family, and the US, against Muqtada al-Sadr, who they fear will win the next elections in October-–because, of course, he is immensely popular.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
We really ‘rock’! Aren’t ya glad to be an aMERICAN? Now about Bushes ‘Legacy’, Gotta be (mostly) red white and very, very blue.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Why are we doing this – i.e., engaging in this gamble of provoking Moqtada al Sadr (see http://shadowedforest.blogspot.com/2008/04/iraqi-gamble.html)? Superb question – one that every responsible candidate for president (are there any left?) and every thinking media person should be asking as loudly as possible.
Perhaps your question was a rhetorical scream of anguish and shame; if so, I sympathize. But for anyone actually searching for answers, one can conjecture about Iraqi internals and the broader neo-con goals. Thinking just about Iraq, the lame-duck Administration really needs to wrap things up; Moqtada al Sadr’s increasingly popular nationalist, anti-occupation stance was not in the playbook. His ingenious tactics – a personal move to become a religious student, declaration of a ceasefire (last August and then renewed after Christmas), and preparation for winning the fall election – had to be stopped to settle Iraq down and make it look like something less than a total defeat for Bush.
From the broader Mideast perspective, given that Baghdad was always just an overnight stop on the road to Tehran, Moqtada may be seen either as a speedbump on the road to the original neo-con goals or perhaps as an excuse (look at all the trouble being “caused by Iran!!!â€). Regardless of the details of neo-con perceptions at the moment, neo-cons always seem to have seen Iran and Iraq as the same issue. (See http://shadowedforest.blogspot.com/2007/10/why-washington-needs-to-bomb-iran.html) And in recent months, there has been a good deal of evidence that Bush is implementing a plan to intensify his overall confrontation with Islam (see http://shadowedforest.blogspot.com/2008/03/washington-intensifying-its.html). In part, then, the offensive against Moqtada should probably be seen in the context of recent confrontational moves by Bush related to Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
Of course, all those words utterly ignore what was, I think, your real point about the immorality of it all. I ignored the question of the morality of U.S. policy because for that, I have no answer.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:25 am
I’m afraid that in war, at least some immorality comes with the territory no matter how sincerely our forces try to follow the law of land warfare. But there first has to be a vital reason for going to war. In this case, I don’t think there is anything to be gained– not even a tactical objective of stopping indirect fire attacks on the Green Zone. It’s just pointless slaughter of civilians.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
ABC News is picking up on the horror in Sadr City.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4775808&page=1
I think TV is a lagging indicator of public support for the war. The networks will back the war party until the public turns against the war and will then slowly and reluctantly do so themselves.
Why are we doing this? On one level we are doing this because once the dogs of war are unleashed, war has its own perverse logic, like destroying the village to save it. General Petraeus is an intelligent man, but once we alienated the majority of the populace, the best he can do is “steam control,†keeping the boiler from blowing up in our faces until we leave. We can either leave with marching bands and flag ceremonies or on the skids of helicopters, but leave we must. No Arab or Islamic country will allow itself to be occupied by the U.S. indefinitely, and our efforts at nation building have, despite good intensions and the sacrifices of very brave members of our military, been frightful in their consequences. http://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/0207web/number.html
But is there more going on here? Is the plan to gain favor with Sunni states and provoke Iran into a wider war by attacking the Shia? Is the plan to pacify Sadr City and Basra so we can get on with an attack elsewhere? Where are the carriers? The Gulf. Where has Vice President Cheney been traveling? The Gulf. Whose economy are we trying to collapse? Iran’s. (see http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8429) Who is in the crosshairs of the Neocon’s? Iran and Syria. Are the dots connected or is the attack on Sadr City just part of the chaos and fog of war?
Why are we doing this, indeed, is the question.
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Why are we doing this?
The answer is simple. It’s the only answer you can give when you have no idea what you’re doing because you’ve never taken the time to figure things out.
JUST BECAUSE!
The longer answer would be. Because I’ll blow your head off, if you don’t shut up!
We are living in a very badly written novel that gets published anyway. We are being governed by a man who was planted in the White House in a fictitious election. Just because!
Now get over it!
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:42 pm
The invasion of Panama was officially dubbed “Operation Just Cause.” But our soldiers have a sense of humor, and they called it “Operation Just Because.”
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Richard:
That’s funny!
Did you know the original invasion of Iraq was going to be “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (OIL). When you start to put Freudian slips in your acronyms, that’s getting really crazy.
By the way, that Scalia quote was actually not from April 27th, but I’m pretty sure it’s from 2008.
May 4th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Why are we doing this?
As Noam Chomsky pointed out, see http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20080101.htm, our basic foreign policy assumption is that we own the world. Hence we use the terms foreign fighters and foreign interference to label root causes of the violence in Iraq without reflecting on the fact that we are obviously foreign fighters exerting foreign interference. I am sure the readers of this blog have long realized that, but that the phrase foreign fighters didn’t immediately backfire on the Pentagon shows how much the American people have bought into the notion that we own the world.
The ruling paradigm in the U.S. is that every enemy is a Hitler, every diplomat opposing war is a Chamberlain, and every war monger is a Churchill. The ruling paradigm in the third world is that foreign invaders from the first world are colonialists and (in the Middle East) crusaders. We are not reading from the same page. We are not even in the same book. So the two sides kill each other, and in the case of the first world power vs. the third world power, the colonial model proves more predictive of the ultimate outcome.
May 4th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
The plan was based in chaos from the very beginning. There was no intention of any good outcome. If the elites cannot have the oil, then no one can.
Sure throws a spanner into Chinas’ works, as Iraq, and then Iran, are the logistical easy access points to get oil for themselves, meaning they are the closest, and thereby the most economical.
It is working so well, the heavy trucks in China are out of diesel and piling up doing nothing. Many must wait two weeks to get enough diesel for their one day runs. The war could well be to just cluster the ME so as to make Chinas’ growth slow. As much as we hate it, 4 dollar fuel is bad but we can still run our economy. Meanwhile it really puts the crunch on Chinas’ growth.
War by proxy means. True enough that the reasons for events are rarely what the mouthpieces say they are. The elites rule on.
May 5th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Here is a disturbing story. Scott Ritter thinks an attack on Iran soon is a virtual certainty.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Former_UN_weapons_inspector_says_attack_0505.html
Glenn, I think the plan was an easy victory and, in effect, pliant puppets. My usual rule is that stupidity explains more than conspiracy. You are right, however, that in neocon circles control of the Middle East is seen as keeping us in control of resources, even if they aren’t destined for the U.S.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:04 am
The plan was sold as an easy victory, the reality was well known by any professional soldier or a person even remotely familiar with military operations in the region, from the time of the Roman invasions, through all other phases of the Crusades, and the sorry tales of Britain.
It is conspiracy, it is as Goering stated, any people can be brought to war by its leaders, just say that you are being attacked, and then define the opposition to such as unpatriotic. This is paraphrased, but his belief was that it works this way in all countries, regardless of the political system a nation has.
Put two people in a room, doing things they don’t want anyone to know and you have a conspiracy. Some are stupid, some are brilliant, they are all conspiracies nonetheless. If falsifying threats as the admin did isn’t conspiracy, I don’t know what is. That the dems went along with it…now that’s stupidity.
Scott has been right all along, and to be sure, no matter who is elected will be forced to follow this path. We are bankrupt people, there is no pulling the value of our money out of the morass it is currently, nor will our debt be paid in anything but inflated dollars. There is nothing left to save the economy but war. History points this out as the primary reason for war, a nation reaches a point of no return financially, and must steal off or make false economy through war. When you have the means it has always been an option.
Don’t forget that Israel is a primary driver in promoting the “threat” from Iran. Nothing like getting a big dummy bully to solve your problems for you.