In These New Times

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Why the war-party’s reading of this is wrong(MISSING LINKS)

The point that Moqtada has emphasized consistently in all of his recent statements is that the Sadr trend is at war with the occupation only, and not with the Iraqi forces. The strategy is to drive out the occupation (1) without triggering civil war between Iraqi groups; and in fact (2) use the process as preparation for an Iraqi government freed from the filth of the occupation. You can see this in his statements of April 8; April 19; and April 25. (Discussion of the latter here). I won’t bother to quote the relevant parts again, because the strategy is clear: Fight the occupation without triggering an intra-Iraq war.

So it should have come as no surprise that the May 12 Sadr/UIA agreement has the same structure. The commitment is the same as it was in the document that ended the Basra fighting: the cease-fire is limited to Iraqi institutions (civil institutions, army and police); it does not extend to the occupation forces. In the case of the most recent agreement, it is true that the Green Zone is included among the institutions that is not to be attacked. But there is no possible reading of this agreement, or of any of the earlier statements, making this any kind of a capitulation to the occupation forces.

It is made to appear that way in the corporate media, the milblog world and elsewhere, because there are two things are particularly hard for the war-party to understand: (1) that the Sadrist approach does not assume a relationship of enmity between the Sadrists and the government forces, but rather a cooperative one, or at least one that has to become cooperative and will become cooperative in the process of purging the American involvement; and (2) general expressions respecting cease-fire and so on do not implicitly include the American forces, which first of all are not party to the agreement, but more important, since the Americans are in Iraq for an aggressive and destructive aim and no other, a cease-fire with them would be a contradiction in terms.

The purpose of this post is merely to gather together the above links to earlier statements, so as to point up the consistency in Sadr’s position in this. And also to point up the propagandistic character of the latest media theme, namely “can Moqtada control his people”? The relevant question is not that, but rather how the Americans will go about resuming their attack on, and exposure to, this anti-occupation group, and what happens then.