David Aaronovitch has returned from Iraq, “glad to be away from the danger and also from the sheer maleness of it all“, and filed the most vacant eyewitness report I’ve read in a while.
Can the coalition have been so foolish as to risk an uprising? Then I wonder whether the Americans, despite their habit of stencilling daft names on their tanks (like Bloodlust, Braveheart, Blitzkrieg and Beautiful Disaster) have been tipped the wink by the anti-Sadr Shia that it’s OK to rein in Moqtada, that their people will wear it. Sure enough, Ayatollah Sistani calls for peace.
Sistani colluding with U.S. Coalition forces and encouraging mayhem in order to take out Sadr is impossible to swallow.
From yet another of Juan Cole’s entries:
A link to Sistani’s statement which included this:
Nevertheless, the revered cleric believes “the demonstrators’ demands are legitimate,” and “condemns acts waged by the occupation forces and pledges his support to the families of the victims”, the source said.
And from Professor Cole himself. Would David shrug off this name as “daft”?
If you want irony, and provocative irony, it turns out that the Plus Ultra base where the Sadrists protested was called “al-Andalus.” That is a reference to Arab Spain, to which the Catholics of the Reconquista put a bloody end in 1492. Although much has been written about the Jews forcibly converted to Christianity in the aftermath, it is not realized that many more Muslims stayed and were forced to convert under the watchful eye of the Inquisition. For the Plus Ultra to call their base Andalus is in incredibly bad taste, and shows the sort of triumphalist mentality that has accompanied the Bush administration’s rehabilitation of “empire.” Unfortunately, naming things is not as hard as actually controlling imperial subjects.
Aaronovitch claims that “A year on, and in the west we still tend to think that everything in Iraq is about the occupation and the Americans. But it isn’t. It is mostly about what comes next, with the occupation forces as a medium of political exchange.”
Consider one more entry from Juan Cole who despite his expertise isn’t so bold as Aaronovitch in reaching then passing fast judgement along as to why the United States decided to put the pressure on Sadr. Read “Phoenix, Assassination and Blowback in Iraq” by Douglas Valentine, “Moving Targets” by Seymour Hersh, “On To Tehran?” and “Iraq’s Mystery Terrorists” by Justin Raimondo and “Iran: Neoconservatism’s Last Stand?” by Christopher Deliso.
If the occupation forces are a medium of political exchange doesn’t Aaronovitch owe it to his readership to determine who they’re brokering for and what’s next on their agenda? As best I can tell David believes, or has a vested interest in infuencing others to believe, that the United States is now doing nothing more than freeing good Iraqis from the evil ones as they’re incapable of reaching the correct conclusions or working out a gov’t amongst themselves without the guidance of bums like Chalabi. Bollocks.
U.S. Marines in the densely packed city were allowing women and children, but not young men, to make an exodus from Fallujah, where Marines have used air strikes and heavy ground fire against entrenched insurgents armed with automatic weapons, mortars and rocket propelled grenades.
Aaronovitch must be breathing yet another sigh of relief. There could soon be an area in Iraq where his fine sensibilities won’t be assaulted by the “sheer maleness” of it all.