More Like This Please
MichaelW on Apr 21 2008 at 9:01 am | Filed under: Foreign affairs, MichaelW's Page, Military Matters, Notes on the war
I was pleasantly surprised, and mildly irritated, to see that Condi Rice basically called Muqtada al-Sadr a coward while she was in Baghdad recently (via: Instapundit):
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mocked anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a coward on Sunday, hours after the radical leader threatened to declare war unless U.S. and Iraqi forces end a military crackdown on his followers.
Rice, in the Iraqi capital to tout security gains and what she calls an emerging political consensus, said al-Sadr is content to issue threats and edicts from the safety of Iran, where he is studying. Al-Sadr heads an unruly militia that was the main target of an Iraqi government assault in the oil-rich city of Basra last month, and his future role as a spoiler is an open question.
“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 too their deaths and he’s in Iran.”
Both my surprise and irritation are because our government has been notably reticent to openly ridicule people like Sadr and bin Laden, or to state the obvious with respect to the civilian-targeting terrorists who blow themselves (they hope) to high heaven. None of them are brave enough to face off against their enemies. Instead they snipe from the sidelines, issue crude and fantastic proclamations about their superiority, and in the end they prey upon the weakest and least protected members of the enemy herd. There is a word for these types of people: cowards.
When one considers the fact that we are knee-deep in an information war (as opposed to a conventional, battlefield, territory-taking war), it’s difficult to understand why we haven’t resorted to deriding the enemy much earlier. The war-supporting blogosphere does so on occasion, but our leaders certainly don’t.
By “deriding the enemy” I don’t mean producing propaganda. Instead, call them out regularly and forcefully as the cowards and charlatans that they are. Employ the poison pen and wipe that arrogant smile off of their collective faces. In other words, take them on in the battle space they’ve chosen. We can defeat them there just as easily as we’ve done in actual combat.
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I’m of the opposite mind. This is like when Rice complains about “foreign influence” in Iraq, by which she does not mean “American influence” in Iraq but rather Iran, Iraq’s neighbor. Only now she’s calling Sadr a coward for… umm, not fighting his conflict personally (ignoring, obviously, his family’s generations of defiance against the Ba’athist regime). And possibly taunting him into trying to murder more U.S. troops. And this while she rushes to the front lines carrying a machine gun, I suppose? I thought the chickenhawk argument was a logical fallacy, but that’s all this is: if you want a war, come out and fight it yourself.
I dunno. I’m all about taunting our enemies, but this doesn’t seem like a constructive way of doing it.
What bothers me most about al Sadr is that he doesn’t *have* to be fighting his own war to put himself in power. He doesn’t have to do it. It’s not like some Sunni sheik who is worried that a Shia majority is going to destroy his people.
The military guys, at least on blogs and such, have been talking about Mookie and how we really ought to take out Mookie and how Mookie is a threat for *years* now. But we haven’t, and the only reason I can think that we haven’t is that it would be better to bring him into the process… *just as* Sunni leaders who were fighting and killing us have been brought in to the process. I have to believe that it is possible to bring al Sadr into the process as well. It would be preferable to do so, particularly as he is a popular guy for a lot of Iraqis.
But if he wants to play this way, if wants to act so very tough and so very bold, it makes perfect sense to point out that the all out war that he threatens doesn’t threaten him personally.
I don’t think that it’s necessary for Condi to strap on a matched set of MP-5s under her trench coat, nor for George to start flying missions over Iraq. In the end, American military leaders do lead from the front and it’s Mookie who’s making the “look how tough I am” noises.
I saw a report on Condi’s remark on television and I wonder… do we have video or audio anywhere of her making that statement? It wasn’t in the report I saw at all. She mocked (while touting) and was dismissive? Maybe so. Those are fairly loaded words, however, and we’re taking someone else’s interpretation that she was going “neener-neener.”
(Mookie is described in similarly colorful terms… it could be Journalism School English at work.)
And again: missing in all this is Sadr and his followers are not mindless Al Qaeda death zombies, but radical nationalists fighting, in their view, to free their land of foreign occupation. Calling them cowards doesn’t exactly promote unity and peace, nor does it address any of the reasons why the Mahdi Army is so violently resisting the Shia government. We can’t ignore Sadr and his family’s long history of defiance against the Saddam regime, either, when calling him a coward. He was standing up to tyrants before it was cool and while it was very dangerous (his father was executed by Saddam’s regime).
Josh:
I fundamentally disagree (shocka!). Rice wasn’t calling Sadr a “chickenhawk” but a coward for running to another country while issuing bold demands and (in the vernacular of my day) attempting to cash checks his body couldn’t pay. If the POTUS was issuing military demands from the safety of Canada while America was under attack, that would be an analogous situation.
And either way, I think that a war of words is a war that we could win without question if someone would just fight it. Until this point (Synova’s point being well taken), our leadership has been absent in this regard.
But they aren’t really “Nationalists” as much as they are “Islamists.” And Rice’s comments to challenge the method the Sadrists have chosen to get the “occupiers” to leave. A method that is cowardly.
Granted that Sadr’s family fought Saddam, but that doesn’t excuse the terrorist tactics employed by him now. I can’t see a downside to calling him out for what he is: a coward. When considering how the Sunnis and the Kurds have rallied around Maliki for taking him on, I’m even less concerned with treating Sadr like the POS that he is.
I remember reading over at Iraq the Model several years ago that Sadr is actually ten or twelve years younger than what’s been reported in the press, which would put him only now reaching his mid-twenties. He was born and raised in Iran.
You know, it wasn’t all that long ago when war opponents where all going on about how Iraq could never be viable with all of the private militias creating tribal havoc. But now that the democratically elected government of Iraq is actually trying to something about that, these same folks are complaining that appeasement and power sharing would be more appropriate way to deal with these (literal) outlaws.
I guess there’s no pleasing some people.
yours/
peter.
Michael, I’m not saying we shouldn’t sling about insults (I’m with you that such a move is long overdue), but I don’t think you’re seeing Sadr for what he is. He is no more “Islamist” (that is, in the classical Olivier Roy definition of the term) than Maliki or any other populist Muslim leader in the country. And terrorist tactics? Yes, but no more so than ISCI/Badr, or the Sons of Iraq. We gave them a chance to come into the political process, even if they reject relations with “the Iranians” in Baghdad; why are we unwilling to work with Sadr?
I don’t get it. JAM isn’t as beholden to Iran as the Badr brigades, not as violent as the tribal warriors we now arm and fund from Anbar, but we support them in their fight against Iraq’s single most popular leader. What am I missing?
Peter, lumping me in with “the war opponents” doesn’t really match. I was a war supporter for a long time. I’m not opposed to the war on philosophical grounds, but practical ones. If we’re going to fight this thing, I want us to do it smartly, which, aside from some tactical successes by Petraeus, hasn’t been forthcoming. I still don’t see how our strategy — which includes strategic communication — is contributing to the victory we all say we want. It seems more like petty sniping than anything constructive.
Besides which, there is little difference than the “legitimate” government and the various militias bombing the Green Zones, at least in terms of extent and influence. They are one of many factions, as is the U.S.
Besides which, there is little difference than the “legitimate” government and the various militias bombing the Green Zones, at least in terms of extent and influence. They are one of many factions, as is the U.S.
Well I think I’ve spotted the premise that prevents you from seeing this war as practical or winnable.
yours/
peter.
Indeed, that is one of my premises. From a practical perspective, both the Maliki government and the U.S. military are one of many militias operating in the country. Why else would they be walling off Sadr city like it’s the West Bank or Kashmir?
If Sadr is fighting to remove foreigners now, what was his family fighting Saddam for before?
And really… how mind numbingly moronic would a person have to be not to realize that the fastest way to remove the offending foreign forces is to stop killing people? What Mookie thinks “in his mind” doesn’t match what he is doing with his “hands.” In the end, his reasons are his own, and likely complicated and conflicting, and the rhetoric about fighting US forces is popular rhetoric. It sounds good.
Heck, if the rumors of his youth are true, perhaps he’s simply riding the tiger he was born with… can’t get off even if he wanted to.
Synova, this goes back to an older point I’ve made about Sadr that was roundly mocked in another comment thread: Sadr is a nationalist and a patriot. Lying down with the Americans would violate the years of anti-American rhetoric on which he built his enormous support base (he was local, and not really national, before the invasion). Why would he deliberately undercut his own power base right when it was gaining him enormous concessions?
Would the kids of Red Dawn just stop fighting the Cubans just because the Cubans say that would allow them to pull out from Colorado?
Of course not. Surrender never won wars. The U.S. pulling out from Iraq is qualitatively different than Sadr attacking foreign invaders.
Woah. I mentioned Red Dawn partially in jest, but nostalgia forced me to read its synopsis. There are a lot of eerie parallels there
“Why would he deliberately undercut his own power base right when it was gaining him enormous concessions?”
Why would he undercut his own power base at all when it’s essentially about his power base?
I fail to see the parallels to Red Dawn. The teenagers fighting had not been fighting before. They did not live under a brutal dictator prior to the invasion. They did not, in any way, plan to establish themselves in a position of power.