Iraq: Exit Here By Democracy's Door
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 14 April 2004
While the world wonders what the President knew about al-Qaeda, and when he knew it, the Bush Administration is ratcheting up its war in Iraq. And, as they escalate, all but a handful of their big-name critics are giving the commander in chief their full support.
Newspapers and TV reported details of the escalation, including the sending of 15,000 more American troops. But, in the chaos of the past two weeks, even Bush-bashers seem to accept the build-up as a needed response to growing disorder, anarchy, and impending civil war.
A needed response? Look again. Washington is sending reinforcements because occupation chief Paul Bremer botched a possibly well-meant, but certainly ill conceived effort to expand and deepen American control over Iraqi lives. No surprise, except to Team Bush, huge numbers of ungrateful Iraqis reacted much as colonial Americans once did against the well-meaning British redcoats, who were, after all, only trying to maintain the king's law and order.
As truthout readers may have gleaned from Naomi Klein and Norman Solomon, Bremer's escalation began March 28, when he shut down al-Hawza, a tiny anti-occupation tabloid run by the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Son of a much-revered Grand Ayatollah killed by Saddam, young al-Sadr ranks as little more than a graduate student in the Shiite religious hierarchy. But playing on his father's martyrdom, he made himself a minor nuisance, claiming to speak for the Shiite young, the poor, and those who most strongly despised the foreign occupation. Like his father, he also advocated an Islamic state run by clerics, much as in neighboring Iran.
Because of his views, the Americans had pointedly excluded him from any political role in the new, undemocratic Iraq. Al-Sadr then became even more extreme, comparing Bremer to Saddam and calling for holy war against the U.S.-imposed interim constitution. He also built up his armed militia, the Army of the Mahdi, which doubles as a religious police enforcing a rigid, fundamentalist brand of Islamic law.
In short, Al-Sadr is not a good guy. But Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the older, more influential clerics, who despise Muqtada as "a young punk," could likely have contained him if Bremer had stayed out of the way, as they repeatedly urged him to do. Instead, the American seemed intent on making the little-read al-Hawza the torch of Iraqi freedom and Muqtada a mini-Ho Chi Minh.
Bremer quickly showed his resolve, branding al-Sadr "an outlaw," sending troops to surround his house, and jailing one of his top allies - the cleric Mustafa Yaqoubi, a black-turbaned descendant of the prophet Muhammad. The arrest warrant, which Bremer had held for months, charged al-Sadr, Yaqoubi, and 10 others in the murder of a rival Shiite cleric, Abdel-Majid Khoei. An angry mob had hacked Khoei to death last April, only days after the U.S. flew him into Iraq from his exile in London.
How Bremer expected al-Sadr, his followers, and other Shiites to react, no one seems able to say. But react the Shiites did, staging non-violent protests, seizing government buildings, kidnapping foreign hostages, and waging guerrilla warfare in Baghdad and southern Iraq. Even Shiites who despised al-Sadr ended up siding with him against the inept and overbearing Americans.
Several senior clergy, tribal leaders, and interim government officials tried to intercede with al-Sadr, who took refuge in an office next to the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, the holy of holies to the world's 130 million Shiite Muslims. According to one report in the Arabic press, the negotiators persuaded him to step back from the brink, only to have Bremer slam the door on their efforts. Al-Sadr had three choices, said the no-nonsense American. Surrender. Face arrest. Or die.
Ah, the whiff of civilian testosterone. I have visions of John Wayne storming the shrine, as Muslims the world over, Sunni and Shiite together, rise up singing God Bless America.
Forgive the satire, but the whole wretched mess has become surreal. How else to explain Bremer's timing? He moved to arrest al-Sadr after the Sunni mob in Fallujah murdered and mutilated the four American mercenaries, or "contractors," and after the U.S. military began their devastating attack on the city, where reported deaths now top 600. So, while the Marines showed the Sunnis who was boss north of Baghdad, Bremer provoked both radical and mainstream Shiites to the South, making heartfelt enemies of the very people the Americans supposedly came to protect.
Why? Why? Why?
To force al-Sadr to disband his militia, one occupation official told the Washington Post, "If we didn't disarm his army, we wouldn't be able to disarm any of the other militias. And if you don't demobilize of all the militias, there's no way you can have a democracy."
Probably true, but bogus. As the widely-admired Middle East historian Juan Cole points out, the Americans work every day with other armed militias - and with their leaders, three of whom the U.S. handpicked to sit on the Interim Governing Council. No one is asking Ahmed Chalabi to disband his militia, which U.S. troop carriers flew into Iraq last April. The reason has nothing to do with democracy. Chalabi is Rumsfeld and Cheney's first choice for Prime Minister when the U.S. hands over sovereignty to their placemen, supposedly at the end of June.
Perhaps, as Naomi Klein suggests, Bremer purposely provoked the Shiites to create so much chaos that Bush can get away with pushing back the handover date.
Perhaps, as Juan Cole speculates, Bremer and his neo-conservative friends are going after al-Sadr, who is sometimes tarred as an Iranian agent, in hopes of extending the war to Iran.
Perhaps, as the Guardian warns, the American occupiers have simply lost touch with reality.
All we can know is that sending more troops will not make the situation better. It will only enable Team Bush to dig in deeper. As former Senator Bob Kerrey put it, "We do not need a little more of the same thing. We need a lot more of something completely different."
Why not democracy?
Not the silly regional caucuses, where Bremer felt he could buy or cajole the votes he needed. Not the handpicked figureheads the Bush Administration wants to leave in place. But one person, one vote, which will likely leave the more moderate Ayatollahs in control, along with the Kurds, who can defend themselves, and some Sunnis who are already working with the Shiites.
Yes, it could lead to disaster, to a civil war, or worse. Democracy offers no guarantees. But the longer America stays, the more problems our people create, as recent events make clear. Unless, of course, the cunning plan is to create national unity by turning all of Iraq against a common enemy, which as Pogo said, is us.
Colonial quagmires do not spring up as a force of nature. As with Vietnam or Algeria, our leaders create them, one small escalation at a time. The only question is whether the rest of us will stop them or shut up and go along.
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A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he writes for t r u t h o u t.
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