Centerfield

Totten Goes Kneejerk

The usually reasonable Michael Totten goes with the visceral spasm of a kneejerk call for the death of Al Sadr:

Moqtada al-Sadr cranked up his "revolution" and says he wants to fight to his "last drop of blood." Fine, then. Give the man what he wants.

I sympathize with the sentiment quite a bit. I thought the same thing when I heard Al Sadr decided to start pressing his luck again. But on mulling it over, I think that if we want to keep our eye on the ball, we need to recognize that while Al Sadr’s death is an outcome we’d happily accept if necessary, we look quite ugly and much like our enemies in simply calling for this death.

There’s no doubt that Al Sadr’s continually destabilizing actions can’t be tolerated any longer, and if the current configuration that serves as authority in Iraq won’t act quickly and forcefully, then we must. And this is really the gist of MT’s post. I don’t want to characterize him as issuing a fatwa on the basis on an ill-chosen post header, “Kill Moqtada Al-Sadr.”

There’s a lot of static in the comments about turning Iraqis away from us, the aforementioned “how’s it feel to issue a fatwa” etc. Like I said, let’s keep our eyes on the ball. The only Iraqis whose opinions we can concern ourselves with are the ones with open minds and a hope for a better future. My expectation is that Iraqis are like us and most other humans in wanting opportunity, security, freedom, personal sovereignty. And they are also like us in that their opinions are malleable on the basis of narrow self interest. So keeping our eye on the ball means providing an increasingly secure and predictable environment, providing for basic needs, showing hope.

Given this, it doesn’t seem like it’d be too hard to paint Al-Sadr as a sanctimonious opportunist. His ilk thrives in an environment when the broad middle that wants security and opportunity is too afraid to stick their necks out lest they be cut off. They’ve learned a ruthless pragmatism fostered by the harsh dealings of Hussein with any detractors, a pragmatism currently being reinforced by insurgents who target those who cooperate with occupation forces.

That’s why I think we need to stress that Al-Sadr will be dealt with, in order to show strength. But we also need to stress the way we are different from our enemies by showing a willingness to work within some sort of due process if it comes to that. Make no mistakes, if Al Sadr wants to take up arms, we’ll gun him down. If he wants to surrender, he can become subject to some legal process. What we can’t let be an option is for Al Sadr to continue indefinitely as a deadly gadfly. We need to show strength, but a different and better kind of strength. And we need to keep trying to make the average Iraqi's life better.

Posted by Brian Keegan at August 10, 2004 01:07 PM