Centerfield

Our Friends?

An interesting op-ed in the New York Times by Bartle Reese Bull (great name!) of The Financial Times, suggests that Chalabi and Sadr are now working together as part of the political process in Iraq and that we should see them as allies in building a democratic Iraq.

According to the author

The Mahdi Army insurrections this summer in Naja and Sadr City had nothing to do with Mr. Sadr's thinking that he could achieve military goals against American forces. If he had wanted to derail the occupation, he would have done what the Sunni insurgents do: keep his men out of harm's way and focus his violence toward fellow Iraqis, foreign civilians and government targets like power stations. Rather, he was moving to insurehis future role by seizing political momentum among the Shiite demographic that matters to him: the young urban poor.

Thus, Mr. Sadr's new direction, like his efforts in Najaf, is not a military move but a political one. Just as most of his country's violence consists of Iraqi attacks against fellow Iraqis, the basic fact of Iraqi politics is not opposition to the occupation, but maneuvering between Iraqis in the game of sectarian and ethnic politics.

Bull argues further that

Mr. Chalabi and Mr. Sadr may well help get Amercian troops out of the country. After five centuries under Sunni rule, Iraq's Shiites majority will get its elections in January. In the end, Mr. Sadr and the occupation have common cause on the issue that matters most: a stable democratic outcome.

The Americans, and the interim Iraqi government would do well to stop seeing these men as enemies and start working with them on building a free Iraq.

Read the whole article here http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15bull.html?oref=login

I'm tempted to say that the article is like the author's name (i.e., bull). If Sadr is promoting violence, however limited, to insure his future position, that doesn't sound like someone very committed to a democratic process. On the other hand, I guess in a country that has never known democracy, his methods probably make some sense. If Bull is correct, it suggests that the road to democracy or some semblance thereof in Iraq is going to be quite different from our experience and will require some real political skill on our part to manage (to the extent we can or should manage it at all).