Iraq War mistake #3281 -— Sadr’s existence.
Sadr has proven time and again to be, unwittingly of course, our greatest ally in the fight against his own Mahdi army. I am not sure we would have so easily defeated them without his help.
You are as wrong there as it is possible to be.
There seems to be a desperation around here to cling to ignorance of how Counter Insurgency differs from Conventional War. This is one of the political aspects of the problem that Conventional Military thinkers find so hard to deal with.
For example Al Sadr. Al Sadr is a clever little thug. He walks right up to the line but he does not cross it. He is typical of the sorts of messy little problems that crop up in a Counter Insurgency. NOT exactly an enemy not exactly an ally. So how you deal with him is troublesome.
Since Malki and Al Sadr are both Shia, Malki cannot squish him without splitting his own power base. So he keeps trying to negotiate with the twit. Frankly, I think with the terrorists mostly broken now is the time to finish breaking the militias.
Unfortunately as usual the Arab way kicks in again. Talk,talk,talk,talk,talk,talk and more talk. Someone needs to sit Maliki down and speak truth to him.
Here how Counter Insurgency done the Dinocon way would look.
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Americans: Yo, all you Iraqis. Now we know you all have been oppressed and terrorized by Saddam and his goons for about 40 years so we came over here to show you a better way. So gather round and we are going to teach you this thing called Democracy. We want to teach you this cause we figure if we get can get enough of you following this ideology you will not follow the ideology that preaches it is a good thing to fly airplanes into buildings full of our Civilians.
Now the first things you need to learn is this part about the Rule of Law. Study the sub chapters on Innocent until prove Guilty, Trial by Jury, Right to Legal Representation and really important, the chapter on outlawing Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Ok, now while you do that, we are going to arbitrarily round up and kill any Iraqis who we think maybe have ever talked mean about us.
What? No we are not going to bother with any of that messy Democracy stuff cause we are at war. And according to our Holloweird Movie guide to Military Action flicks any time you are at war you can waste anyone who pisses you off for what ever reason you want any way you want to do it. According to Hollyweird, we don’t need nothing like proof or nothing we can just go wack that little Al Sadr freak cause he pisses us off. Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence. Our action movie heros never bother with any evidence. In the Movie we watch on TV says we are just suppose to go kill him because he pisses us off so that what we want to do here. Now quit talking back and learn our lessons on Democracy.
Iraqi 1. Hey Mahmoud, why are we helping these clowns?
Iraqi 2. What do you mean Achmed, they got rid of Saddam!
Iraqi 1. They did? Looks to me like they just took his place.
Iraqi 2. Well ya so?
Iraqi 1. Well at least the old thugs were from around here. These guys are not only from out of town they are not even Muslims. We may has well have Muslim thugs if we got to have thugs.
Iraqi 2. You right, time to join the Jihad!
That is what this “Counter Insurgency doctrine as learned from watching TV dramas” would produce. It would of been utter stupidity for the US to follow the macho boy tactics as advocated by the Internet warriors and the Never been talking heads.