My position on the war is that it is being fought incorrectly by good people who do not know what they are dealing with.

Your allusion to Gen. Petreaus respectfully referring to Mookie as a descendant of Mohammed would tend to only make me increase the caliber of the gun I’d put to his head.

Your are of the school that insists there are “good” Muslims that you can “deal” with and plant the seed of democracy. That is a waste of time , blood and treasure. At best you will have a sloppier Pakistan except you will be propping up democratic Iraq forever with your resources and threats.

I know that a lot of pride is getting in the way of pragmatism. You are placing trust in Islam which is always fatal.

My comments are meant for far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, they are aimed at all of Islam. Of course my simple approach won’t happen because it is to easy and definitely unPC. I would destroy the ideology not the people, of course you need a pretty heavy boot on the neck of the Muslim world when you do this.

The west does not know the heart of the enemy and assume and assign default motives and methods to the enemy as if they were western. Democracy imposed might work if you excised Islam from the picture first but, as you wish, Islam will be kept safe by kind hearted folks such as yourself and George Bush. and this struggle will carry on forever.

I do not serve your country as I am not a citizen of it. I don’t like seeing errors in relation to Islam being made and it has been a constant litany of errors starting with the lie that Islam is the religion of yada yada yada. America thus far has gotten it’s strategic and tactical plans for dealing with Islam from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim sources and still seek Islams opinion on dealing with Islam. Insanity.

The backdrop to Sadr’s dramatic statement was a secret trip Friday by Iraqi lawmakers to Qom, Iran’s holy city and headquarters for the Iranian clergy who run the country.
There the Iraqi lawmakers held talks with Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) brigades of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and signed an agreement with Sadr, which formed the basis of his statement Sunday, members of parliament said. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/32055.html

So who’s calling the shots in Iraq…Qassem Suleimani and al-Sadr?

Are you out there,TallDave?

Kill him? Are you mad? Making him a martyr and galvanizing his cause is foolish and strategically counter-productive. Our best opportunity is in supporting Shiite groups that are amenable to partnership with the US – such as Hakim’s (and by association, al Sistani’s) Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq. Hakim has met on multiple occasions with President Bush.

I don’t know what your position is on the war, whether you support OIF or not or what you think of GEN Petraues, but why do you think, as MSG Proctor pointed out, Petraeus refers to Sadr as “Sayid Moqtada al Sadr” (an honorific title acknowledging his descent from the Prophet Mohammed’s family)?

If your tactic for dealing with Muslims and/or Sadr were implemented, which thank God it never will be, there’d be no hope whatsoever of Iraq becoming anything more than a Palestinian state and more soldiers would undoubtedly die. It’s times like this I’m glad people like Petraeus and my husband and not people who hold your inhumane, ignorant view points serve our country.

Like the “Stalin’s” in the mid east, Obama must must be dealt with, and never be allowed to be in control. He is an American hating Judas!
leanright on March 31, 2008 at 8:24 AM

Jeeessss leanright, I thought you said you wouldn’t be”so crabby” when you got back from that steak dinner you ate out last Saturday?

Was it tough or over done?
You could have sent it back?

Actually, that inforamtion was probably a deliberate, subtle attack that may not even be true. It’s Maliki’s way of digging at Sadr for being Iran’s catspaw, something that Shia Iraqis dislike, Kurds get angry about, and Sunni Iraqis go fucking apeshit over.
TallDave on March 30, 2008 at 8:35 PM

TallDave, your verbal descriptions of the operational situation is much appreciated. Actual reports from boots on the ground usually contain the most accurate and objective Intel.

You might consider adding a brief glossary of acronyms’ for all those 2, 3 and 4 letter jobbies. Been a while since I served and some of the jargon has changed.

Drive on! HOOaaAH!

Not just wrong, but stupid, and a liar to boot. Trifecta!
Jaibones on March 30, 2008 at 10:46 PM

OK, stupid perhaps? Wrong, sometimes…yes; but where did I lie? Jaibones!

Just gettin’ started! We have a lot more snipers in country this time than we did back in ‘04 during Operation Kick Moooookie’s Azz and it’s a target rich environment! Good hunting gentlemen.

That is not just Iraq, it happens all over the place. How else did we end up on the same side as Joe Stalin?

If people tried as hard to have some faith in a remotely positive outcome in Iraq, as they do to trash that country and its people and any hope of victory we might get somewhere.

Stop it.
Unless I am mistaken, SADR got where he is by murdering his opposition cleric. Which line of historical thinking do you espouse to. The same stream which says the Sunis would never ally with the Shia to fight a common enemy?

But that’s just me, I’m lazy and I like short cuts to victory.

Please, at least don’t invest faith and pride in anything Muslim, Iraqi or Afghani.

So then, how do we negotiate the dance with him? Kill him? Are you mad? Making him a martyr and galvanizing his cause is foolish and strategically counter-productive. Our best opportunity is in supporting Shiite groups that are amenable to partnership with the US – such as Hakim’s (and by association, al Sistani’s) Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq. Hakim has met on multiple occasions with President Bush.

Those who dismiss Shiite theological trends and dynamics will only end up antagonizing Shiites and firming their resolve. We must engage the clerics, obtain their religious objectives, operationalize the objectives that we we can, and integrate them into Iraqi political life via non-violent means.

Until you understand Sadr’s ’street cred’ you are part of the problem. His militia is disintegrating, but an exterior religious antagonism (such as that perceived as coming from the US) may serve to galvanize the movement and substantiate it’s activities. Religious intelligence matters.

- Master Sergeant John Proctor

Am I wrong?

J_Gocht on March 30, 2008 at 8:03 PM

Not just wrong, but stupid, and a liar to boot. Trifecta!

Am I wrong?

J_Gocht on March 30, 2008 at 8:03 PM

Hey, one man’s coward is another man’s brilliant tactician.

Air power makes messes, Zorro.

The cowards way usually does…

alphie on March 30, 2008 at 5:18 PM

Actually, that inforamtion was probably a deliberate, subtle attack that may not even be true. It’s Maliki’s way of digging at Sadr for being Iran’s catspaw, something that Shia Iraqis dislike, Kurds get angry about, and Sunni Iraqis go fucking apeshit over.

Actually, there is.

Remember, most of this fighting is between the Iraqi Army and Sadr. In that last D3 poll, only four percent of Iraqis approve of attacks on the Iraqi Army. In that same poll, the militias get the most blame for Iraq’s problems.

I guess it’s possible this breaks Sadr’s way, but it seems very unlikely — and the fact he just essentially ordered his people to surrender tends to argue he didn’t like how the sentiment was moving either.

I remember the spike in Sadr’s popularity in 2004, when he was fighting U.S. forces. But approval for attacks on “the occupiers” has always been much higher; this is a whole different game.

The current fighting, which the government portrays as a crackdown on criminality, is better seen as a power grab, an effort by Mr. Maliki and the most powerful Shiite political parties to establish their authority over Basra and the parts of Baghdad that have eluded their grasp…

A smidgen of truth in a load of bullshit here. Sadr’s people have been crapping all over Basra and most people want something done about it. Sure, there’s politics involved here, but it’s not what Cordesman’s saying.

Look, like them or not, SCII won the msot votes in the election. The Kurds don’t like Sadr either. The Sunnis despise him. Politically, he has few friends. That makes it easier to move against him. That’s the political angle here.

A Basra free of the Mahdi Army is really only a Basra owned by militias from SCIRI, Fadhila, and Dawa.

Yeah, but they’ll work for the elected gov’t. That makes them Jacksonian Democrats. And anyways, if you don’t think America has the same problems with representative tribalism you must be colorblind; ours is just less violent.

Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council were likely to be routed because they were seen as having failed to bring development and government services…

I call 100% total bullshit here. Go back and look at the Shia numbers for Dawa’s Maliki; he’s around 60%. The only group that doesn’t like him is the Sunnis and they don’t live in Dasra. Look at the “who do you blame for violence” questions; the militias (i.e. Sadr) are viewed as the biggest problem; now they’re the people’s hope to “deliver services?” They turned the Ministry of Health into a complete fucking joke. It cannot be seriously asserted that anyone believes Sadr’s people are the ones who can do this.

I don’t buy this unless I see some seriously contradictory polls.

Exit quotation: “The Sadrists will likely view their survival as victory.”

LMAO OK, sure. That’s not just lowering the bar, that’s fucking burying it.

Say, could you give us your opinion on the Clinton/Wesley Clark way of doing things in Bosnia and Kosovo?
a capella on March 30, 2008 at 7:31 PM

Wasn’t that where the rotund chickenhawk from West Palm Beach called President Clinton a damn political coward because he had instructed the Air Force to bomb Milosevic and his military baby rapers from above 15 thousand feet?

President Clinton knew Milo’s ground fired missiles weren’t accurate above that altitude!

In fact, as I recall Milo only managed to shoot down one stealth bomber in our whole gosh darn very successful air campaign against those fascist murdering bastards?

Am I wrong?

Sadr orders followers to end fighting
By Bill RoggioMarch 30, 2008 11:27 AM
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/03/sadr_orders_follower.php

“Sadr’s call for an end to fighting by his followers comes as his Mahdi Army has taken high casualties over the past six days. Since the fighting began on Tuesday 358 Mahdi Army fighters were killed, 531 were wounded, 343 were captured, and 30 surrendered. The US and Iraqi security forces have killed 125 Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad alone, while Iraqi security forces have killed 140 Mahdi fighters in Basra.”

I will be interested to see if any of these numbers make any headlines or get much air time from the olberman/couric
crowd.

Ace calls me the Eeyore of the right-wing blogosphere, so let me stay true to form

Be that as it may, Cordesman is a first class, self-promoting douchebag. You may have some tidbit where he “tells the left something they didn’t want to hear”, but he has made his MSM career by making up stupid shit about Bush. Fuck Cordesman.

Ed had this story right the first time.

Air power makes messes, Zorro.

The cowards way usually does…

alphie on March 30, 2008 at 5:18 PM

Say, could you give us your opinion on the Clinton/Wesley Clark way of doing things in Bosnia and Kosovo?