Najaf Winners and Losers

[gottaB]

Juan Cole's View:

http://www.juancole.com/2004_08_01_juancole_archive.html#109359005659851262


Juan Cole and Eric Davis on NewsHour:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec04/najaf_8-26.html


Eric Davis' homepage:

http://fas-polisci.rutgers.edu/~davis/

There is wide agreement that Sistani's status has been enhanced, and that the citizens of Najaf will benefit from the peace.

What about the other antagonists? Esp. the US and Al-Sadr?

[jackofhearts]

1. Sadr does not so much win...

But the US loses big. The destruction they have waged upon the city is a disgrace to America. The number of civilians killed and maimed of course will never be known to the American public but the Iraqis know. For Sadr's army to have stood up to American forces and brought the whole thing to a conclusion where the US must leave the city...regardless of how that was accomplished is a huge blow to America. It will only embolden all Iraqis against the occupiers.

We Americans should hang our heads in shame for what we have done the people of Iraq. Our government has killed and maimed 10's of 1000's of innocent Iraqi citizens and yet somehow our government still calls their mission a moral one. We blow up babies and mothers yet American citizens still think Osama is the bad guy. We have a terrorist run government. OBL is NO WORSE than bush and rumsfeld and rice and wolfowitz when it comes to killing innocent people...in fact if your keeping score bush wins. They should all die and rot in hell.

[Disturbed]

2. The real winner is al Sistani.

He could call for a mass uprising against the US Occupation and the US Puppet Govt. and a few million Iraqis would fight but he won't because in my view he wishes to avoid a huge bloodbath and feels that eventually the Iraqis will be able to capture their country back.

[gottaB]

3. OBL, Vulcan equivalence

OBL attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania not because they posed a direct threat to his organization, but because they were soft targets and he wanted to create a spectacle of death and destruction. Ditto WTC.

Have the Vulcans chosen targets because they were easy and in order to create spectacles of death and destruction? It's arguable. However, in its public relations the Pentagon seems more concerned with covering up its culpability than in publicizing the damage inflicted to life and limb. That strikes me as reflecting a fundamentally non-terrorist moral sensibility. One could argue that the sensibility is phony or not matched by deeds, or just as morally repugnant as the terrorist view. It does seem different, though. I'd say that the moral sensibility in itself was preferable to the terrorist moral stance, although cynical exploitations of that sensibility can be, on a kind of technical level, akin to terrorism. Maybe that's an aspect of the militarization of sentiment or core values. Hmm.

OBL's disrespect for innocents is explicit. In word and deed, he's repugnant.

Hmmm.

[jackofhearts]

6. Well stated gottab but...

Can we really say there is any difference in "a spectacle of death and destruction" and "shock and awe" when both were committed with the full knowledge that innocent people would die? In fact the whole shock and awe marketing ploy was used to induce fear...just as OBL's attacks were meant to do.

Attacking known civilian residential areas with 2000 lb bombs is no less disrespectful of human life than OBL's attacks on the WTC. Killing of innocents is never justified...ever. Lets not let the heartless bastards who are orchestrating this shameful murderous rampage make us think they are the good guys...they are terrorists. Its just that they are terrorizing Iraqs and not us Americans. Does that make them morally superior? I think not.

[gottaB]

7. the rightwing defense of "shock and awe"

Is that the strategy is meant to inspire terror within the ranks of the enemy military, not the general population.

Attacking known civilian areas with 2000lb bombs. The justification from the military is that their targets, which are real military threats, haven taken up positions within those areas. So I think that's a slightly different moral question than attacking a soft target in the belief that the people you kill don't deserve to live. In the military case, you have to ask whether care was taken to avoid killing noncombatants, whether the force applied was proportionate, what level and kind of threat the target represents.

In fact, in the first months of occupation, the policy of targetted missile strikes against Baathist regime leaders killed many hundreds of innocents and like zilch in the way of legitimate threats. The airstrikes during the first Fallujah siege were admitedly disproportionate, and therefore definitely criminal and arguably terrorist in nature. Many of the recent bombardments seem callous and disproportionate to me. I don't know that they're terrorist in nature, but the military does not have a good track record here.

Here's an equation. Pretend that one in a thousand US airstrikes is indisputably terrorist in intent and effect. Do you say that the military is 99.9% non-terrorist? At low intesnity, it would seem to be less lethal than al Qaida or any other terrorist organization. But as the military launches more and more airstrikes, the body count of US terrorism greatly exceeds that of al Qaida. What sense would it make to say that the military was 99.9% non-terrorist when it killed more innocents in terrorist attacks than the world's most active terrorist network? And if you, as head of state or military advisor, craft a policy that calls for a gazillion airstrikes, knowing that 1 in a 1000 will kill innocents and terrorize non-combatants, how can you say you're not a terrorist?

Now, the militarists will either deny prior knowledge that thier weapons terrorize and kill the innocent ("Bad people have parties too"), much less that they sometimes do so with clear intent (as if the moral sense of their warfighters were as infallible as their armaments), or else they will argue that the threat they face justifies the bad things that happen when you launch a gazillion airstrikes. But in the case of Iraq that would be a flat out lie. So, yeah, I agree with you that the Vulcans disrepsect human life as much as if not more than OBL. I don't extend that judgement to every decision made in the Iraq conflict, even those that are unethical or in violation of Geneva protocols. But there are a lot of immoral decisions being made, concatenations of meanness and violence that yield only more meanness and violence. It's worth asking.

Interesting.

[gottaB]

4. kick for more votes

:kick:

[theboss]

5. I did this last night.

Biggest Loser: Allaywi (or however his named is spelled; it's late). He just been revealed to be the 4th (at best) most powerful entity in the US. Right now, it goes Sistani, US Military, and Sadr.

Biggest Winner: Sistani. It's his show now. He basically proved that Sadr answers to him and that nothing is going to get done without his approval at this point. If he wanted to, he could probably call for something similar to the Iranian Revolution in Iran. Of course, Iran didn't have 130,000 US Soldiers in it. A Revolution would be a bloodbath and Sistani knows it.

Second Biggest Winner: Iran. Things are inching along nicely for Iraq to become if not a puppet state, then at least a client state.

Tie: Sadr. This worked out better than can be expected. First of all, he will probably live and remain free. That was certainly no guarantee a week ago. And even if he needed Sistani to save him (proving he is not the top dog), he now has a name and a large group of followers. If he plays the game for the long haul, he has a future. Of course, he could still get iced tomorrow.

Loser: US. Avoided a popular uprising and bloodbath. Still obstensibly in control. But it's clear now where the hearts and minds of the people are and it's not with the Governing Council.

[Aidoneus]

8. Re: Iran/etc

Not really.. they put their eggs in every basket, but I think they were hoping for more influence given to Chalabi, the Kurds, SCIRI, and al-Daawa. Sadr & Sistani represent independent Iraqi forces with their own ideas in mind. To some degree friendly to the Islamic Republic, but neither would be a puppet of them.

If anything, the barbaric atrocities in Najaf showed the effective inability of the Islamic Republic to forcefully act in the best, or even most desperate, interests of the Muslim `Ummah, as they had in fact done before during the zionist invaders' rape of Lebanon and in forming the Hizbu`llah resistance movement. Perhaps they are just waiting for the supreme means of defense before acting any more than cautiously.

Of course Sistani(HA) comes out looking the best. It worked out somewhat evenly for Sadr(HA). Prestige took both a giant leap in his favour, and a giant leap against it, as the Mahdi's Army stayed steadfast in resistance to the crusaders and collaborating agents, but then he left the stage without the last drop of his blood spilling as per claims. It was in the best examples of Haz.Imam Husayn(AS) for the army to resist the invader in spite of the odds and atrocities unleashed, but in the worst example of Haz.Imam Ali(PBUH) to consider a rigged meeting towards "ceasefires" with the apostates and hypocrites at the point of their greatest overall effective strength over them.
Sistani breaking the siege gives the image of subordinating Sadr, but at least brings them back on the same wavelength and strengthens the marja`iyat in Iraq. At the least and most, it gives some very tense people a day or two of quiet to relax, which I guess is all that could be asked for.