The most telling part of the execution

From the NYT:

Four executioners, drawn from the ranks of the Iraqi police, wearing black ski masks, shepherded him to where the thick rope resting on a red railing was at the ready.

And what kind of allegiances did these hand-picked, presumably top-of-the-line, cops have? Let's turn to the LAT:

The charged silence that settled over the execution chamber was broken by an exchange between Hussein and four guards, who were apparently followers of Muqtada Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric whose father was killed by Hussein.

"Muqtada Sadr!" they cried out.

Hussein scoffed in reply.

His last word was a sarcastic "Muqtada," Haddad said. "And then he was hanged."

At what point should we stop saying that Shiite militia have "infiltrated" the government and instead acknowledge that in large part they are the government?

P.S.  Abu Aardvark thinks the hasty offing of Saddam means the U.S. has written off the Sunnis and is now launching the "Shiite Option." (That's the nutty "strategy" of putting all our chips in with the Shiite in hopes of... I dunno, perhaps in hopes that they'll pound the Sunnis into submission.) Let's hope he's wrong.

Comments

[Michael Roston]

Great work, Eric.

With all the cell phone videos out there, it's pretty sickening. Clearly, they, and by they I mean us, wanted to get these images out to as many people as possible. I don't understand how they could have an "official videographer" and then let in a bunch of guys with cell phones capable of getting the whole thing for the entire world to see "unofficially." This was probably the most secure place in Baghdad EVER. The conceit of having an "official videographer" accompanied by a bunch of unofficial propagandists is terrifying.

[perennial realist]

Of course the "Shi'ite militia" has infiltrated the government of Iraq. Has everyone forgotten that Shi'ite Muslims were the majority in Iraq to start with? Sunni Muslims were the minority sect, but Saddam's tyrannical cadre meant that the Sunnis got their way for many moons.

Plus, I'm sure the hangmen would have said "Moqtada al-Sadr", because the prefix al- is crucial in Arabic patrilineage.

Iraq is a microcosm mirroring the larger sequence of events playing out around the world. It has been noted before that the Cold War kept the lid on conflicts great and small all over the planet, as the two sides largely tended their gardens in the interest of preventing escalation.

Look at Bosnia. A region of the world that has been the root of countless problems for centuries exploded into genocide only a few years after the Soviet Bloc crumbled into the corrupt mire from which it rose.

There are many more examples of this phenomenon, too sickening to recount. And as Shakespeare illustrated in "Romeo & Juliet", among others, the desire for revenge always leads to misery.

[wenis]

penis

[Tom Galloway]

Um, perhaps you haven't considered that the heckler could have just said Sadr's name knowing full well that it would jerk Saddam's chain before the rope jerked his neck?

[Maxtrue]

The following is a response to your comments from a military commander involved in the "militia" strategy on the ground in Iraq. He offers an opposing view which you remarks seem to overlook. The thread can be seen at Centerfield. Perhaps you would care to respond.

"So there's two possible interpretations here. One is that Muqtada al-Sadr has gained power through the rise of his militia and their propensity to use force; in this scenario, they intimidated poor, defenseless Da'wa, forced them to bend to al-Sadr's will, and are thereby wielding undue influence over the central government. If this is the case, then actively destroying JAM will break the Sadrist grip on Da'wa and enable Maliki to move forward with a unity government, unfettered by the spoiler Muqtada. Everything works out in this interpretation because we've conveniently decided to believe that Sadr alone is responsible for this situation and if you remove him from the equation, we revert to a Lockean state of nature.

But then there's the second interpretation: that Da'wa was caught flat-footed relative to SCIRI, whose superior militias were better-equipped, better-trained, and better-organized, and thereby enabled them to infiltrate the ISF, control the Shi'a dominated southern provinces, and direct the levers of the political landscape (note that Hakim's SCIRI-- not Jaafari/Maliki's Da'wa or Muqtada's OMS-- control every democratically-elected Provincial Council in southern Iraq. And every southern provincial Governor- with the exception of my counterpart in Karbala- is from SCIRI, as well). Here, too, Muqtada rose to power because of his militia and their willingness to use political violence. But instead of intimidating and influencing Da'wa, in this scenario Da'wa actively sought out a partnership with Muqtada because they feared the alternative- SCIRI cornering the market and driving them off the political map- and knew that only an alliance with Muqtada had the muscle to protect them against the SCIRI monolith.

In this scenario, if you eliminate al-Sadr's militia without addressing the power and influence of the Badr Corps (SCIRI's militia), you will have effectively handed control of the southern zone to SCIRI, forcing Da'wa to fold or seek support from somewhere else (and because SCIRI is more closely aligned with Iran, Da'wa would likely have to look to the Sunnis). In other words, it's not in Da'wa's interests to lose, so they're going to delay the game in order to prevent a SCIRI monopoly from emerging.

The wild card is the Iraqi Security Force- the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi Police who ostensibly owe their allegiance not to one of these political factions, but to the legitimate central government. Some of these units are well-trained and equipped, but heavily infiltrated by SCIRI, Da'wa, or al-Sadr; some of these units are poorly trained and equipped, but relatively independent from the militias. And some of these units are well-trained and equipped, and operate- as they're supposed to- independently of the political militias and serve the legitimate government. The trick is to minimize the first two types and maximize the third, and if and when there's enough of the third to be abel to fill the al-Sadr "vacuum," then it's time to move against him. But doing so beforehand puts Da'wa in a position that they will not accept. Mark my words: that they will not accept.

Finally, the point that no one's talking about is that Muqtada al-Sadr's has some legitimacy that we don't want to admit. He represents a large, well-organized political organization that is much, much larger than his illegitimate militia-- he has tremendous charisma and is quite popular with the urban poor and dispossessed (SCIRI and Da'wa are both seen to be more representative of the establishment, and in SCIRI's case, it is actually by philosophical design). The reaction to the recent US-Iraqi raid in Najaf that killed al-Sadr's chief lieutenant is all too telling here; the people of Najaf took to the streets to protest and, even now, there's considerable backlash among non-Sadrist Shi'a for how that went down (and it has heavily affected my own relations with my Iraqi counterparts, not that I'm necessarily opposed to what was done, mind you- nothing comes without complications and costs, and we have to accept that to work out here).

So, in short, I standby my comments from last week: first, you build independent and capable Iraqi Security Forces who can secure their people against internal and external threats; then you take down Sadr and (eventually) the other militias. If you do it out of sequence, you're not going to solve anything.

Posted by: Bobby at December 31, 2006 04:46 AM "

[Maxtrue]

The following remarks were made in response to a post about the killing of an al-Sadr deputy last week -which goes against the grain of this thread. Again, Bobby suggests a complicated situation that isn't reported very clearly in the press or on blogs......

" 'The headline, of course, was mostly wrong: it was Iraqi troops taking the initiative on this, the US troops were merely advisors;' (Jon's comment)

Indeed, this is usually the case, but I'm wondering where you got the inf*rmation to support this assessment. Admittedly, I have no oversight and little knowledge of the details about this particular operation (although one of the SF team leaders was my classmate at West Point). However, the perception among the Iraqis in Najaf and Karbala is that this operation was almost exclusively US-led, with little or no Iraqi buy-in.

This is significant because just a week ago, Najaf went PIC (Provincial Iraqi Control- basically, responsibility for securing the battlespace transfers from US to Iraqi officials, and it brings some limitations on what the US can do without prior coordination with Iraqi security forces). Prior to PIC, the Coalition controls and directs security in a province and tells the Iraqi security forces what to do; after PIC, the Iraqis control and direct security in their province, and Americans have to work through their leadership if we want to do something.

At least according to officials in Najaf, the US did not coordinate this operation through their offices, and simply swept in with their own hand-picked Iraqi security force in support. While it was tactically brilliant, one can imagine the strategic tension it has caused on the part of Iraqi provincial officials across the country who are wondering what's the point of working to PIC, if the US is simply going to ignore the very rules that we ourselves set up?

My guess is that this operation had been in the works for weeks, and when PIC got pushed up to December, the SF decided to go ahead with it, because the value-added in neutralizing Sahib al-Amiri (by all accounts, a bad guy) was worth the negative effect of souring relations with the locals (also, the SF don't interface with the provincial officials, so it's not their problem to deal with). And, indeed, it hasn't detrimentally affected my relationship with Karbala officials (although they were keen to tell me that when they go PIC, they don't want a similar situation occurring).

But, as always, there are no free lunches, every action has an opposite reaction, and be wary of those who would promise otherwise.

Posted by: Bobby at December 31, 2006 05:23 AM"

Iraq's representitive to the UN claims Sadr has not been found guilty of any crime. This is a Civil War which obviously involves US patient and clever tactics. Yes? The danger it seems, is to simplify.

[Lakers Tickets]

We find ourselves in an intractable position we will stradle for the next 10-15 years, perhaps longer if we are the victims of another attack. Here's the answer: bring back the draft. Force those Americans that would otherwise have no real stake in this "fight for civilization itself" (as G-Dub puts it) onto the front lines. Let's see where their opinions fall then...