Losing Hearts And Minds

"About 10,000 demonstrators, some in buses, others on foot, arrived in Najaf on Saturday to show their solidarity with the militants and act as human shields to protect the city." MSNBC, today

Well, the Deserter is finally proving himself to be a uniter rather than a divider. He is uniting the Shiite populations of Iraq and Iran by attacking Najaf. He is uniting all Shiites in opposition to the United States. By killing native Iraqi Shiites in Najaf he is alienating the very people he professed to liberate, the very people upon whom he vaingloriously claimed to be bestowing democracy.

It is difficult to imagine a more self-defeating Iraq policy than that pursued by the Deserter and his neocon masters. It is now apparent that the U.S. presence in Iraq is the source of instability, not the safeguard against it. But it would be a mistake to attribute this foolish policy to mere ineptitude on the part of our neocon government. Rather, it is the very purpose of this policy to create chaos, for chaos in Iraq is the only remaining justification for continuing this benighted occupation.

How else to explain our wildly careening policy vis a vis Muqtada al-Sadr and Najaf? In March, in the midst of relative calm in Iraq, we ignited an uprising by al-Sadr's militia by shuttering their two-bit newspaper. Following weeks of chaos, we then basically ceded Najaf and large parts of Baghdad to al-Sadr and his followers and relative calm again descended upon those areas. Now, with little in the way of explanation for yet another sudden shift in policy, we again elect to confront al-Sadr's militia.

Why did we initially incite al-Sadr's followers? Why did we then suddenly retreat from confrontation? Why have we now suddenly and mysteriously reversed course again and precipitated a potentially cataclysmic confrontation? What kind of policy is this?