Al-Sadr's Back

Moqtada Al-Sadr decided to show his face today with an interesting message to his followers: Stop fighting Iraqi's.

"Pay attention: This is an important point," he said. "As far as I know, the occupation is behind this, creating an excuse for it to stay in our beloved Iraq. So don't give it a reason, please."

Calling the message a fatwa -- a religious legal ruling -- al-Sadr said that "any fighting between the brothers is not allowed and [is] forbidden as long as they follow the good and reject the wrong. I advise the dear brothers in the Mehdi Army to resort to peaceful choices if they are attacked by the weak souls."

That's a very big step though. His militia has been responsible for thousands of deaths and he himself was wanted for the murder of a rival cleric a few years back. However, if he's sincere, which is a very big IF, and he militia actually listens to him, you can expect violence levels to drop drastically.

What I think it is is al-Sadr went to Iran and him and the Iranians came up with a simple plan: Stop the violence and the Americans will leave. Which is pretty much why we're still there. The Iraqi government and security forces aren't at 100% and violence levels are high in certain places. If those levels drop to 0%, and the Iraqi's can handle security for themselves, it's job done. What is interesting though, is that I'm willing to bet that Al-Sadr and the Iranians will use the opportunity when we leave to have great influence in Iraq without alienating ordinary Iraqi citizens with random acts of terrorism. It's a pretty simple, effective plan if you ask me.

But I still want those who committed these crimes against Iraqi citizens and our troops to be captured or killed. If al-Sadr's militia want to trade in their guns for political positions, I have no problem with that, as long as they didn't commit any crimes during their time in the militia. But only time will tell. What is most interesting is that the timing of al-Sadr's announcement is close to the time that the military funding budget was being finalized.

Perhaps al-Sadr came up with a plan to ask for non violence because he saw Democrats will wavering and calculated that if violence dropped to nothing, then Democrats would ask for troops to leave, and he would "declare" victory. It's certainly within the realm of possibility. I guess we'll see in the coming months.

Travis
travis@rightwinglunatic.com