Silence on Najaf

Dan, making this point with respect to an individual would be unfair. Any given blogger might have omitted mention of Najaf for all sorts of reasons. They might have got sick of the entire topic of Iraq, might not have paid attention etc etc.

But Chris didn’t pick on individuals. The fact that no one, or almost no-one, on the pro-war left is discussing Najaf is significant.

‘As a keen student of my writing, I think you’ll agree that I haven’t suddenly become silent on the subject of military expenditure after having previously obsessed about it.’

I’ll quibble about the word ‘keen’; I’m merely a dabbler in your oeuvre, Chris, if one with a good memory.

But you’re ignoring the main point: you express strong views in favour of various British military interventions- four, by my count. And yet it’s precisely the case that you don’t mention ‘military expenditure’. This is, I’m afraid, intellectually risible attitude: it’s as if I were to call for the British government to provide clean water for the entire 3rd world (a policy of which I would certainly approve) without even a mention of where the funding for such a massive project was coming from.

It’s also the case that you don’t mention the British service personnel whose difficult and often dangerous task it is to carry out the interventions of which you approve. Nor do you realise the rather obvious point that a man who approves of military intervention x should also take an interest in whether his country’s armed forces are adequately funded and equipped, since if they are not, their mission will become unnecessarily dangerous, if not impossible. Now this attitude is worse than intellectually risible: it is very hard, in my eyes, to defend this morally. Further, a point which doesn’t even seem to have registered with you, to call for troops to put themselves in harm’s way and then to fail to praise them for having done so in such a brave and competent fashion is, again, morally very hard to take.

For this reason I respectfully disagree with John Q’s argument: it’s not the case that I’m criticising Chris B for failing to address a single topic (in this instance, military intervention), which as JQ notes, is something that could have multiple justifiable causes. It’s rather that I strongly object to the way in which Chris B addresses this topic. I note, as a minor point, that a tone of utter self-righteousness vis-a-vis pro-war bloggers comes ill from a man who is himself a pro-certain-wars blogger, and whose writings on the topic are a sort of fantasy exercise in which troops and their equipment magically spring out of thin air.

Shorter Chris Bertram: Oh, Christ, losing another argument…Look over there! The schools! The hospitals!

Shorter Chris Bertram (continued):
Keep looking! The hospitals! The schools! The… er… the football!

Shorter Dan Hardie: only five paragraphs not getting the point.

Thanks, Dan. I accept your retreat from the topic to that of grammar criticism. Enjoy.

Entertaining as this discussion has been, I’d still like to hear from anyone with a left/liberal pro-war position what they think about the Najaf fighting, or even why they it was not significant enough to merit discussion.

As the author of the offending comment (cautioning John Quiggin about obsession) let me point out that I was not faulting his reading of the Najaf outcome. The problem he is faced with is that nobody is presenting a worthwhile case for America’s conduct of the war. So there is nobody for him to argue with. Why pick on the left? The pro-war right hasn’t had much to say for itself either. There are plenty of bloggers wittering on about Islamofascists, but no effort is made to explain how shooting up a city sacred to Shiites is supposed to slow the proliferation of these ideological hybrids. Criticise the decision to go after Muqtada and you get the schoolboy’s response: he started it. Apparently the way to extend Allawi’s authority beyond the Green Zone is to attack his principal enemy on the latter’s preferred battleground. The fact that Allawi’s own troops don’t want to fight there doesn’t matter.

Many times since Operation Rolling Blunder was first mooted I have met with complaints that Europe should be supporting American policy. What policy? The policy of destroying Fallujah’s Baathists or the policy of handing the town over to them? The policy of putting Muqtada al-Sadr behind bars or the policy of bringing him into the political arena? The policies of Garner or Bremmer, Chalabi or Allawi? Or for that matter of the State Department or the Pentagon?

I don’t think John Quiggin is wrong, merely that he is wasting his time. (So am I of course, but the opportunity cost to society is smaller.) I fear that Benjamin Franklin’s words will be the best epitaph on America’s non-policy in Iraq: experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

I’ve been waiting for someone on the left to acknowledge that Sadrist has razed villages before and its leader has attempted to impose anti-democratic rule. I suppose this would make it more difficult to suggest that there is no justification for removing Sadr’s militia.

I’ve been through this before with John Quiggen on other threads: he simply will not distinguish between Sadrists attempt to usurp Iraqi’s chance for liberal democracy and the West’s attempt to give them that chance. When he does – when anyone on the left does – they’ll be taken alot more seriously.

Barry- it’s not possible to discuss things when poster only writes one incomprehensible sentence; lack of retreat from topic is clearly visible in reply to other, intelligible posters. Having said that: Ideas sleep green furiously, Barry. I trust I’ll get a full reply from you.

Mark and people who think like Mark- JQ and Dsquared and others of their ilk have stated that they feel contempt for Sadr, hold him responsible for murder and other crimes, fear his goal of a theocratic (and, no doubt, autocratic, with you-know-who as the autocrat) Iraq… They despise Sadr but are not impressed by the tactics used against him. I can’t see a useful discussion developing until you at least acknowledge this.

“Why because he actually isnt in Iraq nor is he Iraqi.”

Astronomers aren’t extraterrestrials, and don’t live in outer space either.

“Why because he actually isnt in Iraq nor is he Iraqi.”

Because he speaks Arabic, reads and consults Arabic sources daily, and sifts intelligently for the benefit of his readers.

However it is still a good point, and besides the sources Cole links to on his page, Cole should be supplemented with Zeyad of Healing Iraq and Raed of Baghdad Burning, both of whom have good blogrolls of other Iraqi bloggers.
…
As far as the events in Najaf, I would only say that Allawi and the Americans are background players to the actually important struggle between Sadr and Sistani. What is going on in Iraq is very similar to what is going on in the US….actual politics. The fact that politics is being done with guns in Iraq with blood tragically spilled…..well it is still early in the American political season. Give us a couple weeks.

Well, Cristopher from Back To Iraq is in Iraq, and this is what happened in Najaf yesterday:

I was on the roof trying to get my BGan to connect when Najaf’s finest burst onto the roof with a Kalashnikov and order me and the other journalists down to the lobby. The cops had raided the hotel and forced all the journalists out onto the street. We were terrified. The cops yelled at us and pointed their weapons toward us. Several large trucks were waiting and knew we would be loaded onto them. Then they started shooting.

– as reported among others by the Guardian, see also RSF (and Body and Soul).

Not really seen this story given much attention in the media at large, though. Not to mention blogs. Maybe detaining journalists at gunpoint is also the kind of thing about Iraq that people shouldn’t “obsess” about?

BTW, here is a good analysis of the politics of the situation, though it has been slightly overtaken by events.

“JQ and Dsquared and others of their ilk have stated that they feel contempt for Sadr, hold him responsible for murder and other crimes, fear his goal of a theocratic (and, no doubt, autocratic, with you-know-who as the autocrat) Iraq…”

Yes, but their version of ‘hold him responsible’ includes letting him take over cities and kill people at whim with his thugs. Their version of ‘deplore’ means ‘talk about him as a vehicle to criticize the US’ and their version of ‘feel contempt’ involves sneering from afar while he tries to set up the very kind of regime that just hanged a girl for having sex.

But other than that, they are all over him.

Holsclaw wrote:
“Yes, but their version of ?hold him responsible? includes letting him take over cities and kill people at whim with his thugs. Their version of ?deplore? means ?talk about him as a vehicle to criticize the US? and their version of ?feel contempt? involves sneering from afar while he tries to set up the very kind of regime that just hanged a girl for having sex.
But other than that, they are all over him. ”

But what else can they do, Mr. Holsclaw, other than sneer from afar? You rail and rage from afar, and yet it has not the slightest impact on Sadr’s activities either. This, I fear, is the nature of blogospheric moral outrage: full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.

You can politically support efforts to get rid of him, or you can politically support efforts to get in the way of getting rid of him.

JQ and D-squared choose the latter.

The criticism of JQ, D-squared and myself has been that efforts to get rid of him have been woefully incompetent leading to deaths of hundreds while undermining our overall efforts in iraq.

The habit of war partisans to impugne the motives of critics rather than address their criticism stirkes me as silly. Unless of course you buy the trope that their criticisms are the cause of Coalition failure in Iraq. I would be very disappointed in you Sebastian, were you to resort to such stale rightwing thinking.

Holsclaw wrote:
“You can politically support efforts to get rid of him, or you can politically support efforts to get in the way of getting rid of him.”

Which political efforts to thwart the US Marines in Najaf are the Crooked Timberites supporting?

Are there in fact any other players present in Najaf other than the US/Allawi on the one hand, and Sadr on the other?

Your patriotism is touching, and I salute you, but you have no more effect on the outcome than a baseball fan cheering his team on in front of the TV set.

If there is a victory or a fuck-up in Najaf, the responsibility will lie wholly – and I mean wholly – with the parties on the ground there, and their leaders. The Crooked Timberites may be standing in front of the TV cheering for the Red Sox, but foolish would be the Braves fan who would ascribe his team’s loss to those cheers.

Okay, Sebastian, anyone who suggests that any operation in any war under any circumstances may have been in any way misconceived is either a tacit supporter of the enemy or an effete, limp-wristed liberal incapable of seeing that dictators must be opposed. Case closed. I used to think that the Pentagon couldn’t have planned this occupation worse if they’d tried, but that clearly isn’t true. They could have entrusted you with operational matters, and handed budgeting over to Chris Bertram.

The objection that anti-war leftists raise about the alleged incompetence of the post-war planning should properly be subsumed under the broader moral reasoning for or against the war. That is, one should argue that the negligent planning caused the los of further lives than would otherwise be the case. THis loss of lives and increased suffering should then be factored into the anti-war side, and weighed against the reasonably anticipated loss of life and increased suffering under Saddam’s continued rule.

I haven’t seen anyone on the left make this argument such that one could make the moral case against the war. I’d be interested to see someone make it. Until then, the anti-war left can’t credibly argue that their opposition to the war wasn’t immoral.

“Which political efforts to thwart the US Marines in Najaf are the Crooked Timberites supporting?”

They oppose the US Marines fighting with Sadr when Sadr kills civilians to take over towns.

Dan Hardie, you don’t have to get so theoretical. I am criticizing specific views by actual people in this actual forum. I’m not criticizing every possible question about any possible war. I’m talking specifically about the wisdom of letting Sadr gain power or leaving Saddam in power. I’m talking specifically about the need to use actual force and often killing in order to prevent Sadr from gaining power or to remove Saddam from power.

“but neither strikes me as coming from a left/liberal position.”

Neither person or neither argument? The argument above is certainly not alien to what used to be the left.

And I presume you read Geras?

>And I presume you read Geras?

Geras is exactly the type of person I had in mind (and I assume the same is true for Chris).

Searching his August archive for “Najaf” and “Sadr” produces a snark about Naomi Klein and some links, hostile to Sadr, but posted without comment on the fighting or the US role in it.

Sebastian, the point was made in some detail in comments to John’s last post that among those limp-wristed liberals worried about the decision of a USMC local commander to go after Sadr were… officers in the US Army. Link:
http://www.indystar.com/articles/7/171252-1377-010.html

You contend that people on this thread ‘use Sadr as a vehicle to criticize the US’. Well, yes, Daniel Davies is a terrorist and Ayatollah Al-Qig’n is his spiritual leader- the beard is a bit of a giveaway. But I personally am worried about what is happening to British soldiers in Basra and nearby towns, three of whom have been shot dead this month, since the formerly quiet areas of the Shi’ite south have, for inexplicable reasons, become rather violent in the last month.

What are the results of this splendid Najaf policy? After three weeks of fighting, Sadr is, as might well have been foretold, ‘as free as any Iraqi’ to quote an Iraqi minister. He’s lost his Najaf sanctuary? I predict he will head rapidly towards the 2 million inhabitants of Sadr City. Any attempt to find him there will meet with the same success as in Najaf. His Mahdi army have laid down their AKs and headed home, unmolested by Iraqi police or US troops? Yes, and it’s beyond the grounds of possibility that they will rearm themselves in a country awash with small arms and ammunition. I wouldn’t have thought, either, that they will now have learnt the lesson that holding ground is a bad idea for a guerrilla army, and switch to hit-and-run tactics instead. I shan’t dwell on the tedious details of dead Iraqi civilians, but I do note that 57 US service personnel have died this month, up from July, which in turn saw a rising death toll in relation to June. Did I mention that reports in the papers say that Sistani is demanding that Najaf and Kufa become ‘demilitarised’- ie, free of US troops, like, say, Fallujah? It really was worth fighting for three bloody weeks so that US troops could then be withdrawn from the scene of the fighting.

I rather doubt that future Staff Colleges will not be studying the brilliance of the Najaf strategy. But I’m sure it would have worked if there hadn’t been all these damn liberals determining the policy of the Bush administration in Iraq.

John, I’m a lefty who initially supported taking Sadr out but soon figured that the seige of Najaf would be a strategic defeat.

Here’s is my first Najaf post, and this is my second.

It appears that Sistani has saved our tuchus for now.

Entertaining as this discussion has been, I’d still like to hear from anyone with a left/liberal pro-war position what they think about the Najaf fighting, or even why they it was not significant enough to merit discussion.

Well, Michael Totten’s out of town right now, but he blogged in favor of killing Sadr outright on August 9, 10, 12, 13, and 18.

As for me, I’m not left/liberal, so I suppose my posts of August 12, 13, 19, and 26 don’t count.

Now that your hopes and dreams have been realized vis-a-vis Sadr, you might be interested in this news:

Iraqi police said on Friday they found “many” bodies of dead civilians and police, including some who were executed and mutilated, at a religious court set up by rebel cleric Moqtada Sadr in Najaf.

“We entered the building which was being used as Moqtada Sadr’s court and we discovered in the basement a large number of bodies of police and ordinary civilians,” said the deputy head of the Najaf police, General Amer Hamza al-Daami.

“Some were executed, others were mutilated and others were burned.”

Thank goodness the Iraqis didn’t make a martyr of him!

Dipnut, I found this in the (pro-war Conservative) Telegraph. Key quote

The brutality of Najaf’s police gave a glimpse of a Saddamist past that could yet become Iraq’s future if Mr Allawi fails.

Police led journalists to Sadr’s Islamic court yesterday to view 16 decomposing corpses. Waving pictures of Sadr next to the bodies, they said these were people who had been tortured by the Mahdi army for breaking Islamic law. Cans of beer were produced to suggest Sadr’s clerics had been carousing.

There was no evidence of torture and Sadr’s office said plausibly that the 16 were mainly “martyrs” whose bodies could not be evacuated because of the fighting.

OTOH, the Guardian seemed to support the police version.

Ethesis, there is reason to trust reports that the Mahdi Army is (was?) made up largely of foreigners, specifically Iranians, and not disgruntled Iraqis as Quiggin assumes. This idea is strongly supported by information which is not in doubt: the Mahdi Army have serious weapons. We know they have mortars and RPGs. The New York Times ran a picture of one of them with a belt-fed machine gun. Having such weapons (and ammunition to feed them with) suggests far stronger logistical support than an irregular “people’s army” could cobble up on short notice, especially when you consider they’re supposed to be angry because they’re unemployed and broke. Then there’s the matter of expertise. Guns don’t shoot themselves; it takes a skilled operator to get any use out of a mortar or a machine gun; skill needs training and practice, which is expensive. Quiggin, of course, is from one of those gun-fearing wussy countries, so these aren’t the kinds of things which would naturally occur to him. But the Mahdi have massive assistance from somewhere, and Tehran is the sensible guess.

Dipnut, Australians are from one of those ‘gun-fearing wussy countries’, eh? Mention that to the next Australian you meet and I’ll pay your subsequent dental bills. Mention it to a member of the RAR and I’ll see if I can chip in some money for your wheelchair. And a ‘belt-fed machine-gun’ is evidence of logistical support from another country? Nurse, Mr Dipnut’s medication.

Dipnut, the Iraqi army was one of the largest armies in the region (maybe Iran’s was bigger, I don’t recall), and they fought a fairly long-running war against Iran. The number of Iraqis who know how to operate belt-fed MGs, RPGs or mortars, all cheap and ubiquitous weapons in any army, must run into six figures.

And training new blood isn’t that expensive; we’re not talking Top Gun here. If poverty-stricken Afghans could learn how to use mortars, RPGs and MGs during the Soviet occupation, and Somalis could do the same during their troubles, then I’m sure that somewhat better-off Iraqis could afford to do the same.

And RPGs were designed by an unsung genius to be simple to use by any uneducated conscript. You just estimate the range, line up the target in the sights and press the trigger. If it’s really close, or you’re just laying down suppressive fire, omit step one. I seem to recall that the rounds are dirt-cheap: $40? Wouldn’t need more than a half-dozen rounds to train up to adequate accuracy, I’d think. I spend more on my language lessons.

1. My critique of the Najaf campaign was specifically directed at the left-liberal ‘moral’ case for the war and Chris followed up on this
2. If you look, you’ll find very few posts on CT that are directly focused on Israel-Palestine. The issue comes up all the time because of its centrality in world events, not because we focus on it.

Can Iraqis not be liberal/left? What about journalists?

Australians are from one of those ‘gun-fearing wussy countries’, eh? Mention that to the next Australian you meet and I’ll pay your subsequent dental bills. Mention it to a member of the RAR and I’ll see if I can chip in some money for your wheelchair.

Point taken, Dan. I apologize, and amend my statement as follows: John Quiggin, specifically, is a gun-fearing wussy.

dipnut, for someone too gutless to post under your own name, you do a mean line in insults. I don’t know how I’ll carry on after this.

dipnut, for someone too gutless to post under your own name, you do a mean line in insults.

“Gun-fearing wussy” isn’t an insult, John. I should think you’d wear it with pride. As for my name, you may look it up anytime.

Seriously: review all the comments I’ve ever made at CT. I’ve taken a lot of abuse from your commenters, and come back with the gentle answer which turneth away wrath, as often as not.

I really do feel bad about that crack regarding Australia. Australia has stood by us splendidly, and I’m ashamed.

I’m just upset by this al-Sadr business. It marks the first major defeat in the war; a totally unjustified pre-emptive surrender. We (by which I mostly mean, Iraqis) will pay dearly for it.

You’ve signed on to some disastrous foolishness, John. So I’ll ask you the same question I asked Daniel. You don’t owe me an answer, by the way.

What do you know about war, and how do you know it?