Bad news from some newspapers; there are suggestions coming through that Sadr was whiling away the time in Najaf by running a sharia court, complete with executions and mutilations.
The specific allegations about the 20 bodies in Najaf are not what I would call established fact – the bodies might simply be casualties of the fighting, and the fact that the allegations are being made by the Iraqi government undercuts their credibility somewhat given the number of fibs they’ve told about Najaf over the last few weeks – but the general historical sweep is likely to be accurate. When and if Sadr and Sistani are brought into the political process, it is very likely indeed that one of their main priorities will be to introduce sharia courts, and sharia courts execute and mutilate people.
I merely emphasise this for two reasons. First, despite what a few right-wing trolls in our comments section think, precisely none of the case made on CT for a political solution in Najaf has depended on our believing that Sadr is a wonderful person, father of his nation or in any way a progressive force. Second, since we’ve covered the issue for weeks rather than keeping gob shut until the opportunity presented itself to say “look, they’re savages”, we’ve perhaps built up a little bit of credibility in the bank which could profitably be used on a discussion of what place sharia courts have in the future of Iraq.
Any such discussion is going to have to take place, however, on the basis of facts rather than hopes. Even after all the damage done over the last eighteen months by believing that wanting something to be true is almost the same as knowing it to be true, there are still people, in government and wih weblogs, who think that Sistani and Sadr are marginal figures. They’re not. It’s visibly the case that Sadr can raise a militia[1] capable of fighting a substantial foreign military presence to a standstill, while Sistani can raise thousands of people to march for him within 24 hours. It’s not a question of whether they should or shouldn’t be in the political process; fundamentalist, Iran-facing Shia is there, it’s very big in terms of sheer numbers and even bigger in terms of numbers willing to act, so it’s politically important. The only question is how it gets brought into the political process; do we try to bring Sadr and Sistani[2] into negotiations, into government and, as John suggested two weeks ago, hope that, as in SouthEast Asia, involvement in government will mellow them? Or do we decide that the price of compromise is too high if it involves sharia courts?[3] And if we decide on the second option, do we expect that Sadr and Sistani will sit on their hands?
Footnote:
[1]Given that military hardware appears to be almost as easy to get hold of in Iraq as it is in Manchester, one can only caution against making the assumption that Sadr’s militia will ever be “disarmed”.
[2]It seems to me very important indeed to get some informed analysis of the relationship between Sadr and Sistani, and the extent to which they can be regarded as a unit.
[3]Or perhaps more accurately, “if it involves state-sponsored sharia courts”. We know from Nigeria and Pakistan that it is entirely possible for liberal-democratic official institutions to exist alongside stonings and sharia.
{ 107 comments }
islamoyankee 08.28.04 at 3:30 pm
I think it’s a mistake to lump Sadr and Sistani together. I’ve argued on my blog that Sadr is filling a vacuum created by the marginalization of Sistani by the US. Sistani is a high-ranking cleric, who does not believe the state should be involved in Islam, or vice versa. Sadr is the son of a prominent religious thinker, but has not standing in his own right. If he was running a shari’ah court, it was outside of his abilities and authority, and Sistani and his followers can deal with far more effectively than Allawi or the US can.
Rook 08.28.04 at 4:28 pm
Having been to Sistani’s Web page, I have to agree with islamoyankee. I think Sistani is probable our best bet in eventually seeing a stable, Iraq. As to democratic? I don’t know if there is anyone in Iraq capable of establishing the start of democracy.
Frank 08.28.04 at 4:31 pm
It’s a bit beside the issue, but US justice and sharia justice differ not much in the execution and mutilation part. Executions are part of US civil justice, and in the military domain, a (now retracted) advice called anything short of organ damage acceptable during interrogation.
And personally, I find it a bit confusing that people think electrocution is acceptable and whipping or stoning not.
The real difference is in other domains.
Steve Carr 08.28.04 at 4:52 pm
Frank, do you honestly see no difference between executing someone for murder and executing someone for adultery (or, if she’s a woman, executing her for having been raped)? Do you see no difference between imprisoning someone for robbery and cutting off their hands?
Of course the real question about Frank’s post, as it is with so many of these comments in CT threads, is: How can a seemingly rational person write such nonsensical words?
Frank 08.28.04 at 5:26 pm
do you honestly see no difference between executing someone for murder and executing someone for adultery
Execution is execution. You might have noticed that I wrote:
The real difference is in other domains.
Like that there is no capital punishment for adultery in the US.
Matthew2 08.28.04 at 5:31 pm
Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. This is democracy and liberation for Iraq; after all, these people were opressed by Saddam, the hawks should be delighted that they are liberated and active.
This is important because if the extremist branch wasn’t being supressed by the US, as they realise their mistake too late, they wouldn’t be so inflamed and maybe the more reasonable (and more numerous) factions would edge out.
Motoko Kusanagi 08.28.04 at 5:36 pm
I think it’s a mistake to lump Sadr and Sistani together
To me it looks as if the two of them are playing good cop/bad cop. That may sound like a silly joke, but I’m quite serious. The pattern is clear: Sadr provokes, Sistani calms things down, and at the end of the cycle the position of both seems better than before. I’m not saying they plan such a strategy together, but since it has proved effective a few times, they might have developed a kind of silent agreement.
kevin donoghue 08.28.04 at 5:36 pm
“It seems to me very important indeed to get some informed analysis of the relationship between Sadr and Sistani, and the extent to which they can be regarded as a unit.â€
Most of us rely on Juan Cole for guidance, supplemented by a few Iraqi bloggers such as Healing Iraq, Raed and Baghdad Burning. Cole’s take is very easy for me to understand: Sistani, he says, is akin to a prominent Catholic bishop in 1950s Ireland. If that is a sound analogy – and it has performed remarkably well so far – then Americans cannot negotiate with Sistani. He will simply tell them to go and talk to the relevant Iraqi official. Of course, that official will know Sistani’s thinking and will disregard it at his peril. Sadr on the other hand is more like a prominent IRA man, but in a country whose condition is more chaotic than Ireland was even in 1920, never mind the 1950s.
The relationship between Sistani and Sadr, on that basis, is one of deep mutual suspicion tempered by hostility to the infidel occupiers. They have some goals in common: getting the Americans out and building a unified, Shiite-dominated Iraq. But Sistani has a following includes both the poor and also people who have a lot more to lose than their chains. Muqtada’s followers are mostly jobless young men whose idea of status is brandishing guns and RPGs in their local neighbourhoods.
I suspect that Americans will try to play them off against each other but I don’t think that will work. At the end of the day these guys are not the real puzzle. The hardest question to answer is: what does America want? In no particular order a partial answer might be: the nearest thing to a secular, tolerant democracy that Iraq can produce; an ally to confront Iran, Syria and any terrorist groups the US may be worried about; a reliable oil supply.
If these goals are not entirely compatible, what matters most?
kevin donoghue 08.28.04 at 5:39 pm
Motoko, I agree with your good cop, bad cop analogy; that’s partly what I mean by having goals in common.
islamoyankee 08.28.04 at 5:55 pm
Sadr and Sistani may have come into a good cop/bad cop dichotomy, but the question is why. Sistani was quickly pushed aside because he is an ayatollah – shades of Khomeini – even though he opposed and opposes Khomeini’s notion of vilayet-e faqih. Sadr has no serious religious training, and therefore no serious religious standing, in the Ithna’ashari tradition. He rested on the laurels of his father and support from Iran. Because he was outside the clerical structure, the US propped him up as the voice of Iraqi Shi’ah. However, as has been pointed out above, Sadr’s following is mostly disenfranchised young men; Sadr is an over-glorified thug, and his “army” is an exceptionally well-armed gang. The Dhu’lfiqar Army in Karbala opposed him and drove him out, because they recognized his lack of standing to represent the community and his defeatist agenda. Sistani has repeatedly asked to be allowed to deal with Sadr and the US has not green-lighted him. Juan Cole comments that it’s interesting that this intervention seems to have come through the British, not the US. The good cop/bad cop seems to be happening because that’s the role the US and the UK have taken vis a vis the Shi’ah the population.
dipnut 08.28.04 at 6:01 pm
…It’s visibly the case that Sadr can raise a militia capable of fighting a substantial foreign military presence to a standstill…
First off, Sadr’s “militia” IS a substantial foreign military presence. Forget about the “availability” of military hardware in Iraq. That stuff costs money, and the cost of a weapon is but a tiny fraction of the cost of ammunition, which in turn leaves out the copious time, space and cash needed for training. When you see a picture of a Mahdi terrorist with a belt-fed machine gun, you’re looking at a 5-figure dollar investment. That money didn’t come from disgruntled, unemployed Iraqis. It came from Tehran, and so did the man.
As for fighting anybody to a standstill, that’s a function of hiding in mosques. Be honest.
Notwithstanding Iranian meddling, it may be that Iraqi Shiites’ impulse to sharia is so strong and widespread that it’s useless to counter it. But sharia does not equal Sadrism. Presumably sharia holds out a punisment for murder; well, nobody seriously disputes whether Sadr is a murderer.
I’m not terribly concerned whether Iraqi law respects our tender Western sensibilities. I do worry that the system will be run by people who are above the law, as Saddam was. Shiite tradition would seem to hold its mullahs above legal accountability; it has been suggested that Sistani has shielded Sadr more out of concern for that tradition than out of concern for Sadr himself.
Having taken the bold step of removing Saddam, it’s regrettable that we lost our nerve to rearrange some other institutions. Suppose we’d established the precedent of bombing mosques as necessary to kill enemy mullahs. How would that be worse than letting those same enemies arrange the entire society to their liking?
roger 08.28.04 at 6:24 pm
The focus on shari’a seems besides the point, to me.
What happened in Najaf during the last month repeated, in many ways, what happened in Karbala in 1843, when the Ottomans decided to exert their power against small cleric/gangleaders and eventually had to devastate Karbala to do it. I know these things from Juan Cole’s excellent article, published in 1986 in Past and Present, and entitled “Mafia, Mob and Shi`ism in Iraq: The Rebellion of Ottoman Karbala 1824-1843.” The real fissures then and now are about elites and the poor; these fissures open up when there is a vacuum of legitimacy. Why we are to be concerned about Sadr’s vile treatment of his prisoners, while an ex-Ba’athist like Allawi has evidently been torturing his prisoners (and, as we all know, Americans have been treating their ghost prisoners to the wonderfully civilized inducements to talk that leave them dead, and available for playing by frisky American GIs in Abu Ghraib) puzzles me. Surely, given the American history, shouldn’t we be asking why they should have any say in the Iraqi political process? The problem, to my mind, is all in the use of the passive tense, here: “…When and if Sadr and Sistani are brought into the political process…”
Who is the agent behind this “being brought into the political process”? Agency, here, has long been taken out of Iraqi hands — with disastrous results. The passive both points to and covers up the lack of political legitimacy in Iraq. While CT is, justly, criticizing Shari’a courts, I don’t recall ever reading a post about the wild and corrupt mis-use of the court system to bring about CPA goals during the late Bremer pro-consulship. The same judge, as it happens, who issued the indictment of Sadr for murder has recently stretched his credibility even more by issuing a warrent for the arrest of Selim Chalabi for murder and Ahmed Chalabi for counterfeiting. Gee, and these two happen to be rivals of Allawi.
The Americans, having set a precedent for a subservient judiciary, have little room to stand on when it comes to urging due process in the court.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.28.04 at 6:43 pm
Sharia court would form a parallel system which would either overrun the civil system, or condemn those who fall under it to a perversion of justice. I can’t see how they could be combined into any healthy vision of Iraq’s future. Which is precisely why it is foolish to let Sadr gather power through quarterly revolution-starting.
dsquared 08.28.04 at 6:48 pm
How do you propose to stop him, Sebastian? Particularly given that I’d imagine his next showdown will be located in Sadr City, Baghdad, an area which will be rather more difficult to reduce to rubble, and where the consequences of doing so will be that much worse.
Robin Green 08.28.04 at 6:50 pm
Suppose we’d established the precedent of bombing mosques as necessary to kill enemy mullahs. How would that be worse than letting those same enemies arrange the entire society to their liking?
I am unclear as to how failing to bomb mosques was to give a free hand to Sadr.
Can’t you hawks get your story straight on whether Sadr is popular or not? Either he is or he isn’t.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.28.04 at 6:52 pm
“It’s visibly the case that Sadr can raise a militia1 capable of fighting a substantial foreign military presence to a standstill, while Sistani can raise thousands of people to march for him within 24 hours.”
Funny that you should put this sentence so close to your worry about accusing Sadr’s people of being savages since the only reason there is a standstill is that hides in a holy shrine and shoots at us while we remain too civilized to kill him in it. (Please note that international law would allow us to attack the shrine if it is being used for military purposes and that the war crime in that case under international law would fall on Sadr’s forces). The way he ‘fights to a standstill’ is by being willing to break the civilized rules and counting on the US not attacking the shrine even though international law would allow it. He is successful only because he gets to play the savage and we are currently playing even more civilized than the civilization’s rules require. There may be good arguments for not killing him within the shrine. But there is no good argument for allowing him to repeat this procedure every time he doesn’t get what he wants. He should not have been allowed to walk away free.
kevin donoghue 08.28.04 at 7:16 pm
D^2: “How do you propose to stop him, Sebastian?”
SH: “He should not have been allowed to walk away free.”
It’s so hard to get good help these days.
dsquared 08.28.04 at 7:19 pm
Sebastian, you’re living in that pleasant place a few inches to the left of “the real world” again. Sadr’s forces fought the Iraqi Army to a boody standstill in hand-to-hand combat. The US Marines took fewer casualties than many had been expecting, but were basically unable to shift them. That was the situation for about two weeks.
This last week, the US has been backing up the ground forces with airstrikes that have reduced the streets around the mosque to rubble. That’s why the Sadrists went into the mosque.
We’re not going to be able to do that if and when it kicks off in Sadr City; the urban area is just too big and too densely populated; one would be generating close to 3 million refugees if one repeated the scorched-earth policy used in Najaf.
The assertion that the Al-Mahdis simply made for the mosque and took pot-shots out of it (and are thus no military threat unless there is a holy shrine around for them to hide in) is dangerous revisionism; while there was a town around it, they were fighting on more or less equal terms for control of that town. Added to the fact that, as I posted earlier, this is a military force which was meant to have been wiped out in April if one were to believe official sources.
Also, I would ask you to be a little more careful in your use of the word “savage”. Abusing a mosque to hide in is not ethical and it is certainly bad behaviour, but it is not savage.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.28.04 at 7:51 pm
Kevin, I was writing my second message at the same time D-squared wrote his reply to my first. I can’t really be blamed for failing to respond to a question I hadn’t yet seen.
D-squared, I don’t understand why you feel the need to distinguish between the Marines air-strikes in this context. Both are arms of the US military. Sadr couldn’t fight the US ‘to a standstill’ without retreating to the shrine because fighting the US military sometimes exposes you to air strikes. If he had not retreated illegally into the shrine, his forces would have been destroyed. His forces were not destroyed inside the mosque because we chose not to engage him there even though his forces were still taking potshots from within the mosque and even though international law would have allowed it. (This may have been a good propaganda decision, but it would have been perfectly legal and civilized to do otherwise.) This was Sadr’s second attempt to start a revolution, and his second time hiding in holy places to avoid death. This was his second time using civilians as a shield against the military. There is a pattern here that we can’t allow to continue. He should be killed or captured because dealing with whatever response that will incurr is better than letting him attempt revolution 3 or 4 times a year or whenever he isn’t getting his way.
In any case, I don’t see how you can get by discounting the US air power as part of ‘fighting to a standstill’. He fought the Marines while engaging a slow retreat and engaged in a quick retreat as soon as the Air Force got involved. That isn’t a ‘standstill’ under any military definition that I am aware of.
But all this is a distraction from the real question. And funny that you should think it wasn’t raised before, when the horrific nature of Sadr’s target government has been mentioned by me in CT comments all along. Sharia courts would be awful for Iraqi citizens–especially women. Having women executed for being raped doesn’t make for a government with even a modicum of liberty and it is exactly the kind of cultural atmosphere that helps Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups. It isn’t in the interest of the West to allow Iraq to descend to that. (And yes that would be a step down from the situation we have now.) If stopping that from happening means killing people like Sadr when they attempt to start revolutions (which is not at all the same as suggesting that all Muslims of a particular sect be killed), so be it.
dipnut 08.28.04 at 8:20 pm
I am unclear as to how failing to bomb mosques was to give a free hand to Sadr.
Had we bombed a particular mosque at a particular time, Sadr would be dead. As it is, we’ve designating “get home free” zones for the enemy. We’ve made it safe to tangle with the Marines. This removes a powerful disincentive for anyone considering joining up with Sadr.
Sadr’s forces fought the Iraqi Army to a boody standstill in hand-to-hand combat. The US Marines took fewer casualties than many had been expecting, but were basically unable to shift them.
Yes, because we set the terms of engagement so as not to make anybody upset. If we were serious about this thing (and we will be, someday), Sadr would have been gone with the touch of a button.
Can’t you hawks get your story straight on whether Sadr is popular or not? Either he is or he isn’t.
To begin with, it’s not either/or. Sadr is popular to an undetermined degree. We agree he has some popularity in Iraq. He is also hated in Iraq. His most significant support, in practical terms, is from Iran.
But this isn’t a popularity contest, it’s a war. I want Sadr dead, for his vicious opposition to the rule of law in Iraq, for his dangerous ideology, and for his enmity to the United States. I don’t care how many people he “represents”. I don’t fear him as a martyr; I don’t fear a leaderless mob.
I also don’t care whether blowing up mosques will make people angry. Oderint dum metuant!
Giles 08.28.04 at 8:24 pm
the most revealing thing about this whole post is that the revelation that your hero might be a bit of a psycopath is “Bad news”.
For whom? D^2
dsquared 08.28.04 at 8:29 pm
Sebastian: If you read the words I wrote slowly, stopping occasionally to ponder the meaning, you’ll see that I carefully distinguished between ground and air power because I don’t think it’s feasible to use airstrikes on Sadr City in Baghdad, which is where I expect him to start causing trouble next.
Thanks for the suggested solution, by the way. Just to clarify; you’re suggesting that we should kill Sadr if he starts trouble again, wipe out the Mahdi Army and deal similarly with any other Iraqi leader that supports sharia courts? I think that this is based on admirable sentiments; in many ways I share your wish that Iraq should become a liberal democracy rather like Ireland. However, if I were to critique this plan, I think I’d suggest it may be a bit impractical.
dsquared 08.28.04 at 8:31 pm
For the twenty people whose dead bodies were found there, you fucking idiot giles. Sadr wasn’t my hero, and if you suggest otherwise I may become abusive.
dsquared 08.28.04 at 8:34 pm
I also don’t care whether blowing up mosques will make people angry.
In that case, could I respectfully suggest that you follow a career in fields other than the management of an uneasy truce between an occupying US Army and the largely Islamic population of an extremely unstable and violent country?
abb1 08.28.04 at 8:37 pm
I’m with Frank. Yes, our court won’t execute you for adultery, but it’ll sentence you for marihuana possession to 10 years in jail where you are likely to be raped, sodomized, tortured and enslaved by your fellow prisoners and guards (or at least that’s what Hollywood has led me to believe). I doubt the saria law is that cruel.
If the people of Iraq want sharia law – they should have it; if they don’t, they should use political process – as well as their many AK-47s and RPGs if necessary – to make sure it’s not practiced. This is totally outside US jurisdiction.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.28.04 at 9:26 pm
Giles, you are way over the line suggesting that Sadr D-squared’s hero. I suspect that D-squared is dangerously unrealistic about the level of force required in the Middle East over the next couple of decades, but he isn’t a Sadr cheerleader.
D-squared: “Just to clarify; you’re suggesting that we should kill Sadr if he starts trouble again, wipe out the Mahdi Army and deal similarly with any other Iraqi leader that supports sharia courts?” No, I’m suggesting that we kill Sadr if he starts trouble again, kill any member of the Mahdi Army who joins him in revolutionary attempts, and deal similarly with any other Iraqi leader that supports sharia courts by attempting to engage in armed conflict. A rather different proposition than the one you ascribe to me. And BTW, a proposition that becomes harder every time we allow Sadr to take over cities, fight him out of them, and then let him go–which is the proposal which you seem to go along with. Unless of course you are suggesting that when he takes over cities he should just be allowed to control them with his sharia courts and other forms of thuggery. Are you?
What choices are left? Let him control the cities one at a time until he has 1/3 of the country or fight him. If we are going to fight him, we may as well kill him or capture him. Fighting him every 3 months for the next 30 years is as bad as anything likely to happen under the martyr concept.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.28.04 at 9:30 pm
Sorry about the bold tag. It was supposed to end at ‘conflict’. Rather non-helpful to bold most of a paragraph I suppose. :)
John Quiggin 08.28.04 at 10:28 pm
“What choices are left?”
No good ones, obviously, which is the point of the post. The question is, which of the bad choices open to us (or more accurately, the US Administration) is least bad.
I’d suggest the following way of looking at it. Suppose Saddam had been overthrown by an internal Iraqi revolt rather than an invasion, and that Sistani or Sadr looked likely to dominate the new government. Would it be sensible/morally justified to send an army to Iraq to stop this happening?
kevin donoghue 08.28.04 at 10:50 pm
“[H]ope that…involvement in government will mellow them? Or do we decide that the price of compromise is too high if it involves sharia courts?â€
D-squared,
It seems to me you had better attempt an answer to your own questions. Pretty clearly, the Muqtada-must-die brigade aren’t going to. (They don’t even present a credible plan for their own limited aim.) If memory serves, you would have supported a suitably-timed regime change if “this bunch of pillocks†hadn’t been in charge of it. If you could have a better class of pillock now, what sort of regime would you settle for?
My impression is that Americans in general would like a regime which fulfils the following criteria: 1) reasonably democratic; 2) not too theocratic (compulsory hajibs maybe, but no stoning, or at the very least not without judicial process); 3) not too friendly with Iran; 4) not too hostile to Israel (e.g. not tolerating groups which fund suicide bombers); 5) respectful of Kurdish autonomy; 6) not interested in WMD development.
Unless, by some divine fluke, elections produce just such a government, some of these desiderata will have to be given up. Which ones are negotiable?
kevin donoghue 08.28.04 at 11:10 pm
“I’d suggest the following way of looking at it. Suppose Saddam had been overthrown by an internal Iraqi revolt rather than an invasion, and that Sistani or Sadr looked likely to dominate the new government. Would it be sensible/morally justified to send an army to Iraq to stop this happening?â€
“Sistani or Sadr†is a bit like “the Pope or General Franco.†Sistani represents a system of belief, not a faction, and he accepts that laymen are better qualified to rule than he is. A government dominated by Shiites who look to Sistani for guidance would surely be much more tolerable than the rule of an unstable leader whose support comes mostly from the most volatile and least educated section of society.
It would be quite a let-down if Americans were to look at it quite as you suggest. It would not be sensible to send an army to stop it happening, but to let it happen after having created the mess in the first place would be a huge defeat, and not just for America. Of course if Sadr looks like doing well in an election, that is a different matter. That result would be embarrassing but accepting it would be wise nonetheless.
woodturtle 08.28.04 at 11:25 pm
Perhaps all that is needed is for Mr. al-Sadr to take a long relaxing vacation, and learn the error of his ways.
abb1 08.28.04 at 11:28 pm
Fear no more:
Or you can read a more colorful commentary here.
————————–
Americans in general? What’s that? And who cares what Americans in general want?
John Quiggin 08.28.04 at 11:37 pm
Kevin, I agree that Sistani and Sadr are very different, and fiddled round with various ways of indicating this, but didn’t find a good one. So I should be asking two separate questions, one about Sistani and one about Sadr. As I’ve indicated in quite a few posts (too many!), a Sistani-influenced government looks like the best on offer.
dipnut 08.29.04 at 12:42 am
I respectfully suggest that you follow a career in fields other than the management of an uneasy truce…
“Management”; bah. Management is for the manageable, and truces are for people who don’t intend to stab you in the back. That’s not the Sadr I know.
Pissing off the enemy is good. Soldiers enjoy doing it, and it wins the war. Look: the Japanese in World War II were an honor-obsessed, fanatical death cult. How do you suppose they felt when we sank their Navy, rolled back their Empire, roasted them alive with the flamethrower and later with the atom bomb, and brought their sacred Emperor to humiliating defeat? They must have been somewhat peeved.
But it’s been three solid generations now, and nobody’s had any trouble with the Japs. History abounds with such stories. The determined, steady, implacable application of serious rough treatment will take the fight out of anyone and put them in the “manageable” category. Despair wins out over hatred every time. There are also countless instances of uprisings crushed by killing the leaders. A mob without a leader is always cowardly and ineffectual.
Now, what precedent is there for the notion that we can prevail with a hostile population by showing exquisite consideration for their feelings, even to the point of foregoing easy opportunities to smash our sworn enemies?
By respecting the mosque (which is only a symbol), we grant the enemy a reliable means to trump our overwhelming military superiority. We’ve opted for a symbolic fight, and ceded the real territory to the enemy. This approach is reminiscent of postmodern scholarship, where everything is about deconstructing narratives, and you can be a Professor Of History without ever having studied a battle.
What do you know about war, Daniel, and how do you know it? I see a lot of Conventional Wisdom around here: we mustn’t make a martyr of al-Sadr; fighting the terrorists just serves to recruit more; etc. This CW seems to have been grown hydroponically from the tiniest grains of truth, with a fertilizer of self-defeating assumptions and moral cowardice. It is not grounded in intelligent observation of the world.
I’m a little fed up with commenters who beg off the question with “I don’t really know what’s going on”. Nobody knows what’s going on, but the general outline is clear enough, and somebody must answer timely. It’s another of those academic misconceptions: complexity is correctness; any rationale which can be further complicated isn’t correct enough.
“In critical and baffling situations, it is always best to return to first principles and simple action” – Sir Winston S. Churchill
roublen vesseau 08.29.04 at 1:25 am
As far as I know, I have never agreed with Sebastian Holsclaw on anything up to now, but I do this time. “Fighting to a standstill” is an absurd description of what’s going on. We should be applauding when the US military shows restraint in killing Iraqis, not taunting them and falsely suggesting that they can’t miltarily defeat any entity in Iraq that they choose to.
Sistani is one of the good guys. Sadr is a megalomaniac and a thug, and quite mad, albeit not completely evil (Juan Cole has pointed out that he has denounced terrorism, which is why the Mahdi army has often tried its best to enage in conventional battles with the US army, wearing uniforms, the predictable result being complete and utterly pointless defeat, with heavy losses. Sadr has spent the blood of his followers like water, for absolutely nothing).
Sadr probably has to be defeated, but the decision to confront him has to be made by legitimate Iraqi leaders, with the US in a supporting role.
bob mcmanus 08.29.04 at 1:37 am
Weintraub
I liked this analysis, whoever this guy is at Norm Geras
asg 08.29.04 at 3:52 am
Roublen Vessau spared me the time to write a long comment. It may make sense to say Sadr has fought the U.S. to a political standstill, because we are willing to bend over backwards for Muslim sensibilities, but to imply that Sadr has fought the U.S. to anything remotely resembling a military standstill is, well, ridiculous.
John Quiggin 08.29.04 at 5:03 am
Weintraub’s piece is very close to the analysis that’s been put here on CT, and very different from the position implied, though not stated outright, in Norm Geras’ own posts. I’d note in particular the observation:
which is spot-on in my view.
Walt Pohl 08.29.04 at 5:43 am
It’s been a while since I read a quote as funny as “That’s not the Sadr I know.”
Whether or not killing Sadr would turn him into a martyr is debateable (personally I’m prepared to try it and see), but if we blew up the Ali shrine, it’s hard to see how this wouldn’t turn Shiites everywhere against us.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.29.04 at 6:19 am
“the great bulk of Iraqi public opinion was simultaneously hostile to Sadr and to the Americans, wanted an end to the fighting in Najaf, and wanted to avoid an armed attack on the holy places.
which is spot-on in my view.”
Which only shows that both you and the great bulk of the Iraqi public are living in a fantasy world where Sadr doesn’t hole up in holy places and doesn’t try to take over Najaf with thugs shooting at people. The real Sadr unfortunately doesn’t conform to your wishes.
Frank 08.29.04 at 6:50 am
Funny how we changed Iraq from a country where killing was wrong to one where killing is part of the debate.
As in a Roman arena, thumbs up to let Sadr live, thumbs down and he will die.
Postmodern progress?
Googled quote:
Jack 08.29.04 at 10:31 am
dipnut, the point is not that bombing the Imam Ali mosque would piss off Muqtada Al-Sadr who has somehow become the enemy, but that it would piss off the entire muslim world.
On the cost of the guy with a belt fed machine gun, it would be wrong to project US costs onto Iraqis. Only the ammo cost is likely to have been anything like you claim and there are several hundred thousand ex-soldiers unemployed, not all of whom were Sunnis.
That is not to say that Iran is not backing Al-Sadr but to suggest that they are merely helpful rather than essential and that you are probably misguided if you think that most of the Mehdi army are in fact Iranians.
It does seem sad that military solutions seem to be the only ones available and that a military response seems to be a substitute for a plan. It is especially true since it is the same problem that has been playing out at least since 1917 and possibly even under the Ottomans. That is to say little that is happening in Iraq should have been unpredicted. By contrast it seems that the coalition is perpetually on the back foot and is having to imitate much of what Saddam did.
abb1 08.29.04 at 11:23 am
There were probably less than 100 million Japanese in the 1940s, concentrated in a few little islands. In the end about 2 million of them were killed and 2 atomic bombs were used in the process. Japan was under military occupation for 6 years officially, but in reality for more like 15 years.
Now you are pissing off over 1 billion Muslims. They are not concentrated on a few small spots where you can easily nuke them and get it over with; but if we extrapolate your Japan analogy, you’d have to detonate 20 nuclear weapons and kill over 20 million of them.
History abounds with stories about empires that’d bitten more than they could chew.
Jack 08.29.04 at 1:51 pm
Sebastian,
you say:
Once again an extraordinary statement for someone from a country founded on a dispute over who got to decide policy on tea taxation.
I suggest that most Iraqis know that Al-Sadr’s crew ended up in the mosque and I guess that you know this. From that I infer that you think that they have failed to fully accept the implications of that fact. I suggest that even if they did the implications they would draw from it might not be the same as yours.
I imagine that most Iraqis don’t see the US army as being that much better than Al-Sadr. It’s not just Abu Ghraib, a couple of no shows in the previous decade and unthinking anti-americanism either. Who is actually talking and listening to these people? Mostly not us.
Therefore it would be bold to assume that we are seen as being much better than Al-Sadr’s lot. Paying for our victory over the local boy with the desecration of the Imam Ali mosque wouldn’t look like a great deal even if you weren’t in denial.
In any case this attempt to justify the means is a distraction from paying proper attention to what the end of it all is. At the end of this we have not defeated Al-Sadr, we have destroyed a large part of Najaf and been seen to lay siege to the Imam Ali shrine. No matter how we see it, it is unlikley that Iraqis will conclude that it is all or even primarily Al-Sadr’s fault. It is certainly not clear that his position has been weakened to any great extent. Even if he was killed there are enough people that sympathise with his views that the problem would not go away.
Until there is a plausible plan, and all the indications are that, at best, the Najaf situation was the result of some rather ad hoc policy making, probably the less done the better.
Maybe there is a plan that I don’t know about but if there is I don’t think the people defending the action in Najaf know what it is either.
MQ 08.29.04 at 3:22 pm
The alternative to letting people govern themselves tends to be lots of killing, one way or the other. Sistani pushed us for free elections almost a year ago, we refused and put in a puppet government, now we are paying the price as the opposition radicalizes. At bottom, this is about letting the Iraqis control their own nation, something I suspect our current administration has no intention of doing and never did.
From “Dipnut”:
“The determined, steady, implacable application of serious rough treatment will take the fight out of anyone and put them in the “manageable†category. Despair wins out over hatred every time.”
Types like “Dipnut” want to kill more Iraqis than any Sharia court ever would. We don’t really have the moral standing to lecture people about Sharia courts right at the moment. The streets of Iraq are full of bodies put there by U.S. military action, with some in this country pressing for more killing.
dsquared 08.29.04 at 3:40 pm
Pissing off the enemy is good. Soldiers enjoy doing it, and it wins the war.
D’you know something, dipnut? General Vo Nguyen Giap wrote an entire book about how you’re wrong.
For what it’s worth, I have no personal knowledge of wars. If the USA ever starts fighting a war in Iraq, rest assured that I will be the first to shut up.
However, I know quite a bit about guerilla wars, because 1) I was the research assistant for a book about Vietnam and was present at a large number of face-to-face interviews with senior commanders on both sides, and 2) I spent the period 1976-1998 as a civilian target for the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign.
Since you don’t seem to understand the difference between the fight against the Mahdi Army and battle in the Pacific theatre of WW2 (a starting clue would be to count the number of naval engagements), I think it is by now pretty safe for me to ignore you unless I happen to come up with more insults.
Your theories about Iran are pretty stupid too.
dsquared 08.29.04 at 3:45 pm
By the way, it is also important to realise that although sharia courts are IMO disgusting, this is probably not a particularly popular opinion in Iraq. I also happen to think that executing 16-year olds by lethal injection is disgusting, but am aware that it would be political suicide to run on a ticket of not executing 16 year olds in some parts of the USA.
In general, in areas where people have a high fear of violence, they tend to be surprisingly supportive of draconian courts; there’s a strong sado-masochistic trait in electorates which it is easy to play to. That’s how the Taliban got in place in Afghanistan; to begin with they were very much welcomed by the locals because they cracked down on an epidemic of drunken rape.
Nicholas Weininger 08.29.04 at 4:27 pm
I must object, here, to a few of the assertions made by the slaughter-the-wogs crowd on this thread which have so far gone unchallenged.
First: the notion that Sadr opposes “the rule of law in Iraq”. There is no real rule of law in Iraq for him to oppose. Neither the brute-force rule-by-decree of the occupation forces, nor the farcical pseudo-rule of Allawi and his puppet troupe, constitutes a rule of law. Our thugs may be somewhat less vile than Sadr’s, but that doesn’t make them paragons of legitimacy.
Second: the idea that destroying the Imam Ali shrine to rid it of the Sadrists would be “both legal and civilized”. Legal, probably. Civilized, never. That shrine is as much a treasured part of the cultural heritage of humanity as St. Peter’s in Rome. Destroying it in pursuit of our ephemeral tactical goals in Iraq would be a crime against humane culture; this is a moral issue quite apart from practical discussions of the effect on Muslim opinion.
Third: the implicit premise that one can discuss the morality of crushing Sadr without discussing the cost to civilians. If we had a magic pushbutton that would kill Sadr and only him– or even Sadr and a few of his lieutenants– I’d happily push it; but that’s never been the question. The question is whether it’s legitimate to carry out, in order to crush Sadr and his militia, operations we know perfectly well will cause the deaths of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of innocent bystanders. (Here’s a hint to start: reciting the usual easy exculpatory bromides about how we don’t really mean to kill civilians does nothing to change the nature of the question).
And that’s not the end of it. If the Sadrists are a threat worth crushing whatever the cost to others, how much more so are the Sunni fundamentalists who now run Fallujah and Ramadi? Dipnut, SH, do you advocate our forces doing to those cities what Hafez Assad did to Hama? If not, how do you think we’re ever going to establish the rule of our-thugs-instead-of-their-thugs over those cities? If so, well, how do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning?
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.29.04 at 4:36 pm
And we return to the moral equivalance argument.
I guess I can’t argue with you if you think that comparing sharia courts to American courts is apples to apples.
I can’t argue with you if your thoughts on a woman getting executed for being raped are “I am personally disgusted by it, but feel compelled to offer freedom of cultural choice to those who want to do that.”
I am happy that you finally use the word ‘disgust’ rather than ‘condemn.’. Condemnation suggests action and resistance. Disgust is just a personal feeling. You are willing to have personal feelings about a court system that regularly executes women for being raped. How laudable.
dsquared 08.29.04 at 5:24 pm
On the other hand, the reason that I can’t argue with you is that you refuse to acknowledge basic facts of the situation, and that you reach for nasty political insults like that one every time you’re brought face to face with the consequences of your ridiculous positions. Who’s the bigger twat? (clue: look for the words “moral equivalence”, the leper’s bell of the modern online idiot)
kevin donoghue 08.29.04 at 6:18 pm
Nicholas, please don’t think that those of us who ignore “the slaughter-the-wogs crowd on this thread†have any sympathy with their views. There is little point in engaging with people who think that “the great bulk of the Iraqi public are living in a fantasy world†with the implication that their houses should be brought down around their ears in order to raise their political consciousness.
In truth, it is these guys who live in a fantasy world, where all it takes to deal with urban guerrillas is moral certitude and massive firepower. They tell us that Sadrists see force as the means to secure power and that they won’t give the Marines a fair fight.
Such insight! What is one to say to people with such an astonishing grasp of the situation?
Nicholas Weininger 08.29.04 at 6:25 pm
kevin: I do apologize for inadvertently imputing such sympathy. That first sentence, as I reread it, did come out sounding like “you who are silent must be giving tacit consent”; I did not mean to imply any such thing.
kevin donoghue 08.29.04 at 8:31 pm
Nicholas,
Thanks, but no apology was required, you gave me an excuse to sound off about these twits. It doesn’t advance the discussion but I feel the better for it.
abb1,
You were a bit perplexed by my comment about “what Americans in general want†so maybe I should clarify. To tell the truth I haven’t the foggiest idea what Americans want in Iraq. I think that is symptomatic of the problem. English is my native language, I regularly scour the internet in search of clues and the only conclusion I can draw is that, in truth, Americans don’t have a clue what they want. If that’s how it looks to me, it has hard to conceive how it must look to an Arab. Is it any wonder that the Arab world is in thrall to conspiracy theories?
You made your own position clear: “If the people of Iraq want sharia law – they should have it…. This is totally outside US jurisdiction.†That makes perfect sense to me. But America did not invade Iraq to give Iraqis sharia law. Are Americans prepared to settle for that outcome? They surely ought to be debating this but they are not. As little as a year ago, I thought that the Bush administration was the problem. Now I think it’s the whole freaking country.
The historian Niall Ferguson, who has done his bit to sell imperialism to Americans, now seems to feel that they really aren’t up to it, being handicapped by three deficits: a budget deficit, a trade deficit and an attention deficit. Witty, but only one of these deficits greatly bothers me. This thread really highlights it.
Jason McCullough 08.29.04 at 9:05 pm
“However, I know quite a bit about guerilla wars, because 1) I was the research assistant for a book about Vietnam and was present at a large number of face-to-face interviews with senior commanders on both sides.”
Which one? I’ve been on a tear reading all the big name books of the conflict; I can’t be the only person who’d love a post elaborating more on your experiences there.
dsquared 08.29.04 at 9:33 pm
To be honest it was only a guidebook to the country’s railways, but the section on the history of the country got completely out of hand.
woodturtle 08.29.04 at 10:02 pm
We don’t have sharia courts but we still have men that beat and kill their wives, so I guess that is a type of sharia court. Judge, jury, execution, all done in short order.
It hasn’t been very many years ago that men began to be held more accountable for these crimes.
So I don’t understand how you can be horrified by a sharia court, and not by what happens to women over here, and by other examples of drug-related sentencing listed above.
Ivor 08.29.04 at 11:18 pm
Looks like it’s not only Kerry who lied about Vietnam.
Dsquared: However, I know quite a bit about guerilla wars, because 1) I was the research assistant for a book about Vietnam and was present at a large number of face-to-face interviews with senior commanders on both sides.
Commenter: Which one? I’ve been on a tear reading all the big name books of the conflict; I can’t be the only person who’d love a post elaborating more on your experiences there.
Dsquared: to be honest it was only a guidebook to the country’s railways, but the section on the history of the country got completely out of hand.
Hannah 08.30.04 at 12:14 am
Dsquared, either you think people have a right to stone women for adultery or not. I don’t. Either you think people have a right to execute 16-year-olds for murder or not. I don’t. But if you can’t see the difference between the two “crimes” then it’s you who should be ringing that bell. (Will I be called a “twat”, too? I never thought of mine as a term of insult and abuse, but I guess that might explain your feelings towards adulteresses…)
Woodturtle, the difference between Sharia and (western) wife battery is that the latter is against the law while the former is the law. Your slick comparison of the two is utterly despicable.
dsquared 08.30.04 at 1:22 am
If you’re throwing around the same kind of political insults as Sebastian, and if, like him, you can’t be bothered to spend a couple of minutes reading this thread and considering whether what I’ve actually send fits into your “moral equivalence” template, then you may feel free to pick whatever insult you like, Hannah. If, on the other hand, having unburdened yourself of your extremely courageous opinion that stoning women for adultery is wrong, you have any practical proposal about how sharia courts can be avoided in Iraq without turning the country into an American protectorate for the forseeable future (with resultant mass slaughter), then perhaps let’s have a conversation. Otherwise, select your epithet from the dictionary of genito-urinary medicine and away ye go.
Hannah 08.30.04 at 2:38 am
Dsquared, if you weren’t comparing capital punishment (which I oppose) for “16-year-olds” with the stoning of raped or adulterous women (and apologizing for the Taliban) then why does your comment include mention of it? You think the Americans and Brits have no choice but to accept some version Sharia for Iraq? Fine, but shut up about capital punishment for “16-year-olds” (btw, isn’t there a word missing? they aren’t sentenced to death for being 16 but for having murdered someone), and, especially, stop peddling that baloney about “an epidemic of drunken rape” in Afghanistan (yeah, right, it was all done to “protect” Afghan womanhood!). Otherwise don’t be surprised if people reading your comment of Aug. 29, 3.45 pm are reminded of the male “genito-urinary” organ.
dsquared 08.30.04 at 3:21 am
I stand by my comments of 1540 and 1545pm today and remain interested in a discussion of the subject with anyone who I do not consider to be wilfully misreading them.
Frank 08.30.04 at 7:02 am
My original comment on sharia was apparently a bit too insensitive.
I’ll try to be a bit more reasonable this time.
Three things:
– The US is maintaining good relations with various countries which apply sharia law (Nigeria, Pakistan, UAE, Saudi Arabia).
– It is unlikely that the Sunni and the Kurdish part of Iraq will accept sharia courts, as they have (had) a functioning non sharia system of justice.
– Canada, of all places, has accepted a bit of sharia in a fit of overzealous religious accomodation. (www.nosharia.com)
That may all seem unrelated, but my conclusion would be that sharia will pose no real obstacle to a functioning society in Iraq.
naomi 08.30.04 at 8:54 am
dsquared: I think the problem lies in assuming that the majority of Iraqis would support even the extreme forms of shariah courts. I don’t know, I’d be very hesitant about assuming anything at all about “Iraqi popular opinion” at this stage, given the context, and the fact it’s not yet had a way to express itself as such. I just don’t think it would be unpopular to have a legal system that is more compliant with human rights than Saddam’s (or post-Saddam Abu Ghraib).
Besides, sharia can mean very different things – even in Israel there are nationally approved shariah courts, but they don’t execute and mutilate people. There’s very different levels of adherence to Islamic law. I hope Iraq will go towards a neater separation of religion and state and not have shariah courts at all, but if not, it doesn’t necessarily have to turn into Iran or Saudi Arabia either.
The problem is that the mutilate and execute kind of shariah courts can be set up by extremists at a “private” unofficial level even if they’re not sanctioned by the government. So the main issue is back to the political management of Iraq and the way fundamentalists are dealt with, and given the current situation any predictions there sound like a very wild guess.
John J 08.30.04 at 2:06 pm
an epidemic of drunken rape
In Afghanistan? Very interesting. Is this a fact, Dsquared, or just another case of you making shit up?
rea 08.30.04 at 3:12 pm
Sharia law does NOT punish rape victims, contrary to allegations above in this thread.
Just as in our system, however, rape victims runs the risk of being disbelieved. Because Sharia severely punishes women for consensual sex outside of marriage, the consequences of making a rape accusation that is not believed are drastic.
The system as it really exists is quite bad enough without making shit up about it.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.30.04 at 3:24 pm
Just because the charge of moral equivalance often shows up as a mere insult in internet conversations does not mean it is inappropriate to notice it from someone who says: “By the way, it is also important to realise that although sharia courts are IMO disgusting, this is probably not a particularly popular opinion in Iraq. I also happen to think that executing 16-year olds by lethal injection is disgusting, but am aware that it would be political suicide to run on a ticket of not executing 16 year olds in some parts of the USA.”
No one forced you to make a point about electoral difficulty by drawing direct comparisons to US law, so either you see a moral equivalance there, or you are being an ass. To be fair, it certainly could be both.
Having a parallel religious court system is an awful idea from a systemic point of view.
Moving on, since you actually did return to substance eventually:
You didn’t mention anything about Iraq not being a protectorate until now. It is clearly one of the better options. We are only getting out of Germany 5-8 years from now.
The mass slaughter part is clearly hypothetical–even in Fallujah and Najaf a huge majority of the people killed were those actually involved in military confrontation on one side or the other. Unless you are talking about combatants, which I won’t assume you are unless you verify it overtly.
And in the middle of accusing me of being unable to deal with the reality of my views, you run from the implications of yours.
Imposing sharia on the Kurds and Sunnis (and frankly many of the Shi’a Muslims) would be horrific and is very likely to cause civil war if attempted. (Which may be part of why Sadr feels the need to engage in revolution.) See for recent historical (non-railway) example the Sudan.
And when that happens there will be calls for ‘international intervention’ meaning as usual US troops. See also the Sudan. Why go through that stupid cycle instead of fighting now, while we are already there?
I’m not being unrealistic. I don’t pretend that killing Sadr will make the issue vanish. I suggest that killing Sadr will reduce the number of prominent leaders willing to engage in civil war to gain their aims in Iraq by one (directly) and perhaps more (indirectly). I fully realize that the US may need to stay in Iraq for 5 or 10 years on this and other issues. But if the alternative is an outcome of Iran II by means of bloody civil war a la the Sudan, I don’t see why we shouldn’t at least consider the other options which you (though not in your original post) clearly reject out of hand.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.30.04 at 3:29 pm
“Just as in our system, however, rape victims runs the risk of being disbelieved. Because Sharia severely punishes women for consensual sex outside of marriage, the consequences of making a rape accusation that is not believed are drastic.”
Getting pregnant from a rape has drastic consequences for the same reasons. Also sharia law requires a number of MALE MUSLIM witnesses who are willing to testify to the crime to prove rape. (The precise number being a matter of debate I believe). So if you are unmarried and get pregnant from the rape you are fucked again later by the sharia system as large stones fly toward your head till you die. I stand by the characterization of that as ‘punishing you for being raped’.
james 08.30.04 at 4:04 pm
The consequence to a democracy is you often up with leaders you do not like. The benefit is you can remove them without bloodshed. The United States is willing to accept the former for Iraq as long as it can guarantee the Iraqi’s the later. The problem is setting up a system that guarantees the later after the Iraqi’s choose a leadership.
Kevin Donoghue,
What Americans want is to be left alone. Time and again, what we have learned is that this is not possible.
Barry 08.30.04 at 5:29 pm
Kevin Donoghue:
“The United States is willing to accept the former for Iraq as long as it can guarantee the Iraqi’s the later. The problem is setting up a system that guarantees the later after the Iraqi’s choose a leadership.”
Kevin, by incompetance, the Bush administration has made sure that its guarantee power is substantially diminished. Assuming, as I don’t, that the administration actually cared about democracy, in the first place.
Barry 08.30.04 at 5:30 pm
James: “What Americans want is to be left alone. Time and again, what we have learned is that this is not possible.”
For a country which just wants to be left alone, the US has an awful lot of ‘imperial entanglements’. And not just by force of circumstances. The USA, from the beginning, was run on the basis of *not* leaving others alone, unless that was convenient.
fantazia 08.30.04 at 5:38 pm
“I suggest that killing Sadr will reduce the number of prominent leaders willing to engage in civil war to gain their aims in Iraq by one (directly) and perhaps more (indirectly). ”
That arithmetic worked just fine when we only had Saddam to deal with, didn’t it now.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.30.04 at 5:44 pm
I’m not tracking. You’ll have to be explicit.
james 08.30.04 at 5:55 pm
barry – If the rest of the world would stop asking for US involvement, the US would be less involved in the rest of the world. In the last 2 years the US has been asked for troop involvements (“peacekeeping missions”) in Haiti, Sudan, and Ivory Coast. Before that it was Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Rwanda. Then there are the requests to “solve” inter-nation problems. For example, why is North Korea considered a US problem? China is the benefactor nation of North Korea. Shouldn’t it be China’s responsibility to reign in that government?
dsquared 08.30.04 at 6:00 pm
Unless you are talking about combatants
As John and myself have repeatedly pointed out, no doctor ever said “congratulations, Mrs Hussein, a bouncing seven-pound baby combatant”. Those people weren’t combatants until someone invaded their country.
As happened in Vietnam, the process appears to be that in order to defend a version of democracy, we maintain a military presence and a level of repression which ensures that large numbers of civilians decide to become combatants, at which point Sebastian declares it OK to kill them.
As Naomi points out, btw, sharia courts come in a number of different varieties, and are perfectly consistent with modern states like Malaysia. Our current course of action appears almost tailor-made to ensure that the very worst version prevails in Iraq.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.30.04 at 6:12 pm
“As happened in Vietnam, the process appears to be that in order to defend a version of democracy, we maintain a military presence and a level of repression which ensures that large numbers of civilians decide to become combatants, at which point Sebastian declares it OK to kill them.”
And in your version we don’t maintain a military presence and that allows Sadr to maintain a level of repression which ensures that large numbers of civilians get butchered whether or not they decide to become combatants.
And that is fantastic in an ‘aren’t my hands so clean’ fashion. You continue to accuse me of failing to deal with the consequences of my ideas, but you consistently refuse to deal with the likelihood of even bloodier civil war is the 65% Shia population attempts to enforce sharia law against the Kurds and the Sunnis.
But I don’t want to be accused of putting words in your mouth.
Do you think the Kurds and Sunnis are likely to just sit back and take it?
Will their lack of technological superiority over their enemies likely to increase or decrease the total number of people killed in the slaughter?
Is Sudan in Iraq an acceptable outcome as long as you can wash your hands of the matter?
supertrooper 08.30.04 at 6:31 pm
…In the last 2 years the US has been asked for troop involvements (“peacekeeping missionsâ€) in…
Oh behold America, the benign and generous superpower that exists only to fix and clean up every kind of shit in the world, kind of like a military Mr Muscle. Only more eco-friendly.
Oh behold the wonder of America’s leaders, a league of gentlemen so naive and generous, so hopelessly clueless, so alien to the concept of self-interest that they have to be forced to actually come up with a foreign policy at all. For the exclusive benefit of others. A huge, big barrel of sheer generosity.
Behold the miracle of the superpower at whose heart lies a super-samaritan. Praise be. Now let’s all salute the flag.
kevin donoghue 08.30.04 at 6:31 pm
The comments of Sebastian Holsclaw and James suggest one answer to the question of what outcome Americans want in Iraq. That outcome is a state which is democratic but not sovereign. Iraqis will be able to choose their own government. James wants America to retain the power to ensure that the government holds elections. Sebastian wants US forces to remain for many years, to ensure that sharia law is not imposed and to deal with other, unspecified, issues.
I don’t believe Iraqis will tolerate a prolonged American presence, for these or any other purposes.
Barry,
I share your scepticism about the administration’s democratic aims. However as I noted in an earlier comment, I am increasingly coming around to the view that it isn’t just the Bush administration we should be worried about, but the absent-minded approach which Americans generally take to this whole issue.
fantazia 08.30.04 at 6:54 pm
“And in your version we don?t maintain a military presence and that allows Sadr to maintain a level of repression which ensures that large numbers of civilians get butchered whether or not they decide to become combatants. ”
Sadr isn’t going to butcher large numbers of ‘civilians’ just for the heck of it.
He’s going to fight to keep a grip on as much power as possible, and other Iraqi factions will fight against him for exactly the same reasons. People will get killed. Some of the dead will be armed combatants from the Sadrists or whomever Sadr is fighting. The rest will be civilian “collateral damage”.
Which is no different from what’s happening now.
“You continue to accuse me of failing to deal with the consequences of my ideas, but you consistently refuse to deal with the likelihood of even bloodier civil war is the 65% Shia population attempts to enforce sharia law against the Kurds and the Sunnis.”
And your solution is what? Slaughter the Sadrists, and the rest of the Shia will say “Thank you America for ridding us of that fundamentalist monster” and shower you with rice and rose petals?
Worked great with Saddam, didn’t it?
Listen, Holsclaw. Half-measures don’t work. You are talking “iron fist” peace here. If you want to rule Iraq with an iron fist, that’s fine, but don’t expect to be able to blather innocently about false “moral equivalences” when you find out just how bloody iron fist approaches turn out to be.
Barry 08.30.04 at 7:01 pm
Why not? Sebastian and most of the neo-cons feel perfectly free to blather about Iraq, even though their policy has been a failure. And they pretty much get away with it.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.30.04 at 7:35 pm
“He’s going to fight to keep a grip on as much power as possible, and other Iraqi factions will fight against him for exactly the same reasons. People will get killed. Some of the dead will be armed combatants from the Sadrists or whomever Sadr is fighting. The rest will be civilian “collateral damageâ€.
Which is no different from what’s happening now.”
That isn’t true at all. You are ignoring all concepts of scale when you say that some people get killed either way. There isn’t attempted genocide against the Sunni and Kurd population. There isn’t sharia law imposed against the Sunni and Kurd population causing civil war.
I can’t speak for all neo-conservatives, but I have no illusions whatsoever about being showered with rice and rose-petals. The most likely case, if the US were wildly successful, is a gratefulness level of Germany after it was smashed to bits and rebuilt. I don’t care about grateful. I care about a sane country. You can’t get there from here while tolerating quarterly armed outbursts from Sadr. You won’t get to a sane country under the type of sharia law that fundamentalists accept.
fantazia 08.30.04 at 7:51 pm
“You are ignoring all concepts of scale when you say that some people get killed either way.”
*All* concepts of scale? What on Earth do you think Iraq is right now, paradise? If *your* only concept of scale is a choice between Adenauer’s Germany or another holocaust, then *your* concept of scale is fucked up.
Saddam did not go about slaughtering large numbers of Kurds and Shia just for the fucking hell of it. Dictators of fractured multiethnic states like Iraq or Yugoslavia are not one-dimensional cartoon characters. It takes a nasty motherfucker to rule a country like Iraq by force, and Saddam had the choice between being a nasty motherfucker or a dead motherfucker.
Iraq is no picnic at this moment. Clearly, the US fist is not hitting hard enough. You may find, though, that hitting hard enough to “keep Iraq sane” will not result in enough differentiation between the occupied forces and the disposed dictatorship to make you feel very happy. Unless you are a hard-headed realist.
Of course, by that time you’ll be blaming liberal bloggers, the French or the UN.
dsquared 08.30.04 at 7:59 pm
I think it is indicative that a significant majority of Iraqis, including the local trade unions, think that on the whole, they’d rather take their chances with Sebastian’s hypothesised civil war scenario.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.30.04 at 8:02 pm
“Clearly, the US fist is not hitting hard enough. You may find, though, that hitting hard enough to “keep Iraq sane†will not result in enough differentiation between the occupied forces and the disposed dictatorship to make you feel very happy.”
First sentence clearly true. Second sentence not obviously true. And that is precisely why I say you aren’t paying attention to scale.
But you continue in your refusal to deal with the likely outcome of leaving Sadr along–sharia law, civil war, and quite possibly Sudan style genocide.
So don’t play uber-realist with me until you talk about how you intend to deal with that, or the fact that you don’t care about that. Choose either, though I suspect I know which one you actually hold. You may remember that the end of the Vietnam war did wonders for the people of Cambodia. But you probably don’t.
dsquared 08.30.04 at 8:08 pm
And that is precisely why I say you aren’t paying attention to scale.
Sebastian, some estimates of the casualties suggest that the coalition forces killed 2000 people in the first week. If you kill 2000 people a week, then it will take you three and a half years to kill as many people as Saddam Hussein did between 1988 and 2003. Who’s not got an idea of scale?
And the idea that anyone might think that raising the precedent of US policy in Southeast Asia as a reason why it is a good/i> idea to replicate that policy in the Middle East, is just breathtaking!
Nicholas Weininger 08.30.04 at 8:26 pm
Well, SH, I’m not dsquared, but I’d respond to your “what about the civil war?” thing with a forthright: yeah, let’s wash our hands of the whole thing and let them kill each other.
My arguments for that are:
1. it’s morally superior, at least in my moral universe, since we don’t have any obligation to save the Iraqis from their own problems but we do have an obligation not to kill them ourselves,
2. it’s also better for American long-term security, since that way when Iraqis get killed their countrymen will be somewhat less likely to blame it on the US.
3. who knows, maybe left to themselves they’ll exceed expectations and forge a decent country out of the mess after all; for one thing, Sadr and his ilk may actually become less popular once they can no longer portray themselves as indigenous freedom fighters standing up to the evil occupyin’ furriners. They’ve not got much of a chance of that, I’ll grant you, but they’ve got a better chance than we do.
So, don’t think there’s no one out here willing to bite your bullet. ‘Course, I’m not a liberal humanitarian-interventionist, but a libertarian isolationist, so I may be atypical of CT readers.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.30.04 at 8:49 pm
D-squared, thanks for answering my question about how you would advise we avoid Iraq as Iran via the Sudan or whether we should even try to avoid it.
Your insight was its usual keen nature.
I stand in awe of the steadfast righteousness and laser-focused mind which allows you to accuse me of being unable to deal with the bloody consequences of my proposals as I talk about them while you calmly avert your eyes from and wash your hands of the consequences of your proposal.
You certainly are a paragon of the left.
fantazia 08.30.04 at 8:55 pm
“Second sentence not obviously true. ”
What, not enough people dying yet for you, Sebastian?
“So don?t play uber-realist with me until you talk about how you intend to deal with that,”
I don’t. It’s not my problem. Bush didn’t ask my advice before embarking on his excellent adventure, and he’s not asking for it now. Nor would he follow it even if he asked.
I’m playing the uber-realist game with you because it’s fascinating to see you raise the threshold of exactly what level of carnage is compatible with your image of yourself as a morally pure blogger for the forces of righteousness. Right now I see that that threshold has been raised to full-scale civil war and slaughter on the Dafur scale.
My oh my, and it used to be that “USA: Not as bad as Saddam” was considered seditious anti-war bilge.
I don’t have any constructive advice to offer: I get my pleasure from petty carping on blogs at neo-cons who have been reduced from grandiloquently comparing themselves to Churchill and Reagan, to peddling the slogan “USA: Slightly better than Dafur”.
abb1 08.30.04 at 9:02 pm
There’s nothing you can do to prevent a civil war there if it’s in the cards, unless you break Iraq into pieces.
You can use repression to suppress it for a while as Tito did in Yugoslavia or Hussein in Iraq, but once you let go – it’s back with the vengeance.
This neocon stuff is exactly as silly as, say, the communist idea that masses of people will begin working voluntary against their self-interest if you kill enough of them.
Sure, if we drop enough bombs there will be no civil war, they will all hug each other and lion will lay down with the lamb. I know – if only we sprayed enough agent orange and napalm in Vietnam – they’d be all driving minivans now and shopping at Walmart. Let’s just drop a few more 2000-pound bombs on densely populated city blocks and see if it turns things around for the better. No, didn’t help? Shit. Let’s try some cruise missiles then, I heard they work miracles.
dsquared 08.30.04 at 9:46 pm
D-squared, thanks for answering my question about how you would advise we avoid Iraq as Iran via the Sudan or whether we should even try to avoid it.
Sebastian, lose your sarcasm. Since your phrase “Iraq as Iran via the Sudan”, once I spent five minutes trying to work out what the hell you were on about, appears to refer to a hypothetical horrible situation of your own invention, I’m unlikely to be discussing it much.
Jim Henley 08.30.04 at 10:29 pm
Or do we decide that the price of compromise is too high if it involves sharia courts?
Quick question: who are “we?”
dsquared 08.30.04 at 10:43 pm
I have a frog in my pocket.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.30.04 at 10:59 pm
I apologize for assuming you were aware of the sharia in the state of Iran or the centrality of sharia to the civil wars in the Sudan and their genocidal aftermath.
I won’t allude to those further if they are causing confusion. And to keep things morally simplistic I will pretend that inflicting sharia court laws on people isn’t incredibly awful in and of itself.
What do you think are the likely results of attempts to enforce sharia law against Kurds and Sunnis in Iraq?
Harry (of the Place) 08.31.04 at 12:30 am
Perhaps Sebastian could learn something from reading this link
Jason McCullough 08.31.04 at 12:47 am
“And in your version we don’t maintain a military presence and that allows Sadr to maintain a level of repression which ensures that large numbers of civilians get butchered whether or not they decide to become combatants.
And that is fantastic in an ‘aren’t my hands so clean’ fashion. You continue to accuse me of failing to deal with the consequences of my ideas, but you consistently refuse to deal with the likelihood of even bloodier civil war is the 65% Shia population attempts to enforce sharia law against the Kurds and the Sunnis.”
Did Britain have a moral responsibility to intervene and stop the US civil war to prevent the possiblity of future civilian casualties?
Dan Hardie 08.31.04 at 10:01 am
‘an epidemic of drunken rape’
‘In Afghanistan? Very interesting. Is this a fact, Dsquared, or just another case of you making shit up?’
He’s not making things up- try reading Ahmed Rashid’s ‘Taliban’ for numerous examples of how early Taliban commanders, starting with Mullah Omar, got the support of locals by using armed force against, er, drunken rapists. ‘Hannah’ sneers at Dsquared for purportedly peddling the idea that the Taliban were out to protect Afghan women: actually, Hannah, a lot of the rape going on was of young boys. So nice attempt at labelling Dsquared a man with weird views on women, but better luck next time.
Sebastian Holsclaw: your post on ‘Red State’ on the affirmative action question was one of the best things I have read in the blogosphere on any subject- I say that not merely because I agreed with so many of its conclusions but because of the way it explored the questions. Could I ask what has happened to turn you into someone hurling abuse and accusations of ‘moral equivalence’ at people disturbed by the rather visible lack of strategy in the current US campaign in Iraq? And- given that on an earlier thread I spelled out my own objections to the Najaf operation- would you accuse me of moral or other forms of cowardice? And have you read the weekend’s NYT article spelling out how US forces have basically had to withdraw from large chunks of Western Iraq, including Ramadi, capital of Al Anbar province, in the face of Sunni guerrilla attacks? Any response, or are the reporters who wrote the story cowards, moral equivalence types, etc?
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.31.04 at 5:17 pm
Thanks for noticing the affirmative action post. I’m not accusing all people disturbed by the rather visible lack of strategy in Najaf. I’m disturbed by the direction that they think the strategy ought to go. I’m specifically pointing out issues with d-squared’s proposed approach. He repeatedly accused me of being unattentive to the bloody possibilities of my proposed approach while repeatedly (and to this moment) ignoring (at least publically) the near-certain bloody nature of his approach. He has repeatedly suggested that I don’t follow my proposal through to logical conclusions, but across multiple posts on the topic he ignores the ramifications of Sadr ascendant, or the ramifications of sharia law imposed on Kurds and Sunni practioners of Islam. There is ample historical evidence on the topic, we don’t have to guess. The civil wars in the Sudan centered on the topic and it remains crucial to the genocide that is going on now. The abuses in Afghanistan were related. Iran may be the best case scenario–which shouldn’t be comforting to anyone who cares about human rights or anyone who worries about Islamist terrorism. The best he comes up with in response is a quick mention of Malaysia. And it was good that he mentioned it only quickly because a slightly longer look at the issue there wouldn’t be encouraging for his argument. Malaysia isn’t currently undergoing civil war, but the sharia issue is causing major and sometimes violent problems.
dsquared 08.31.04 at 5:42 pm
Factually, there has been little or no violence between Sunnis and Shias since the liberation, and factually, there is no material anti-sharia armed movement. Therefore I suggest that the danger of this “civil war” is exaggerated. Furthermore, I disagree that shari courts specifically, played all that significant a role in the Sudanese civil wars.
kevin donoghue 08.31.04 at 6:10 pm
Sebastian Holsclaw: in an effort to get a better idea of your viewpoint I took a look at Obsidian Wings, where you spelled it out a bit further:
America should “guarantee [the Iraqi] Constitution for the first decade or two until it has become a part of their national character.â€
Practically speaking that means being prepared to interfere in Iraqi politics even after the Iraqis have a government which they and the world at large (likely including most Americans) consider legitimate. It is inconceivable that Iraqis would tolerate that, in the year 2014 never mind 2024, and quite unlikely that Americans would push it. Sharia may be causing problems in Malaysia but I don’t see too many Americans calling for intervention.
The “decade or two†timescale is too long to make sense for America and far too short to change the “national character†of Iraqis, which is pretty well set; the Ottoman Empire didn’t change it.
I cannot see that D-squared’s approach, to the extent that he has spelled it out, is all that scary. In a federal system Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites will have some latitude as to how far each province wants to go towards sharia law. Sistani is not pushing for anything that looks very radical to me. Al-Sadr is another matter but his share of the vote isn’t likely to give him practical constitution-changing power; nor is his militia strong enough to stand up to a legitimate government.
Dan Hardie 08.31.04 at 6:25 pm
Sebastian, my objections to the Najaf operation start with the fact that – in some accounts, including those provided by official USMC sources- the decision to go after Sadr after some of his thugs tried a drive-by shooting in Najaf was taken by a USMC Lt Col who did not refer his decision up the chain of command- no damn way to run a military operation- and goes on to the almost certain bloody unsuccess of any operation where the insurgents could either take cover in the third holiest shrine of Shia Islam (Najaf) or go to ground amidst 2 million civilians in an uncharted urban waste land (Sadr City). It’s nice that your reply to me has such a reasonable tone, but the bulk of your replies to Quiggin and Dsquared have, frankly, been screaming rants. I can quote if you want, but frankly it would just be better if you would start from the assumption that people to your left may not actually be motivated by mere anti-Americanism, to the exclusion of concern for, say, their own country’s interests or for the lives of their uniformed compatriots.
As for the general problem of Sharia law- non-Muslims in Iraq, whether urban secularists or Christians, are very much minorities. Any attempt to ‘go too far’ and impose over-strict Sharia law on a resentful majority, or large minority, will indeed lead to some kind of civil war. But ‘going too far’ or ‘over-strict Sharia law’ are terms which will have to be defined by the Iraqis, not by us: their country, not ours. Iranian sharia allows for the execution of rape victims, and women who lose their virginity; Pakistani ‘tribal custom law’in the NWFP has included the equally disgusting practice of gang-raping women as a punishment, although Islamabad has recently tried some kind of crackdown; Malaysian sharia, although I wouldn’t want to live there myself, does not hang rape victims or allow gang rape. The Iraqis themselves will have to determine what kind of law they want.
As to your belief that you know better than ‘the great bulk of the Iraqi public (who) are living in a fantasy world’ well maybe you do and maybe they are, but you can only dictate to them if you are prepared to fight a guerrilla war against a larger section of the population than are already fighting. Really- is that a good idea?
In my view the one thing that will deter the thuggish demagogue Sadr is being outgunned by a majority of his own compatriots. (I know that January elections are the current US policy and I pray that policy will not be abandoned. There are good reasons to think that Bremer did not institute elections earlier because it was obvious that Chalabi would lose them.) To judge from recent events, what will not deter him is the prospect of having to fight US troops in Sadr City: try finding an American soldier who relishes the idea of a street fight in a slum populated by 2 million Shi’ite Iraqis.
naomi 08.31.04 at 6:56 pm
I really hate to insist, but it should be noted that shariah per se is simply Islamic law, law according to Islamic principles. Sharia courts are religious courts applying those principles.
There are shariah courts everywhere there are mosques and religious Muslim communities. Those officially recognised, not just in Arab states but also in countries like Canada, or, again, Israel, are indeed those where the application of sharia is limited to family law matters such as marriage, divorce, parental rights, inheritance, etc.. They do not supersede national laws. They coexist with secular courts, in a secular law environment. In other words, they are somehow similar the Vatican Rota (except the Vatican Rota only regulates marriages and annulments, not inheritance).
It’s a bit early now to say, but if it turns out that there will be a majority consensus to have some form of sharia law in Iraq, that kind of sharia court system, which is the most common one, would be the model, not its extreme, dictatorial forms.
I mean, you don’t really have to find the concept of religious courts particularly attractive to realise it takes a big extra step to go from there to stoning adulterers or victims of rape in Taliban-like fashion, or even Saudi Arabia-style executions and mutilations. It also takes a big extra step to get to ethnic conflict and massacres.
I remember some debate over which degree of recognition sharia was to be given in the new Afghan constitution, but I don’t know how that was resolved.
Sebastian Holsclaw 08.31.04 at 7:05 pm
“Furthermore, I disagree that shari courts specifically, played all that significant a role in the Sudanese civil wars.
Do you disagree from knowledge or are you spouting?
Because imposition of sharia law has not only been significant, but has in fact been central to the Sudanese civil wars.
I presume you know about Hassan Abd Allah’s role in the Muslim Brotherhood, his work with and later fights with Nimeiri regarding the scope of sharia law being imposed in the country? The collapse of the Umma party and with it the parliamentary democracy when it was torn apart by those who on the one hand wanted more agressive imposition of sharia law, and those on the other hand who wanted sharia law lifted? Not significant? Balderdash.
In the other comments, I note the trust in the Iraqi federal solution to avoid sharia problems with minorities with the simultaneous outrage at the concept that the US may be required for some time to guarantee that it isn’t ignored joined with an understanding that Islamists desire to impose sharia law throughout Iraq married to a belief that the Islamist sentiment is so strong that the US can’t fight it. I don’t know how to respond to that level of contradiction. Is the desire to impose sharia law so amazingly strong that the US doesn’t dare fight it, or is it weak enough to be contained by an untested and unsecured constitution after a quick US withdrawal?
kevin donoghue 08.31.04 at 7:34 pm
I see before me a sentence of approximately 70 words, with one comma, containing the word “federal.†From this I deduce that the sentence refers to something I wrote. Oddly, though, it also contains a reference to “outrage.†I don’t do outrage very often myself, but somebody here does. It seems to affect comprehension.
I don’t know anyone, here or elsewhere, who holds the belief that “Islamist sentiment [in Iraq] is so strong that the US can’t fight it.†Personally I regard Iraq as one of the more secular states in the Arab world. That could change of course.
If anyone other than Sebastian Holsclaw has difficulty understanding what I wrote, please let me know which bit is obscure.
Dan Hardie 08.31.04 at 7:49 pm
I’m afraid I couldn’t understand Seb either. Look, Sebastian, I am *at least* as eager as you not to see the Anglo-American forces in Iraq get shot to pieces and for that reason I am criticising the current lack of a policy. I don’t think that ‘Islamist sentiment [in Iraq] is so strong that the US can’t fight it.†I do think that if the US decides to pick a fight with a large proportion of the Iraqi population over who defines the legitimacy of legal and other institutions, it will lose. This will be in part a religious struggle, but it will also be a classic nationalist struggle: who wants a bunch of foreigners proclaiming which laws can and can’t pass in one’s own country?
You said, not me, that ‘the great bulk of the Iraqi public are living in a fantasy world’. I am all in favour of an Anglo-American holding campaign whilst elections are held and the beginnings of a legitimate Iraqi state constructed, but a War on Unrealistic Iraqi Beliefs is a bit much for me.
dsquared 08.31.04 at 9:58 pm
Sebastian, what happened in Sudan was that the civil penal code was rewritten in accordance with one version of sharia. The Sudanese courts were civil courts imposing hudud punishments, not sharia courts (this is quite obvious from the fact that they imposed such punishments on non-Muslims; sharia courts would AFAICT in general not recognise themselves as having jurisdiction over non-Muslims in most cases).
Since Sistani’s Shia are a minority in Iraq (and Sadr’s loyalists a minority within that minority), the likelihood that they could rewrite the entire penal code to their liking is small. However, what they would be much more likely to do would be to establish a parallel sharia system in the regions they control. The question I have been asking all along is; how many people is it worth killing to prevent them from doing so? I’d be particularly interested in any answers which include all projected deaths, including those of ‘combatants’.
kevin donoghue 08.31.04 at 10:19 pm
D-squared, it is a bit puzzling that you say “Sistani’s Shia are a minority in Iraq.” Maybe in the sense that not all Shiites follow Sistani, but Shiites as a group have a clear majority. I agree with the gist of what you say, but my reading is that Sistani can’t dictate simply because he does not consider he has the right. As Juan Cole puts it, he is a bit like an Irish cardinal in the 1950s. There’s no doubting his power but there is good reason to believe he won’t throw it around.
nick 09.01.04 at 2:06 am
In Afghanistan? Very interesting. Is this a fact, Dsquared, or just another case of you making shit up?
Read RAWA (or any human rights organisation) on the ‘enforcement’ tactics during the height of the civil war in 1994 — tactics that, unsurprisingly, have been used in reconquered areas since 2002.
dsquared 09.01.04 at 3:34 am
I think Kevin is right on the subject of Shiites not being a minority, so sorry about that. I think the rest of my points stand, though; Allawi plus the coalition can’t impose their will on the Sunni triangle so I doubt that anyone else can.
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