The Shadow of Sadr...and Chavez

Something else to ponder, now that al-Sadr has, thanks to Allawi's weakness and the Bush administration's leadership paralysis, once again slipped the noose in Najaf.

If the United States wants a peek at Iraq's future, it might take a look down Venezuela way.

In Venezuela, Chavez's populist rhetoric and nonaligned — if not overtly anti-American — stance galvanized his followers, who gave him a convincing victory of 58% to 42% in the recall vote.

The result was a major poke in the eye for the United States, which has combined overt disapproval of Chavez with barely disguised covert subversion of his democratically-elected regime and sub voce support of the fat-cat opposition that yearns to remove him.

It's a sobering reminder of what happens when somebody who isn't an enthusiastic stooge of the United States gains control of part of that oily neighborhood that is so important to our world interests, objectives, and self-esteem.

An oil-rich supremo can mobilize the lumpen with calls to distribute the petro-wealth on behalf of the poor, shut the doors of power on the pro-American business elite, and frustrate and affront the United States by diverting some of the precious crude to friends — like Cuba — who do not have a vested interest in his destruction.

If al-Sadr does the same thing in Iraq, then Oh mama! all that blood and money Bush poured into the Middle East got pissed into the desert for nothing.

Even before defying the U.S. in the latest Najaf standoff, al-Sadr commanded the admiration of anywhere from 68% to 80% of the Iraqi people, and had announced his determination to participate in the post-occupation political process.

For "participate", read "dominate", especially if Sistani decides he prefers medical treatment and mealy-mouthed pronouncements to the challenge of either directly confronting or embracing al-Sadr

In other words, al-Sadr is poised to become the major populist, anti-American force in Iraq politics — if he can survive the attempts at judicial and military assassination that the United States and the Allawi regime keep throwing at him.

The non-stop campaign to destroy al-Sadr is a new chapter in Minority Report. He isn't really wanted for his past and current crimes of alleged murder and actual maintenance of an independent militia.

Al-Sadr has been tagged for elimination for the pre-crime of superseding the illegitimate reign of the U.S. backed Allawi rump administration with a militantly Shi'ite, populist, non-business-friendly and anti-American regime.

Al-Sadr's slogan might as well be "Stay Alive Until 2005", when Allawi will either have to hold national elections or face an avalanche of righteous Shi'ite fury orchestrated by al-Sadr for postponing them. To achieve that goal, al-Sadr will probably do, say, or promise anything it takes.

Allawi and the Bush administration are humming to themselves "If We Can Only Kill Him by December" in the forlorn hope that, if the al-Sadr movement is beheaded, it will just go away.

But don't be surprised if we get it wrong — again.

Another fundamental miscalculation appears in the U.S. delusion that letting New Iraq's shaky legions take point in the planned assault on Najaf's holy shrines is somehow a wonderful, legitimizing boost for the miraculously unstooged Allawi regime...

...or that Iraqi-on-Iraqi slaughter under the distant supervision of the U.S. Marines would provide us with enough PR distance from a truly nasty piece of work.

The truth is, U.S. image in the Middle East is so poor it probably couldn't get any worse.

And the biggest favor that the U.S. military forces could do for Allawi is if we did the job ourselves, quickly, irrevocably, and brutally while he wrung his hands impotently and patriotically in Baghdad about what monsters those Americans are.

As al-Sadr dodges the bullet with another timely concession, one of most prolonged, grinding political assassinations in history drags on into another dispiriting round.

It looks like the U.S. dream of fast-forwarding Iraq's political development through Sistanized people power and Sadrist populism into the promised land of de-facto oligarchy by pro-business and pro-American elites presiding over a dispirited and politically neutered populace is not going to happen quite yet.

Don't blame al-Sadr, his overweening ambition, or his undeniable duplicity.

And as long as the United States relies on the pleasing rhetoric of liberation and democracy and the cruel reality of occupation and subversion, and expects our confused, incapable and illegitimate proxies to bridge the gap between the two, the "troublesome priests" - the Chavezs, the al-Sadrs — will continue to multiply.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.