No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 
Events in Najaf are at a Crisis Point. Why? and Why now?

Juan Cole weighs in on the American battle with the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf and at the shrine of Imam Ali (Shiite Islam's St. Peter).

It sounds like a politically extremely high-risk operation, one with little likelihood of a payoff worth the risk.

--------------------------------------------------

http://www.juancole.com/2004_08_01_juancole_archive.html#109234425753976053

Al-Jazeerah says that the Mahdi Army may have mined the shrine. This information suggests that if any force does attack the Mahdi Army there, it may trigger explosions that could level it. (Read: Very, very bad publicity for the US).
…
Some readers have written to ask if I think the Bush administration is deliberately provoking Iran, in hopes of widening the war and getting a pretext to attack Tehran.I don't know what in the world they are thinking. All I know is that they are acting in a hamfisted manner that is endangering the United States in the medium term for no good reason.

If I were thinking conspiratorially, this is what I would say: The Mahdi Army continued to be a challenge to the caretaker government of Allawi and could possibly have launched violence at any time.

The Bush administration may have feared leaving this element of uncertainty out there, with the risk that it might explode in their faces in October just before the election. So they could have thought that there are advantages to just taking care of the problem in August, on the theory that the American electorate can't remember anything that happened more than one month previously. Likewise, if they finish off the Mahdi Army, it sends a signal to other potential challengers to the Allawi government and they may think it will be strengthened. Likewise, the Mahdi Army's control of so many neighborhoods was a problem for the proposed January elections, and might have allowed a Sadrist party "machine" to dominate the returns from them.

The problem is that in actual fact they are undermining the credibility of the Allawi government as an independent actor. They are probably also actually increasing Muqtada's popularity, and the likelihood there will be new recruits to the Mahdi Army.

The radical Shiites are reworking the conflict as a defense of Iraq's independence from brutal American Occupation. On Thursday, the Board of Muslim Clergy, a Sunni fundamentalist organization with substantial support from Sunni Muslims, issued a fatwa or ruling that no Iraqi Muslim may participate in an attack on other Iraqi Muslims in support of the occupying power. That is, even the hard line Sunnis, who mostly don't like Shiites, are siding with Muqtada against Allawi and Rumsfeld on this one.


posted by Richard at 5:29 PM