from Ziggurat:
My point wasn't so much that people were saying we'd be defeated ...
Then don't claim it. Saving time and bandwidth.
Not exactly. We pounded the Fallujah insurgents, and when they fell back to the Golan slums of Fallujah, we allowed the Iraqi's to try to take a hand in the situation by attempting a "political" solution. The marines controlled the tempo of operations in Fallujah, don't mistake their decision to take it slowly for a lack of control.
That is a matter of opinion. They could have gone the Israeli bomb-and-bulldozer route, except they couldn't because they'd be back to "destroying the village to save it", at a time when US PR hasn't been doing well. On the other hand, they didn't want to get involved in street-fighting with armed glory-heads, of which Falujah has no shortage. I wouldn't want to. Arrangements were made diplomatically. Military action is only ever an element of political action.
You've got the wrong impression there, too. US attacks killed hundreds of Sadr's militia, it was losing badly, it faded into the background so that the remaining members would survive. Sadr wasn't persuaded to enter politics, he now wants to enter politics because it's the only route to power he sees left now that his army has been crushed. And the Iraqis aren't going to let him as long as he has an outstanding warrant for the murder of another Iraqi cleric.
Sadr was at one time persuaded that he would come to power by force and a popular Shi'ite uprising, yea in glory would he be uplifted and a shining light would issue from his fundament ... The guy's a numpty. His militia were still shooting (to no great effect) at US soldiers when he became persuaded that there was another route. His "army" wasn't crushed; it didn't even lose its best forces since it never had any. As I said, the Iraqis will sort him out. They'll tell him he's going to become a made man, then when he gets to the venue he finds ... not so much. Plastic sheeting instead of carpet, that sort of image. He's a nothing.
This Guardian article is interesting. Here's a flavour:
They can't see what they are shooting at but shout Allahu-Akbar all the same, and everyone starts giving numbers of how many Americans they have killed.
But there's no shortage of them.
But the primary tool for the inflation of Sadr's stature was not US action, but millions of dollars in Iranian funding.
That surely has no documentary backing? The Iranians are backing al-Sistani. They have a good grasp of the realities out there. The Iranians do not want the US in Iraq any longer ... well, they never wanted it at all, let's face it. (If they were manipulating Chalabi they've discovered what "blowback" is.) And dorks like Sadr are not going to help get the US out, quite the opposite.
Nobody should expect reforms to come overnight. But yes, there are signs. Pan-arabism is starting to be recognized as a failure. And while no government wants to grab onto the US's middle east democracy initiative out of reflex anti-americanism, there is in fact growing recognition that they can't ignore the problem of reform indefinitely.
Prince Naif of Saudi Arabia thinks it can be ignored. Just what the "US's middle east democracy initiative" is apart from "look what happened to these guys, now behave yourselves" I don't know. How's it getting on in Saudi Arabia, where the US has had a great deal of influence and involvement for a long time? Not terrible well. Syria? The old guard seem to be consolidating their position and stifling reform, citing the threat from Israel and the US, defenders of the Fatherland, the usual generals' cant. Iranians seem to have given up on their reformists who, while not needing US backing any more than a hole-in-the head, could have done without the "axis of evil" BS. Kuwait? Puh-lease. And so on.
