What are the implications of killing Moqtada al-Sadr?
He is the leader of a banned, radical, anti-American militia in Iraq. Since his newspaper was banned last week, his followers have been staging massive protests which have been turning more and more violent. Some of his followers are throwing themselves under American tanks to add to the anti-American hostilities in Iraq.
He is a bad dude by all definitions and if he is still around after our June 30th withdrawl, he will be a constant menace to a stable Iraq. I think he’s gotta be taken out, but…
Is this a case where if we strike the shepherd the sheep will scatter or is Sadr’s militia better organized than that? Most likely, his assassination will cause immediate protests/riots but how long would these last? Does the US have the ability to penetrate Sadr City and actually kill him? Would there be any major backlash in the wider Arab world? Does the US have a stated policy on Moqtada al-Sadr? What is keeping us from killing him?
Political assasinations should be condemned, period. The United States has scooped up thousands of bad people who carry out violence against our troops and Iraqi police, what is the possible advantage of carrying out premeditated murder in the manner that the Israelis have already been roundly condemned?
Ravenman: *Political assasinations should be condemned, period. *
Political assassinations are illegal, period. The only rationale for extrajudicial killings that seems to be generally accepted as legitimate according to the Geneva conventions is when they’re combatants in an armed conflict. If our situation in Iraq is no longer officially “at war” but is rather dealing with guerrilla resistance to occupation, as I understand it, we are not allowed to take anybody out unless it’s to protect our own immediate safety when they are actively attacking us.
I share your puzzlement about why we would want to assassinate anybody rather than arrest them, anyway. If we have an accurate enough fix on their location to know that we can take them out, why don’t we use it to take them in, instead? Obviously, if they’re breaking the law, we’re within our rights to arrest them and deal with them as lawbreakers. And if they’re not breaking the law, where do we get the idea that it’s okay to assassinate them?
Depends on who gets to take him out , It may be a reconstituted Iraqi army or a very fetching britney spears look a like. Does the American government in Iraq have a top down list of how the mans organization works? Just poppin the pimple does not automatically get you some peace and quiet.
To survive in that atmosphere , everybody is not a nice guy
If we don’t know how the militia is organizised , then its time to actually learn and hold off on whacking the guy .
No idea about the protests , but I am sure the press can find a passing group of unemployed lads for an impromptue protest, if it cant be found in real life
Does the US have the ability , yes
Would it have backlash , most likely , but as the Israelis are finding out , the sun still rises while the arab world should have risen up in one massive wave. Even Yasser is asking the states for political garunteees that Israel will not try and kill him , which is stupid cause he is the one crying make me a martyr.
In return to the question at hand , I expect that most people believe that Moqqie will soon be sleeping with the fishies , who does it and when are for a later time , and sooner or later Iraq will have to fight its own internal battles , even if that means a civil war.
As Iraq gets more violent and dangerous, I have a feeling the cries from the right to go in there, kick some ass, blow stuff (and people) up will escalate.
This doesn’t seem to be looking better. 5,000 people in a demonstration? That is crazy. This isn’t just “insurgents left behind by Saddam” - this is a lot of really pissed off people. A firefight killing 20 protesters and 4 soldiers (American, Spanish, and 2 Iraqi) and injuring over 200 people is a major deal - and all of this is in protest ofan arrest of his aide.
Good luck stabilizing the country by June, Bremmer.
The notion that the Iraqi problem can be resolved by killing Iraqis is mind-boggling in its degree of stupidity. For every one that you kill you are making more enemies. And even if you kill *all * the Iraqis (which I hope no one is advocating) the rest of the Muslim world would take on the fight. This is a chain reaction which needs to be defused and instead some people think it can be finished by throwing more fuel into the fire. The stupidity is alarming and wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t that some people who think like that are part of the US government. The situation is getting worse and in great part it is American actions making it worse. This is crazy.
You know, for a country that killed over a million people in defense of the domino theory, we certainly didn’t take the lesson to heart in realizing that other people could look at us the same way. O_o
It is particularly mind boggling that the poster seems to have adopted wholesale the proposition that it is an offense (a hanging offense, it seems) to organize demonstrations!
There is, in fact, a criminal sanction in place under the viceroy, for ?encouraging opposition to the occupation?
And, of course, under our current system once you check in to the Hotel Bremer, you don?t check out for a long time and your calls are always held…
While Maqtada al-Sadr might be the titular head of a militia, he is also a religious leader. So in a sense, assassinating him would be equivalent to assassinating, say, a Catholic bishop in the States. Granted, few Catholic bishops promote a message as violent as Maqtada’s, but hopefully you understand the gist of the metaphor.
Juan Cole is an indispensable source of information on these matters. He writes:
Nota bene: Sadrists are Shiites, not Sunnis. Up until now, most of the resistance to the US occupation has come from the so-called “Sunni triangle.” Muqtada’s uprising represents an expansion of violent resistance beyond its Sunni base.
The entire cycle seems to have been sparked by an unfortunate set of circumstances. To begin with, the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin by the Sharon government has pissed off a lot of Shiites, especially Sadrists, who believe the US shares blame for failing to condemn Israel over the killing:
After this, the CPA decided to close down Muqtada’s newspaper, charging it with fomenting violence (I have been given to understand that it had been consistently printing incendiary falsehoods about the CPA anyway). This led to protests: 1000 protesters on Monday, 5000 by the next Saturday. Muqtada’s Baghdad representative gave a speech, saying in part:
(For those who don’t know, an “honor killing” is when a man kills a woman – his wife, daughter, sister, or other family member – for adultery or other acts that can be construed as “dishonoring” his family. One of the less savory customs in that part of the world.)
Finally, yesterday, the US arrested Mustafa Yaqubi, one of Muqtada’s top aides and the head of his Najaf office (where the majority of the violence occurred today). I took the US decision to arrest Yaquabi as a warning to Muqtada, but Juan Cole suggests it might have been in response to the shooting of the police chief in Kufa, Muqtada’s hometown. All of these events, taken together, have simply simmered over.
Whew.
Muqtada is one of the most important members of the Shiite community, and arresting or executing him would probably result in civil war. Sistani would almost undoubtedly throw his weight behind armed resistance as well, should the US try to do something so foolish.
[QUOTE=alaricthegoth]
It is particularly mind boggling that the poster seems to have adopted wholesale the proposition that it is an offense (a hanging offense, it seems) to organize demonstrations!
QUOTE]
I said no such thing. Sadr is fomenting violence as a means of being in a advantageous position when the the handover takes place. He is not simply organizing demonstrations. As long as he is alive and free we cannot pull out of Iraq or else he very possibly could take over the country (or a substantial portion). This thread is to discuss the best solution to dealing with Sadr.
I don’t think there is a good way of dealing with him, but killing him or jailing him is probably the worst. We can barely handle our problems in the Sunni Triangle on a good day; if the Shi’ites take to the streets in large numbers to oppose us (on an ongoing basis, that is), that’s the end: there would be no good way out; if that happens, we might as well just pick up and leave. And killing or arresting al-Sadr would do just that.
I think we have little choice but to let him re-open his newspaper and hope things quiet down.
But don’t worry, even if things go to hell over there, the CPA press office will still be writing little happy-news releases about how wonderfully things are going, since they believe their job is to make the American taxpayer believe everything’s peachy, and besides, they want Bush re-elected.
Bremmer has become the new Bagdhag Bob. Every day you hear his triumphal declarations as things are getting worse and violence is mounting. he just ignores all that and continues with his rosy speeches. What a clown.
