Today's Stories

April 30, 2008

William P. O'Connor
The Day I Lost My Innocence

April 29, 2008

Uri Avnery
The Military Option

Roedad Khan
Why Gen. Musharraf Must Go

Chris Floyd
The Torture Election

Paul Craig Roberts
The Iraq War Morphs Into the Iran War

Dave Lindorff
Invasion of the Pumpheads

Mats Svensson
Mental Barriers in Palestine

Peter Morici
Will the Fed Broaden Its Focus?

Mike Ferner
Inside American Royalty's Security Bubble

John Weisheit
Towing Icebergs to San Pedro

Amit Srivastava
China Olympics, Tibet Crackdown, Coke Profits

Website of the Day
Tom Friedman Gets Creamed

April 28, 2008

JoAnn Wypijewski
On Queen's Boulevard, the Night Sean Bell's Killers Got Off

Mike Whitney
Jeremiah Wright Delivers the Knockout Punch: But Will It Topple Obama?

Iris Keltz
The Fruiting Fig Tree: Memories of East Jerusalem

Steve Niva
The New Walls of Baghdad: the Israeli Model Surges Toward Iraq

David Macaray
CAFTA's Bloodtrails

John Ross
"Adelitas" Shut Down Mexico's Congress

Stephen Lendman
The Politics of Green Scare

Malou Innocent
On "Withdrawing Responsibly" from Iraq

Christopher Brauchli
Want to Learn the Ins-and-Outs of the Slumping Economy? Just Ask Ashley ...

William Kaufman
Michael Moore's Embrace of Obama: a Polemic Devoid of Politics

Website of the Day
Get Your Fix

April 26 / 27, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Nothing Will Get Hillary Out of the Race

Ralph Nader
A World of Hunger

Peter Camejo
A Crying Shame: the Wages of Left Capitulation

Harvey Wasserman
Making You Pay for the Next Chernobyl--in Advance!

Franklin Lamb
Will U.S. Policy in Lebanon and the Middle East Ever Change?

Wajahat Ali
Fisk Fighting: an Exclusive Interview with Robert Fisk

Mike Whitney
Food Riots and Speculators

Andrew Wimmer
Obliterate Them!

David Yearsley
Nero, Frederick the Great, Nixon ... They All Did It Better Than Clinton

Greg Moses
Chicago: the Stupid Experiment

Ron Jacobs
Walking the Lonely Road

Robert Fantina
Bush v. Carter: Let History Judge

Missy Comley Beattie
Introducing President McCain

Linn Cohen-Cole
The Criminalization of Raw Milk: a Mennonite Farmer is Hauled Away

Paul Krassner
Remembering Ruben Salazar

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Buknatski, Khaiyat, Lair, and Kowit

Website of the Weekend
Justice for Sean Bell

April 25, 2008

George Ciccariello-Maher
Embedded with the Tupamaros

Dave Lindorff
The Bitter and the Biased: How Clinton Courted Racists in Pennsylvania

Franklin Lamb
The Israeli Project Has Failed in Lebanon

Alan Farago
Hacking the Development Code: the Politics of Zoning in Florida

John W. Farley
Syiran Nukes: the Phantom Menace

Kathleen M. Barry
Some Questions for "Femininists for Clinton:" Is There Really Any Difference Between Hillary and Condi?

Mohammed Alireza
Cowboys and Iranians

Nick Dearden
Haiti and the Black Hole of Debt

Carmelo Ruiz Marrero
Why Biotech is Betting on Biofuels

Bruce Springsteen
Farewell to Danny

Website of the Day
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop

April 24, 2008

Linn Washington, Jr.
Duplicity Demeans Clinton Campaign (or When Bill Praised Farrakhan)

Franklin Lamb
Bush to Nasrallah: an Offer Hezbollah Cannot Refuse?

Jennifer Van Bergen
The High Crimes of John Yoo: the President's Executioner

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Hypocrisy and the Malaysian Guantánamo

Mark Engler
Trade Politics and the Battle for the Soul of the Democratic Party

Dave Lindorff
The Politics of Obliteration: Hillary's Monstrous Threat

John Blair
Obama's Missed Opportunities in Evansville: Did He Even Know It Was Earth Day?

De Clarke / Stan Goff
Politics is Food is Politics

Binoy Kampmark
Bowling for Boris: the Tories, Red Ken and the London Mayoral Race

Philippe Marlière
Sarkozy and the Specter of May 68

Peter Morici
The Bank of England Misses the Point

Website of the Day
Fair Food Nation

April 23, 2008

Cockburn / St. Clair
Straggling to Denver

Vijay Prashad
McCain's Mask

Paul Craig Roberts
What the Iraq War is About

Stephen Soldz
The Involuntary Drugging of U.S. Detainees

Laura Santina
Hillary: Another Feminist Perspective

John Stauber /
Sheldon Rampton
Pentagon News Networks

Dave Lindorff
What Double Digit Win? Media Round Up in PA

George Ciccariello-Maher
Radical Chavismo Growls a Challenge

Ralph Nader
Andy Stern's Rackets

John Weisheit
Rearranging Deck Chairs at Glen Canyon Dam

Website of the Day
Wal-Mart's "Cost of Admission"

April 22, 2008

David Isenberg
Spinning Saddam's Linkages

Stan Cox
The Political Economics of Greenwashing

David Macaray
Memo to the Clinton Campaign: They Are Still Murdering Labor Unionists in Colombia

Jeff Birkenstein
Playing the Opposite Game: Or Why Can't I Sell Out?

Mike Whitney
Memo to Bernanke: Enough With the Rate Cuts, Already!

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush's Paraguayan Fiasco

Floyd Rudmin
From Lhasa to Bilbao: Journey of a Double Standard

Carlos Villarreal
Why John Yoo Should be Dismissed From Boalt Law School--And Prosecuted

Ray McGovern
What About the War, Pope Benedict?

Michael Gould-Wartofsky
El Barrio Fights Back Against Globalized Gentrification

Robert Ovetz
A Fish Tale

Pat Wolff
Rightwing Power Grab in Cornhusker State

Website of the Day
Defend the Rutgers 3!

April 21, 2008

Bill Quigley
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

Uri Avnery
The Lion and the Gazelle

Dave Lindorff
The U.S. Economy and the Costs of War

Wajahat Ali
Finding Osama Bin Laden with Morgan Spurlock

Andy Worthington
Hollow Gestures at Guantánamo

Robert Jensen
The Sorrows of Race and Gender

Ron Jacobs
Clampdown at Evergreen

Dan Bacher
The Great Salmon Closure

Harvey Wasserman
Where's George?

Danny Alexander
Remembering Danny Federici

Website of the Day
Save Our Taco Trucks!

April 19 / 20, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
McCain: What Really Happened When He Was a POW?

Patrick Cockburn
A New Struggle is Beginning in Iraq

Wajahat Ali
Zinn Speaks

Andrew Wimmer
Papal Benedictions

Rev. William E. Alberts
Jeremiah Wright and America's Continuing "Separate and Unequal" Societies

David Rosen
Texas Two-Step: The Polygamy Raid and the Regulation of Sexual Life

Robert Fantina
McCain Detests War?

Ramzy Baroud
The Politics of Armageddon: McCain's Pastors and the Middle East

Saul Landau
The No Escape Clause on Iraq

Dr. Susan Block
Raelians, Aliens and Evolution

David Yearsley
Suitcase Arias and Ithacan Jazz

Phyllis Pollack
On the Red Carpet with the Rolling Stones

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Hartz, Newberry and Khaiyat

April 18, 2008

John Ross
The Bush Legacy: Losing Latin America

Dave Lindorff
Courage and Conviction: In Praise of Bill Ayers

Dan Glazebrook
An Interview with Robert Fisk

Carl Finamore
A Look Inside the Hangars

Rannie Amiri
J Street: Do We Really Need Another Pro-Israel Lobby?

Richard Morse
A Creepy Roadblock at Midnight

Ko Young-dae
CONPLAN 8022: Inside Bush's Nuclear War Plan for the Korean Peninsula

Farooq Sulehria
A Himalayan Surprise

April 17, 2008

Michael Hudson
Hillary Joins the Vast Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

Robert Bryce
The Ethanol Apologists

Kathy Kelly
Weary of War? Don't Collaborate

Madis Senner
The Carrion Feeders' Ball: How Hedge Funds Reap Billions Off Economic Misery

Peter Morici
The G7, the Banks and GE

Ron Jacobs
Washington, al-Maliki and the Militias

William S. Lind
A Confirming Moment in Basra

James Murren
Obama's Disconnect with Small Town America

Ben Terrall
Losing Haiti

Walter Brasch
Political Log Rolling in Clinton County, PA

Website of the Day
Stealth Attack: Homegrown "Terrorism" Bill

April 16, 2008

Bill Kauffman
The Candidates from Nowhere

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Colonization and Massacres

Saul Landau
How to Leave Iraq

Peter Morici
McCain's Economic Plan: GOP Out of Ideas (But So are the Democrats)

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
Bankers Saved, Human Rights Sacrificed

Jeff Ballinger
Inside Nike's Asian Sweatshops: Squeezed Vietnamese Workers Strike Back

David Macaray
Union Strikes and Replacement Workers

Gary Leupp
Electoral Revolution in Nepal

Richard Morse
The Food Riots in Haiti

George Ciccariello-Maher
Einstein Turns in His Grave

Dave Lindorff
Letters from the Bitter Belt

Website of the Day
Surviving Prozac

April 15, 2008

Ralph Nader
The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

Uri Avnery
Manifest Destiny and Israel

Brian Cloughley
Arrogant Lies

David Price
Outrageous Pre-Tour de France Ban

Joe Bageant
Bitter America: Media Shit Storms and Heartland Reality

Steve Early
The Purple Punch-Out in Dearborn

Mats Svensson
To Create Something from Nothing: the Making of a Palestinian State

Michael Donnelly
Dead-Eye Hil and the Elitist

April Howard /
Benjamin Dangl
Dissecting the Politics of Paraguay's Next President

Laray Polk
Let's Not Put the Torch in a Bubble

Charles Modiano
What Does a Woman Have to Do to Get on the Cover of Sports Illustrated?

Website of the Day
The $3 Trillion Shopping Spree

April 14, 2008

Carl Finamore
Airline Deregulation Makes a Hard Landing

Michael Hudson
A Trillion Dollar Rescue for Wall Street Gamblers

M. Shahid Alam
Hizbullah's Big Win: Has Israel Finally Met Its Match?

Patrick Cockburn
A Cleric, a Pol and a Warrior

Paul Craig Roberts
Petraeus Sets Up Iran

Joanne Mariner
Redition to Jordan: What Happens When the Gloves Come Off?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide and Cymbalta

Dave Lindorff
The Bitterness Thing: Is Obama Channeling Nader

P. Sainath
Hot Messages to Sex Dancer Doom Condi's New Finnish Pal

John V. Whitbeck
On Hypocrisy Over Tibet: a Personal Reflection

Website of the Day
Spying on Environmental Groups

April 12 / 13, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Olympic Torch Toasts US Candidates

Patrick Cockburn
Warlord: the Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Mike Whitney
Want to Save the Economy?

David Yearsley
Film Scores and Westerns: the Stealth Cavalry of Empire

Robert Fantina
Bush's Brand of Morality

Conn Hallinan
Another Defining Moment in Iraq

Bill Hatch
In Praise of Hippies and the Counter-Culture

Ramzy Baroud
The Basra Battles

George S. Hishmeh
Back to Square One

Ron Jacobs
The New New Left in Latin America

Nikolas Kozloff
Olympic Torch in Buenos Aires

Charles Thomson
The British Prime Minister and the Tate's Tin of Shit

Alexander Billet
The Disney-fication of CBGB

Missy Beattie
Huffing and Puffing to Failure

David Michael Green
America's Jones for War

Seth Sandronsky
Education Entrepreneurs

Prairie Miller
Meeting David Wilson

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Ko Un, Ibn Salma and Greaves

Website of the Weekend
Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

April 11, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff
The Clintons and Their Sordid Colombia Advocacy

Wajahat Ali
Revenge of the Ghetto Nerd: an Exclusive Interview with Junot Diaz

Sharon Smith
Let Them Eat Ethanol!

Yigal Bronner / Neve Gordon
Digging for Trouble: the Politics of Archaeology in East Jerusalem

Alan Farago
Eating South Florida

Dave Lindorff
On Waking Sleeping Giants: Lessons for America from China

George Wuerthner
Money for Nothing? The Problems with the Conservation Reserve Program

Christopher Brauchli
Prostitutes Don't Do Funerals

Website of the Day
Animals Explain the Insurance Industry: a Health Care Video

April 10, 2008

Mathieu Vernerey
Tibet for the Tibetans!

Elizabeth Schulte
Slavery in the Fields

David Macaray
Labor Unions Will Never Get a Fair Shake

Ashley Smith
The Rise of Muqtada al-Sadr

Peter Morici
Driving Up Debt and Dragging Down Growth

Jacob Hornberger
The Military's Distintegrating Family Life

Harold Austin
Snitch or Else: Prison Officials Threaten Gang Drop Outs

Website of the Day
Hillary: the Wal-Mart Videos

April 9, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Fading American Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congressional Theater: the Petraeus / Crocker Hearings

C. Hand
Why Dave Marash Left Al Jazeera

Paul Krassner
Sex and Violins

Paul Wolf
Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years

Wajahat Ali
Alien Invasion!

Karyn Strickler
Lost in the Fumes: the Sierra Club Sells Out to Clorox

Dan La Botz
Confronting the Economic Crisis

Eric Walberg
The Shadow of Munich: Another NATO Flop

Robin Millenthal
Enough Already! Growth and the Tar Sands Economy

Website of the Day
Conservative Nanny State

April 8, 2008

Mike Whitney
Should Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be Set Free?

Nikolas Kozloff
Bush Bullies Congress on Colombia Deal

Greg Moses
Migrant Detention in South Texas

Joshua Frank
The Other Military Draft

John Ross
Mexico City's Urban Tribes Go on the Warpath Against EMOS

Michael Donnelly
Hillary's Western Swing

John V. Walsh
Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Jeff Nygaard
Health, Security and Mandates

Bill Piper
Last Shot for a Bush Legacy?

Sen. Russ Feingold
Legal Representation and the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Catonsville 9, Forty Years Later

April 7, 2008

Ishmael Reed
The Irish Black Thing

Harry Browne
Irish Peace Activist Acquitted; Deported

Uri Avnery
Tibet and Palestine

Lenni Brenner
Obama's Constitution, His Pastor and His Unbelieving Mom in Heaven

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
America Must Respect Pakistan's Democracy

Robert Fisk
Fearful Lives in the Land of the Free

Edwin Krales
Ensuring the Success of Fascism in Spain: the US Corporate Role

Chris Genovali
Vancouver Island's Dwindling Ancient Forests

Website of the Day
LA Artists Against War

April 5 / 6, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Did the Elites Want MLK Dead?

Ramzy Baroud
There are No Checkpoints in Heaven

Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts

David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down

Saul Landau
Sex Politics in America

Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show

Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot

Seth Sandronsky
Meet America's Promise Alliance: Colin Powell's New Gig

John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students in Ecuador Bombing

Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values

David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad

Missy Beattie
McCan't

Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe

Dr. Susan Block
The New American Pot Dealers

Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press

Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Diamand and St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Richard Pryor Goes to the Gun Shop

Subscribe Online

Surging Into Chaos

Iraq After Basra

By ASHLEY SMITH

The trumpeted success of the Bush administration’s surge was built on flimsy foundations. They were, principally, the employing of the Sunni resistance to fight al-Qaeda, effectively bribing a large section of the Sunni resistance to stop attacking the U.S.; Muqtada al-Sadr’s unilateral cease-fire, which temporarily silenced the Mahdi Army; and the fact that a great many areas formerly prone to sectarian violence had already been cleared of Sunnis or Shia. All of these conditions were provisional. Seemingly unaware of the Iraqi prime minister’s tenuous position, Bush supported Nouri al-Maliki’s disastrous attack on Sadr’s Madhi Army in Basra at the end of March.

Bush celebrated the siege of Basra as “a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq” that would bring “America closer to a key strategic victory in the war against the extremists and radicals.” Just as with previous proclamations like “Mission Accomplished,” this new “defining moment” turned out to be precisely the opposite of what the U.S. and its puppet Iraqi government intended. Sadr withstood the attack, and it took Iran, the U.S. archenemy in the Middle East, to save the Iraqi government by brokering a cease-fire.

At the very moment General Petraeus, Ambassador Crocker, and Republican presidential candidate John “one hundred years of war” McCain were hailing the success of the surge before Congress, the assault heightened political and military conflicts between and among Iraq’s three main communities—Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds.

The U.S. precipitates intra-Shia civil war

Contrary to U.S. propaganda that the Maliki government organized the assault on its own, the U.S. played a key role in its design and execution. “No significant Iraqi military action,” argues analyst Gareth Porter, “can be planned without a range of military support functions being undertaken by the U.S. command…. Furthermore, the embedded role of the U.S. Military Transition Teams makes it impossible that any Iraqi military operation could be planned without their full involvement.”

The U.S. and the Maliki government opted to attack Sadr in Basra to secure their control over Basra’s oil fields and the port and to eliminate the Sadrists as competitors in the October provincial elections—with an eye toward the neoliberal reconstruction of the oil industry and wider economy.

The Sadrists’ parliamentary faction had supported the Maliki government and had ministers in his government. But the Sadrists, who are Iraqi nationalists with deep roots among the Shia poor, split from the Shia United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) controlled by Maliki’s Dawa Party and Abdel-Azziz al-Hakim’s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), whose base is the Shia elite.

Dawa and ISCI opted to support U.S. plans for an extended occupation, the new oil law (not yet passed) that would open up Iraq’s oil industry to foreign and private investment, and the soft partition of Iraq with a weak central government. In response, the Sadrists withdrew from the government and denounced the Dawa/ISCI government as collaborators who were failing to address the demands of the Iraqi masses for independence, a strong central government and improved living conditions. Dawa and ISCI were therefore itching for a fight with Sadr.

ISCI and Dawa had a further interest in proving to the U.S. that they were willing and capable of liquidating the Sadrists. Ibrahim Sumydai, a former Iraqi intelligence officer and analyst, argues, “The Shiite parties saw the growing cooperation between the Sunnis and the Americans and started to fear maybe the Americans will turn and give power back to the Sunnis. The other Shiite parties wanted to prove that they are still America’s closest allies in Iraq, so they attacked the Madhi Army.”

The U.S. and Maliki foolishly underestimated the Sadrists’ strength, unity, and popular support and thought they were in a position to eliminate his forces. They wrongly thought that Sadr’s declaration of a cease-fire in August 2007 and its renewal in February 2008 were signs of weakness. Moreover, they mistakenly believe that they had split Sadr from his “criminal and extremist militias,” including those in Basra.

In fact, Sadr used the cease-fire to consolidate, unify, and strengthen the Madhi Army with the help of Iranian weapons and training. As one of his commanders told the Canadian Press, “We are better organized, have better weapons, command centers, and easy access to logistical and financial support.” Moreover, Maliki and the U.S. underestimated the widespread support Sadr gained by breaking with the UIA and agitating against the occupation and poverty.

After the British were driven from Basra, a three-cornered fight developed among the ISCI with its Badr Brigades, Fadhila with its militia the Oil Protection Force, and Sadr’s Madhi Army for control of the city and its crucial oil fields. While ISCI and Fadhila won political control of the city and Shia south in the 2005 provincial elections, the Madhi Army controls the city itself through its forces and social services.

Over 20 percent of Iraq’s oil is pumped out of Basra’s wells and 90 percent of its oil exports are sent out of Basra’s port. It is therefore a major strategic prize for the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Right before the attack, Vice President Cheney visited Iraq to push for the new oil law. Moreover, as the siege of Basra occurred, Chevron, Exxon, and British Petroleum were negotiating with the Iraqi Oil Ministry for contracts on the Rumaila oil field near Basra.

The U.S. decision to hold provincial elections in October was the final precipitant of the battle of Basra. They pursued these elections to appease demands for political inclusion from the Sunni Awakening Councils—the militias of former resistance fighters recruited by the U.S. to fight al-Qaeda—whose forces boycotted the last provincial election and therefore are not represented in their own strongholds. However, the U.S. along with ISCI and Dawa feared that Sadrists, who also boycotted the 2005 provincial elections, would sweep the Shia south as well as Baghdad.

The victors of the provincial elections will decide on the proposal from ISCI and Dawa and their Kurdish collaborators for the soft-partitioning of Iraq into ethnic and sectarian super-provinces—Kurdish in the North, Sunni in Anbar, and Shia in the South—with a weak central government. However, the Sadrists as well as the Sunnis favor a strong central government, oppose the oil law, and demand a timetable for U.S. withdrawal. So, if the Sadrists were allowed to sweep the October elections, they would likely win control of the Shia areas, challenging the U.S. occupation and its neoliberal economic plans.

The U.S., ISCI, and Dawa were therefore determined to eliminate Sadr and his Mahdi forces as their principle political opposition before the October elections. As an Iraqi member of parliament stated, “Maliki’s goal is to wipe out the Sadrists before elections because he knows his bloc will lose to them.”

The siege of Basra

Driven by their own illusions and interests, the U.S. and Maliki launched Operation Knights’ Assault with 30,000 soldiers and policemen, most of them ISCI’s Badr Brigade militias in uniform. Maliki declared, “we entered this battle with determination and we will continue to the end. No retreat. No talks. No negotiations.”
The operation turned into a catastrophe for Maliki and the United States. The Mahdi Army fought their forces to a standstill. Over 1,500 government forces refused to fight and turned over their weapons and vehicles to Sadr’s militias. Sadr’s forces struck back with protests in cities throughout the Shia south and even launched attacks on U.S. soldiers and the Green Zone, causing the highest number of U.S. casualties since the start of the surge.

Sadr appeared on Al Jazeera to rally Arab nationalists and all Muslims to expel the U.S. occupiers from Iraq. He declared that “the occupation is trying to divide Sunnis and Shias…. I love the Sunnis. I am Shia, but we are all Iraqis. Iraq is still under occupation and the United States’ popularity is reducing every day, every minute. I call through Al Jazeera, for the departure of the occupying troops from Iraq as soon as possible.”

“The Iraqi people,” he continued, “are suffering just as if they were still under Saddam. The small Satan left and the great Satan came. God willing, the occupation forces will be driven out as happened in Vietnam.”

The Iranian connection

Desperate for a solution, ISCI and Dawa representatives sought out the Iranian government to negotiate a cease-fire and escape from humiliating defeat. “Adding to Bush’s utter humiliation,” the Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss writes, “the Iranian negotiated truce was mediated by the commander of the so-called Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani…. The Quds Force, you will recall, was only last year designated as a ‘terrorist’ entity by the U.S. government. So President Bush’s ‘defining moment’ is this: the head of an Iranian ‘terrorist’ force has brokered a deal between the two leading Shiite parties in Iraq, Sadr’s movement and ISCI.”

Therefore, Sadr and Iran emerged from the battle of Basra as clear victors. Sensing his advantage, Sadr called for a million-strong demonstration demanding an end to the occupation. Neither the U.S. nor the Maliki government could tolerate the Sadrist threat in the run up to the fall elections. They immediately laid siege to Mahdi strongholds in Sadr City, the teeming Shia slum of 2 million. U.S. air and ground support was substantial. Militias likely associated with ISCI killed Sadr’s second in command in the holy city of Najaf. Faced with a reign of terror and streams of refugees fleeing Sadr City, Sadr called off his demonstration.

The U.S. and Maliki won over Sunni and Kurdish representatives to join them in introducing a bill that would require that all political parties disarm their militias or be excluded from the October elections. Of course, the law, if passed, would no doubt be implemented in a completely discriminatory fashion against Sadr’s Mahdi Army and not against ISCI with its Badr Brigades disguised in the police and army, nor the Kurdish parties with their fighters in the Peshmerga. There’s no telling what ISCI and Dawa will do with the various Sunni parties and their connections to the Awakening Councils.

Failure of the surge

The assault on Basra has ended the false calm of the surge and sparked both increasing resistance to the occupation as well as ethnic and sectarian conflict between and among Iraq’s three great communities.

As Vali Nasr, author of The Shi’a Revival, told Time magazine, “The ceasefire and the surge allowed everyone to regroup and rearm. There is still the Shia–Sunni conflict. There is still the Sadr-Badr conflict. The surge and the ceasefire merely kept them apart, but there has never been a real political settlement. No, the big battle for Iraq hasn’t been fought yet. The future of Iraq has not been determined.”

The U.S. and the Maliki government have opened up a period of intra-Shia war against the Sadrists. They will attempt to co-opt Sadr’s moderate wing and crush his militias. But, as the Arab Times reports, “Sadr says he will not enter any political process that would allow U.S. forces to remain in Iraq. Sadr also denounces U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates as a terrorist and says he will never work with Iraq’s occupiers.” Moreover, despite his overriding strategy of avoiding self-defeating military conflicts with the U.S., Sadr has threatened to call off his cease-fire with the occupation forces and government. As Juan Cole argues, “if the Sadrists are really excluded from civil politics, and they are the majority in the South, then you will have just pushed a majority of Iraqis out of the political process and potentially into civil violence.”

Bush’s decision to subcontract the fight against al-Qaeda to the Sunni tribal leaders has created the conditions for an even more explosive conflict between them and the Shia. The U.S. pays $16 million a month for the services of the Sunni Awakening Councils of 90,000 former resistance fighters. The councils’ tribal leaders are salafists, hard-line fundamentalists who despise not only the U.S., but also the Shia government, which refused to integrate their forces into the Iraq Army; indeed, they consider the Shia to be infidels.

The Guardian newspaper reported in March that there were several strikes among Awakening Council members over inadequate pay and frustration over doing life-threatening dirty work for the U.S. against al-Qaeda. If the U.S. calls off the elections because of the chaos their siege of Basra caused, the tribal leaders could easily renew their guerrilla resistance to the occupation, and their attacks on the Shia.

The ISCI/Dawa plan for soft partition has exacerbated conflicts among Arab Shia and Sunnis and the Kurdish parties. The Sadrists and Sunni forces are both for a strong central government, while disagreeing about its sectarian balance. By contrast, the Kurdish parties want control over the oil rich areas of Kirkuk and Mosul as part of an autonomous Kurdish region. To do so they would have to ethnically cleanse the Arab population as well as the Turkmen minority, something that would provoke Turkey to intervene against Kurdish nationalists and in defense of the Turkmen. With the approach of the provincial elections, all of these sectarian and ethnic conflicts will grow more intense.

To impose their rule over the catastrophe they have wrought, the U.S. has frozen any withdrawals until July to maintain its force at about 140,000. It has also ordered the British troops near Basra to remain in the country. The U.S. and Britain are clearly preparing for further and even more violent assaults on the people of Iraq.

Threatening Iran

Desperate for a new justification for the failing occupation, the Bush administration, General Petraeus, and Ambassador Crocker have turned to blaming Iran for all their problems in Iraq. Both Crocker and Petraeus trumpeted the Awakening Councils’ success against al-Qaeda in Iraq, but they argued that the real threat is Iran, which they claim is fighting a proxy war through so-called special groups inside the Mahdi Army.

This is a complete distortion of reality. The Iraqi opposition to the occupation is home grown, particularly Sadr and Mahdi Army, who have long been critical of Iran and the parties it has controlled—the U.S. allies ISCI and Dawa. Moreover, while Iran has cultivated allies among all the Shia factions, it has played a restraining role. Gareth Porter reports, “Maliki and Supreme Council chief Abdul Aziz al-Hakim publicly dissociated themselves from the U.S. ‘proxy war’ line, insisting that Iran was restraining Sadr rather than egging him on.”

Nevertheless, the Bush administration has increased its threats against Iran. No doubt with U.S. approval, Israel in early April staged one of the largest military exercises in its history with the expressed purpose of preparing a response to attacks from Iran in the event of a U.S. war on Iran.

After the hearings in Washington, the U.S. sent Petraeus, Crocker, and Rice to all the Sunni states in the region to rally them against Iran. As the Washington Post reports, “Maliki’s willingness to go after fellow Shiites attracted support from other political groups in Iraq, including Sunnis and Kurds that have long been suspicious of his sectarian leanings. It also gave Washington a talking point to use with the Sunni Arab governments in the region that have shunned him. ‘It’s an opportunity to make him look better inside Iraq and to make a better argument to the Arabs,’ an official said.”

However much Cheney fantasizes from his bunker about another war, the U.S. is in no position to attack Iran. The U.S. military high command clearly opposes it for fear of breaking its already crisis-ridden military. Admiral William Fallon already resigned over Bush’s decision to deploy the Navy to the Persian Gulf.

Instead of a prelude to war, the Bush administration’s threatening posture and rhetoric aims to bully Iran while conducting behind the scenes negotiations about its nuclear program and its policy in Iraq. George Bush announced his intent “to solve these issues diplomatically. You can’t solve these problems unilaterally. You’re going to need a multilateral forum.” But Bush’s threatening posture could easily tip the volatile situation into military confrontation between the U.S. or Israel and Iran.

The Democrats offer no real solution to the Bush administration’s disastrous policy in Iraq or toward Iran. Despite their antiwar rhetoric, they merely want to rehabilitate U.S. imperialism in the Middle East through better diplomacy, phased withdrawal, and increased military intervention in Afghanistan. More often than not the Democrats join the Bush administration in bashing the Iranian boogeyman. When the rubber hits the road, the Democrats won’t even oppose Bush’s war plans; yet again they have promised to pass the $108 billion emergency war-funding bill that Bush has submitted to Congress.

Resistance, civil war, and chaos

Sadr’s uprising against the U.S. and Iraqi government siege of Basra has certainly undermined the surge. But overall, neither Sadr nor the Iraqi resistance as a whole has produced a nationalist formation able to unite Sunni, Shia, and Kurds against the occupation.

Sunni salafists lead the bulk of the Sunni resistance as well as the Awakening Councils. Many collaborated with anti-Shia bigots in al-Qaeda in Iraq. They envision reclaiming sectarian dominance in a new central government, thereby positioning themselves in opposition to the Shia majority and discounting legitimate Kurdish demands to self-determination.

Sadr has emerged as the paramount Arab Shia Iraqi nationalist. But as left-wing Iraqi exile Sami Ramadani argues,

Sadr’s previous tactics have been strongly criticized for being an obstacle to greater anti-occupation unity. These tactics included on-off participation in the government and the Sadrists’ presence in parliament (within the sect-based coalition list that won most of the seats in the January 2006 occupation-controlled elections). Though his supporter have withdrawn from the government and the sectarian coalition, their tactics have partly contributed to the sectarian climate which they constantly criticize and regard as the main obstacle to unity.

The Kurdish parties have collaborated with the U.S. invasion and occupation to secure their dreams of autonomy within a federated Iraq, a demand that puts them at odds with the Iraqi Arab majority.

Except for the heroic struggle of the Iraq oil workers in Basra and elsewhere for union rights and against the occupation, there is little non-sectarian and multiethnic organization capable of galvanizing a truly nationalist movement that encompasses all the demands of the Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds.

Nevertheless, with each passing day, the U.S. occupation makes the situation in Iraq worse—killing its people, increasing sectarian and ethnic conflicts, undermining the economy, and destroying the infrastructure of its society through the unceasing violence provoked by the occupation. In such conditions, Iraqis will struggle to unite their masses and liberate their country.

Our task in the U.S. is to demand immediate withdrawal to free Iraq from colonial occupation and compel the U.S. to pay reparations to the Iraqi people so they can rebuild their society however they see fit.

Ashley Smith writes for the ISR. He lives in Vermont and can be reached at: ashley05401@yahoo.com