In any event, my view of what happened differs from that offered, and also from what I could find in the N.Y. Times. I think it is true that there is probably not a lot of love lost between the Grand Ayatollah Sistani and Moktada al-Sadr. (Neither of these men would share most of the belief system those of you getting this hold - on issues such as the role of women, the rights of homosexuals, sexual freedom, a secular society, the use of alcohol, etc. I think our differences would be substantial). The Grand Ayatollah is a deeply respected figure, modest, religious, a scholar. Moktada al-Sadr, while from a respected family - his father was an Ayatollah - is not, I gather, seen as a respected Islamic authority. He is too young in a society where religious authorities are generally much older.
However the Western media - including the New York Times - has generally treated him as some kind of scoundrel, and written off his followers as a rag tag army of thugs. I suspect the British media in the 18th century reported in much the same way about the youthful and violent leaders of our own revolution, and their "mob" actions, starting with the Boston Tea Party. The courage with which al-Sadr's Mahdi's Army fought, outgunned, facine laser guided weapons, aircraft, etc., was remarkable. It seems to me that our media has been too ready to accept US reports of over a thousand dead in the battle, as if (a) the dead were all members of the Mahdi Army and not, in fact, a great many civilians and (b) as if the members of the Mahdi Army were not a legitimate resistance organization - certainly more legitimate that the United States military, which invaded a sovereign country and holds it by violent, military occupation.
The media is missing those points, and doing so consistently.
It would seem to me that the reality, in political terms, is that Sistanti emerges the clear victor, and the US and the puppet regime in Baghdad the losers. Let's briefly summarize what has happened. After a major military offensive by the US military (with little or no actual help from the Iraqi police), and after nearly achieving their goal of a military defeat of al-Sadr which would have culminated in his capture or death (a repeated statement of US objectives in the past) and after several "final ultimatums" from the Baghdad government, Sistani returned from his medical treatments in London, hardly a well man, called on his people to join him in a massive (and peaceful) march on Najaf, and within 24 hours had achieved a treaty with al-Sadr, which the Baghdad government had failed to do, and secured an agreement from the US (which at this point it has not yet honored) to withdraw from Najaf. Indeed, so irrelevant was the "government of Bagh dad" to the events this past week that in a scan of the Saturday reports in the New York Times the name of the leader of the "government of Baghdad" appeared not at all - Dr. Allawi's name appeared only on the editorial page!
Nor are al-Sadr and the Mahdi army losers. Al-Sadr, for whom an arrest warrant on a charge of murder had been issued (a very shadowy warrant from what little I can gather), is free to go, not subject to arrest. His followers are not forced to disarm. And while his followers are to leave Najaf, the more important part of the deal is that the US must also leave Najaf! This is now one of several Iraqi cities from which the US military has been excluded! Quite a strange occupation!
The main loser is Dr. Allawi. The main winner are the people of Iraq who demonstrated that they can, through their own institutions - in this case through the Grand Ayatollah Sistani, achieve a cease fire and get the US forces out of Najaf. I think the question of what would happen if the US simply withdraw sfrom Iraq can't be answered until the US does withdraw, but events of the past week suggest there is more reason to trust the Iraqis who are independent of the US than Dr. Allawi and his cohorts in Baghdad.
Turning briefly to the reports of an Israeli spy in the Pentagon, one remembers the quote of DeGaulle that "nations do no have friends, they have interests". Of course Israeli spies on the US, just as the US spies on Israel - and just as both countries must, for the sake of appearances, deny categorically that they would do any such thing. The charge that the spy involved worked with Wolfowitz and Feith - two of the most "ultra neo-conservatives" and two of the most pro-Israels among the nest of hawks - will mean that some wings may be clipped. I cannot help but wonder if there is some other agenda being pursued deep within the power structure. The strange turn of events for Chalabi (who was also very close to Wolfowitz), and now the FBI charge that there is an Israeli spy in the Pentagon with links to AIPAC, Feith, etc. looks to me as if something else might be going on.
Finally, the Saturday Times (August 28th) took the unusual step of devoting a third of a page to chiding Donald Rumsfeld - something which neither the Times nor any other newspaper will usually do, except on the editorial page. Rumsfeld startled even his own staff when he said, following the release of the two major reports on the charges of torture at Abu Ghraib, "I have not seen anything thus far that says that the people abused were abused in the process of interrogating them or for interrogation purposes". But were exactly among the charges in the Schlesinger report and in the Fay report from the Army! Both just issued in the past ten days. There is simply no way at all that Rumsfeld could not have been aware of the charges - which were political dynamite. It is bad enough to have Rumsfeld as head of the Defense Department. It is bad enough, in fact, that in Orwellian ways we changed the name of the old War Department to "Defense Dept", but it is intolerable that it is headed by a man who at one moment will admit that the buck stops at the top, and in the next moment denies that the reports from the panels he himself set up charged that prisoners were abused in the course of interrogation.
It is past time for Rumsfeld to leave the government. It is time to consider criminal charges against him, as well as against the lowest ranking members of the military who have already been charged.
The crimes of Abu Ghraib need to be understood much better than Rumsfeld seems to. It is one thing for us to remind ourselves that terrible things happen in our own prisons here in the US. But at least the men and women in our prisons have been tried and found guilty of some crime. (This doesn't justify either the present court system, nor the prison system, but it is to underline a crucial difference - the men held in Abu Ghraib had been detained but not charged, and a great number have long since been released). What is involved is that the US Military held Iraqis, and subjected them to torture, before there had even been the filing of charges, let alone trials or convictions. These were men helpless against the jailers, held under extreme conditions, in some cases of bitter cold and in others of terrible heat. Further, while some Republicans seem to think that what happened was no worse than might occur during a fraternity hazing, the cultural re ality is that the nature of the sexual torture was as deeply shocking within Iraqi society as news of the beheadings of hostages is to us. (Though I'm not sure why we should be that surprised - beheading is standard in Saudi Arabia).
Where events in Iraq will go it seems impossible to predict, but it is clear the US has lost military control of substantial portions of the country. We need to be clear in our demand for immediate, unconditional US withdrawal from Iraq. And we do need to keep in mind that in addition to the horrors of Najaf (well documented in the Saturday Times - the US military essentially destroyed the city), young Americans, men and women, are being brutalized, killed, and returning home with real or deeply traumatic psychic wounds. The price for this war is not being paid by the draft dodgers such as Cheney and Bush and Wolfowitz - but by working class Americans who had seen in the army a way to find work and even training, and have found themselves on the front line of a deeply nasty "imperial war".
David McReynolds August 28, 2004 (feel free to use in whole or part or send to others)
David Mcreynolds <http://www.mcreynoldsforsenate.org>