If the U.S. and compradors suffer an election setback in Iraq, perhaps the Iraqi Peoples' War against U.S. imperialism is a two-tiered effort, the bullet and also the ballot, a variation on the speech-theme of Malcolm X, a Muslim :>)- some mass cunning.
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Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani is not, as far as I can detect, an instrument of American imperialism. Even so his softer approach (dependent, in an ironic way, upon the thinly veiled threat that with a word he could order the Shia masses to join the Sunni insurgency - thus ensuring a head spinningly rapid US defeat) has attracted much criticism.
But as Prof. Juan Cole has tirelessly tried to explain for many months it is of far greater political significance to the dismantling of US stratagems (such as they are) than the ruthlessly executed but ultimately out gunned guerrilla war. Though, as you say Charles, the gun and the ballot form the ad hoc pincer movement of this war.
The United Stares is acting as midwife to the birth of a new state that, only a twinkling of an eye ago, was declared to be a nightmare scenario: a religiously led government in the heart of the Middle East, implacably opposed to American plans.
It is Sistani, and those who form his circle, we must watch closely - along with the Kurdish independence activists who are only a heartbeat away from changing their view of American allies from help to hindrance.
The Shia religious leadership of Iraq, whether we like it or not, are now at the vanguard. And although we're not at all attracted to their political ideas (though I should investigate this assertion more thoroughly) attention must be paid.
.d.
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