Residents of Baghdad are systematically being pushed out of the city. Some families are waking up to find a Klashnikov bullet and a letter in an envelope with the words "Leave your area or else." The culprits behind these attacks and threats are Sadr's followers- Mahdi Army... Riverbend.
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I had the thought as Riverbend described her friends leaving Iraq. That was in fact the plan behind this civil war. The point to the civil war which may be more like political cleansing is not to turn the country into fragmented pieces. I think political cleansing is more appropriate than ethnic cleansing since R writes: ``It's not just Sunnis- it's Shia, Arabs, Kurds- most of the middle-class areas are being targeted by militias...'
The point is if Sadr and whatever he represents can consolidate enough of Baghdad and several other regions, then he or `they' will be in a strategic position to turn and take on the US military directly. Somewhere near that point Sadr will sit on top of an accomplished fact, and can dictate terms to the US. Leave or be thrown out the hard way.
In the end, the country will become exactly what the US theoretically invaded Iraq to stop. It will become a fully militarized (Islamic) state that is both a serious threat and the enemy of the US and western interests in the Middle East.
Bush was right when he said Iraq must not fail. Of course the US has done everything to absolutely insure that its own worst nightmare will come true.
All this is happening right in front the US military occupation. The military doesn't see these cleansing operations as a serious threat to itself because it is only Iraqis killing Iraqis. The US seems to think of these battles only in terms of a so-called de-stabilization problem.
Maybe there is no de-stabilization problem, but rather its opposite. An internal war to stabilize and consolidate the country along Islamic state lines.
I will bet, sooner or later, the US military occupation will begin to realize they have presided over a series of brutal consolidations that have made their worst enemy much stronger. And, if the US stays around long enough, it will become the only target in Iraq.
Both the US right and left tend to see Vietnam as a communist victory. But it might be wise to review that idea and look more closely at the North Vietnamese in light of Iraq. Of special interest were the NVA operations in the south during the middle years of say `63-67 when the Viet Cong were seen as a destabilizing force by the US and the Saigon government. There was plenty of ethnic cleasning going on in the cities, especially against the ethnic Chinese who had a serious business (and middle class) tendency to support whoever was in power in Saigon.
CG