California Conservative

My favorite military analyst/columnist Ralph Peters has written a wonderfully sarcastic article on Muqtada al-Sadr’s departure to Tehran. Here’s a sampling of his NY Post column:

LOOKS like our team won this round of Spook-the-Mook. A best-in-show source in Baghdad confirms that Muqtada al-Sadr took off on a road-trip to Iran. And he wasn’t just cruising in search of a Reuben sandwich.

The game ain’t over until the fat mullah’s scared. No matter how he tries to explain it away, Muqtada’s public cowardice is going to hurt him…after he encouraged his followers to martyr themselves. There already had been rumors of mutinies in the Mahdi Army that threatened Mookie himself.

One more reason to run.

It’s going to be hard for him to maintain his image as an Iraqi nationalist after running to mommy back in Qom or Tehran. To be fair, the Mookster hasn’t always done Iran’s bidding in the past but now he’s going to owe the Shiraz Sopranos.

In other words, the Bush Surge scared ‘Little Mookie’ so much that he’s decided he’d rather have a career as a chicken-shit imam in Tehran than have a legacy of being a martyr in Najaf. He’s lost all credibility within his Mahdi Army. He’s essentially neutered himself by doing this. I don’t know that this means the militia will set aside its weapons but it can’t help troop morale. Remember, too, that al-Sadr took his advisers with him.

Some news stories have hinted that Sadr’s stay in Iran is temporary, only waiting until the American surge is over before returning to his place of power. With his militia’s leadership in shambles and his cowardice exposed, Sadr is all but officially finished as a power broker.

We and the Free Iraqis shouldn’t miss a chance to portray that melon-bellied bigmouth as a wuss. He’s always been glad to deliver fiery sermons, but whenever we delivered firepower he disappeared, letting others do the fighting for him. In the past he at least went to ground on his home turf, hunkering down while his underlings fought and died. This time, his nerve failed him so badly that he jumped the border.

Amen, Brother Peters. Preach it, Son.

Here’s why Sadr fled:

The troop surge that Sen. Barack “I’m entitled!” Obama and so many others in Congress deride got his attention, too: Sadr City’s no longer a safety zone.

And after being beaten sufficiently about the head and shoulders, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has decided that maybe Mookie’s not the man of the future. Najaf and Karbala just don’t feel safe anymore.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve taken out or busted nearly a dozen high-ranking Sadrists, the boys who decide where the bombs will go off and who choose the death-squad targets. It’s hard to feel warm and fuzzy when your deputies keep going down.

And there’s a new kid in town: Gen. Dave Petraeus is a different kind of adversary and Muqtada, who made his bones judging the limitations of his opponents, recognizes that the rules just changed. Petraeus has a tactile sense of Iraq that his predecessors in Baghdad simply lacked. And King David’s out to win.

In other words, everything in Iraq has changed. Maliki had a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting with President Bush, who undoubtedly told him that his running interference for Sadr wouldn’t stop American forces from filling him full of lead. Another contributing factor is that the U.S. changed the Rules of Engagement, meaning that the shackles came off of our soldiers. Finally, David Petraeus is totally ruthless, something that’s been lacking until now. I suspect that Sadr decided to flee when he saw his top operatives weren’t being protected.

Technorati Tags: Moqtada al-Sadr, Mahdi Army, Shiite Militia, Iran, President Bush, Iraq War

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Iran, Iraq, Military, Terrorism, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.