- Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani made good on his promise
to return to Najaf with thousands of pilgrims in tow and broker an end
to the standoff between Moqtada al-Sadr's militia and the US military.
The presence of pilgrims was necessary to act as a shield and to force
a cease fire - neither side, in particular the US, wanted to be seen engaging
in attacking pilgrims. All that was accomplished, for all the expenditure
of life and property, however, is that the militia inside the mosque gave
up their arms - which can easily be replaced. No prisoners were taken.
-
- This is the second time that the US has made a concerted
attempt to crush the al-Sadr rebel movement, and failed--even after destroying
a large part of Najaf, surrounding the famed Imam Mosque where hundreds
of Shi'ite militia took refuge, and killing hundreds of civilians.
-
- Will this be the end of the Shi'ite rebellion? Hardly.
As Reuters International reported, "But after bitter fighting with
US marines that killed hundreds and drove world oil prices to record highs,
many Mehdi militants still breathed defiance. "We will support whatever
Ayatollah Sistani and Sayyed Moqtada have agreed. But we will still slit
the throats of the Americans," said one militiaman.
-
- US Iraq policy is caught in a vice. It can,t win against
a growing resistance movement that has access to hundreds of thousands
of weapons and stockpiles of ammunition, and it can,t just let it go, without
losing face and walking away from its globalist policy of intervention
and control (oil, strategic choke points, etc). What it could do, if the
US wasn't so insistent upon antagonizing the Arab world, is:
-
- 1. Give the Kurds to the north their own independent
state
-
- 2. Allow the southern portion of Iraq, where the Shia
predominate, to form a semi-autonomous religious state
-
- 3. Allow central Iraq where Shia and Sunni co-exist to
be a semi-autonomous secular state.
-
- 4. Stop trying to control any further outcome of Iraqi
politics.
-
- Then, if people are free to vote with there feet, they
can choose which of the three areas to take up as their permanent residence.
Under current policy of micromanaging everything in Iraq, the US will
continue to be hated and attacked.
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