Nice article, although the author, Fareed Zakaria, was one of the main enablers of this whole mess in the first place, using his "moderate" credentials to gin up support for the war.

It's increasingly obvious that Maliki, the Iraqi Prime minister, is allied with the Mahdi Army. Maliki and Sadr are playing a good cop, bad cop routine, and they're using US troops to dismantle Sunni insurgents groups. This will make Shiite ethnic cleansing of West Baghdad Sunnis much easier in the future, but it will also radicalize the Sunnis and foster more violence in central Iraq. Maybe US troops will also be used against the Mahdi Army, but that seems unlikely --anyway, if the surge is actually aimed at suppressing the Sadrists, then it's insane.

The surge plan is just a desperate rehash of the Vietnam-era "clear, hold, build" strategy. That strategy itself came from the French plan Challe in Algeria. Both ultimately failed, although they met short-term military objectives --we know what Bush cares about. The strategy is complex, bloody, rarely works under favorable circumstances, and cannot work with the measly reinforcements that will head to Iraq in the coming months.

All great points, Cizungu, I suspect that as we speak, Maliki and Sadr are hiding caches of weapons and temporarily disbanding the Mahdi Militia to present a false sense of cooperation with the US.
21,500 troops will not make a difference, and if GWB believes Sadr and Maliki will willfully cooperate with his plan…well, he will just confirm his naiveté in regards to his Middle East policy.

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"If you don't know where you are going, you will probably wind up somewhere else."
- Laurence J. Peter

In the "real" Saddam hanging video, you can hear the guards chanting "Muqtada" as in Muqtada al-Sadr. If the guys in charge of Iraq's most important prisoner are Mahdi Army types, what does that say about the rest of the government?

I too read about how the Iraqi Army isn't going after Shiite militias, just Sunnis. More Americans could help with that, since it looks like we're the only ones who are willing to fight the Mahdis, but 21,000 will be like shooting an elephant with a bb gun.

You maybe right there. By the way I like your avatar and welcome to AWE.

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An American first and always a Conservative.

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Go Sooners

We have no Allies. Britian only has 7,000 troops on the ground, Wheres Germany, France, Italy, Egypt, Japan.........We are (America) is all alone.

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You seem to have hit the mark :

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Mahdi Army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements.

"We have explicit directions to keep a low profile . . . not to confront, not to be dragged into a fight and to calm things down," said one official who received the orders from the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

(...)

The decision by al-Sadr to lower his force's profile in Baghdad will likely cut violence in the city and allow American forces to show quick results from their beefed up presence. But it is also unlikely in the long term to change the balance of power here. Mahdi Army militiamen say that while they remain undercover now, they are simply waiting for the security plan to end.

Of course, if US troops attack Sadr City, you can expect Hue redux. The Shiites would forget about our uneasy alliance and it's very likely they would turn on us, which is a very unpleasant thought when you know that US troops are being embedded with Iraqi units.
This whole surge plan is amateurish and just plain dangerous.

"Another U.S. adviser, Maj. Mark Brady, confirms reports that the Mahdi Army has been continuing to systematically take over Sunni neighborhoods, killing, terrorizing and forcing people out of their homes."

>>>Let me save the wingers some time: "What would a lowly fucking major know?"

I guess painting the situation as a failure from any direction is better than not being able to paint it a failure at all.