Muqtada al-Sadr’s coalition leading in Iraq elections
Reinforcing my belief that they should have killed him when they had the chance, Muqtada al-Sadr’s coalition is taking an early lead in Iraq’s election, according to Stars & Stripes. al-Sadr encouraged his followers to kill US troops while he resided safely in Iran with his Shi’ite benefactors.
If the results hold, al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood and southern Iraq, could be in a position to determine Iraq’s next leader. Al-Sadr has repeatedly called for the complete withdrawal of all American troops from Iraqi soil.
Al-Sadr is a nationalist opposed to all foreign influence, including both U.S. and Iranian. He campaigned on a platform that criticized Iraq’s current political leadership as deeply corrupt.
Al-Sadr did not run for election but commands a coalition, known as Sairoon, which won by a large margin in Baghdad, which accounts for the largest number of seats in Iraq’s 329-member parliament that in turn selects the prime minister. A ticket led by the commander of a Shiite militia close to Iran came in second, according to preliminary results release Sunday night.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that Iran’s support of al-Sadr while he “bravely” urged his followers to fight US troops to their deaths from his apartment in Tehran will count for something if he gets a hold of the reins of power in Iraq.
He surprised Iraqis by forming a cross-sectarian, non-Islamist electoral coalition for Saturday’s vote that includes Iraq’s communist party.
Everything old is new again.
Category: Terror War
Mooky climbed out from under his rock in Iran and is back, how nice. I wounder how much arm-twisting it would take to have him arrested, tried, and sentenced by Iraqi authorities.
Or just “disappeared” altogether.
That fat, satan worshipping a.h. looks like a great target to me!
Thanks Pres. Bush for all the US Military deaths and Wounded for the likes of this dirt bag to win the election in Iraq in 2018. Thanks a lot you Bastard.
Don’t blame President Bush. Under asymmetrical warfare, he did the right thing by ordering the invasion of Iraq.
Want to blame someone for the deaths of U.S. Troops in Iraq? Blame those who opposed the Iraq War. Muqtada al-Sadr ranted that Iraq was going to be a Vietnam for the U.S.
What happened regarding the Vietnam War? Our enemies, emboldened by the anti war movement in the U.S., held on when they otherwise would’ve given up. The terrorists did the exact same thing in Iraq, doing their best to increase American kills in Iraq, expecting the same result.
Yes, they planned their attacks to take place at a certain time (When the U.S. East Coast, and its media centers started the day), late in the day their time. They watched the polling of American will to fight and saw how their efforts were having an impact on the U.S. electorate.
I’ve argued this point during the last decade, and I’ll be glad to argue it for the rest of my life.
Those that opposed the Iraq War both on the streets of the U.S. and in the halls of Congress are the ones that should be blamed, or have the lion’s share of the blame.
Our enemies have learned, from the 19th Century on, that to defeat the United States in War, you have to defeat the will of the electorate to fight.
Thank goodness that the military leadership, and their supporters in Washington D.C., were not willing to talk to those anti war types.
Oh yeah, you could also blame the last administration for fumbling the ball with regards to Iraq. We lost a lot of time, regarding progress, when ISIS rolled through. The last president also was pretty much a part of the anti war crowd.
So… what you are saying is all those losses were in vain and we couldn’t get the job done. How again is Bush fault?
I suspect that the BS ROEs in place after Bush directly lead to most of those “deaths in vain.”
But I digress.
All I’m going to say is Paul Bremer. Now he was a point of failure.
Give the fuckers cable TV and they STILL choose a zealot over freedom. I hate to say it but some peoples cannot think for themselves and require a dictator to lead them.
That would appear to be Arabs in general…
From the linked article:
“The younger al-Sadr campaigned on a cross-sectarian platform of fighting corruption and investing in services and struck a surprising alliance with the Communist Party in the capital.”
And:
“He surprised Iraqis by forming a cross-sectarian, non-Islamist electoral coalition for Saturday’s vote that includes Iraq’s communist party.”
That coalition has to hold.
Iraqi Cable TV is 200 religious channels, 30 football channels, 10 with Western TV, one with women’s tennis, ALJ and lets not forget Press TV.
Al-Sadr is a nationalist opposed to all foreign influence, including both U.S. and Iranian…He surprised Iraqis by forming a cross-sectarian, non-Islamist electoral coalition for Saturday’s vote that includes Iraq’s communist party.
If we accept that countries have “interests” rather than “friendships” this sounds like good news for us…or at least as good as you can expect in a place like Iraq. In fact I rate it as “excellent” compared to most of the predictions I’ve been hearing since 2003.
With Saddam gone one of the major critiques I’ve heard of post-America Iraq is that it’ll just be a puppet regime for Iran. If this article is right, Sadr’s coalition is against the idea.
Nationalism is a big improvement over sectarianism. And a broad-based coalition with a few commies in it is a big improvement over, say, the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas or Hezbollah or a Khomeinist party or the Ba’athists or what have you.
I wouldn’t wish an overall communist government on anyone, but if they’ve got atheists of any stripe in the coalition, it means they’re not in “behead all the infidels” territory. Actually I have to admit being cheered that Iraq–like Israel–even allows a communist party.
I don’t love anyone who’s responsible for American deaths in the past. And I remember the Cold War and hate communism as much as anybody. But a more peaceful future is far more important than any kind of grudge, however well-founded and however bloody that grudge may be. That should be the central lesson of the Middle East.
Ah yes… we originally supported Qaddhafi and Hussein since as nationalists, they weren’t communists.
Hussein was a socialist. Iraq was socialist prior to 1992, sort of stayed that way until the invasion.
Saddam’s official ideology certainly was socialist, but he was fundamentally about something much more primitive…the raw will to power, backed up by tribal allies and naked fear.
A broad-based political coalition, even headed by al-Sadr, is a considerable improvement on that. It suggests that Iraqis really can “do” democracy.
The Bath party has always been socialist. It’s founder was a big fan of NAZIism. Saddam controlled the country through the Iraqi Bath Party.
Many popular ME movements were fans of the Nazi’s. Iraq fought against the Allies in WWII as an attempt to throw off the British (and badly failed).
“Saddam’s official ideology certainly was socialist, but he was fundamentally about something much more primitive…the raw will to power, backed up by tribal allies and naked fear.”
Okay…. and this isn’t socialism how?
You massacre “family enemies” instead of “class enemies.”
In the ME your tribe is your class, so I guess so.
Except Mooky is Shiite, and has deep roots in Iran. It’s where he’s been hiding until the dust settles, and now he has a shot at Iraqi government. This is not a good development.
Iran would be the logical place for a Shiite leader to hide out. And since Iraq is majority Shiite, you would expect a major part of any new government to be the same.
But whatever his ideology is, he is seeking authority not only through the electoral process, but through a coalition, and a partly secular coalition at that. That gives him a lot less room to impose his own will.
If he’s popular enough to draw a lot of votes, we ought to be happy at two things: #1, a major part of his platform is not letting Iran run his country, and #2, he’s not able to impose a government with his own followers alone.
I’ve read that Churchill was able to deal amicably with Michael Collins–for all his terrorist background–to bring peace (of a sort) to their region; we ought to be able to deal with Sadr in the same cause.
And if the result is a consensual government in Iraq that isn’t attacking either its neighbors or its own citizens, that will be a fine thing indeed.
“But whatever his ideology is, he is seeking authority not only through the electoral process, but through a coalition, and a partly secular coalition at that. That gives him a lot less room to impose his own will.”
They all start off like that. Once they consolidate power they bring out the guillotines.
The Irish didn’t–maybe these fellows won’t either. They have enough recent experience with both dictatorship and sectarian violence to at least give them a reason to want something else.
The fact that Sadr sees the need for this coalition in the first place says something good about the Iraqi people. How good, we shall see.
Ok, the Irish didn’t: “this time” but for hundreds years they were more than happy to knife each other in the back for marginal, personal, short term gains. Sounds awfully familiar.
These shithole countries (to repeat a phrase) need to have their borders “secured”. Let the fuckers-and fuckerettes- kill off themselves.
I thought this gasbag was dead. My bad.
Somebody just shoot him. Shoot them all.
What? Too aggressive?
Fuck this mother fucker with an Abrams sized red hot serrated poker sideways.
Sincerely: Every single one of us that fought against JAM
Yeah, sure he opposes all foreign influences. That’s why the fucker spent so much time sucking Iran’s dick.
It’s not too late to solve this problem. One well placed charge of HE and the circle jerk falls apart and back in to infighting.
Maybe TAH should pool some money together and hire a guy to redecorate Sadr’s immediate AO with his own brains.
I got five on it.
Have a friend with a fucked up RPG leg he received fighting this cocksucker’s forces. Can we drone this fucker?
It rankles, but no we can’t.
Your friend (and I, and the rest of the Iraq vets) were there in part to ensure that the Iraqis could pick their own leaders. To drone their choice would be to defeat that part of the mission. Which, if he’s really running for office in the lawful way and including secular members in his coalition, appears to have succeeded.
Yeah I know. I’m just talking frustration in my first pass. Then reality sets in.
Stout fellow. All the best to you and your buddy.
Thanks. He fought there. I didn’t.
If Muqtada al-Sadr taking over is success failure must be what Khmer Rouge? Stalin?
“Failure” would be “back to a Saddam-style dictatorship, that invades its neighbors the way Saddam used to.”
Which I remember certain stripes of antiwar types predicting back in 03…some explained to me that Iraqis (or Arabs generally, or Muslims generally) just couldn’t do democracy. Others told me that the Iraqi people obviously liked the Saddam regime, it was culturally insensitive of us to imagine that they’d prefer democracy to this native institution, and how dare we deprive them of it? How would we like it if someone came in and took the Bush administration from us by force?
Our goal after removing Saddam was to let the Iraqi people themselves pick their future governments through a peaceful, consensual process. Per this story that now seems to be happening. It was never our goal to control who the leaders would be.
Don’t let’s support another 1963 Vietnamese Coup because we don’t like the parties who are succeeding. Instead, let’s be glad that they are parties, and are acting like parties instead of sectarian militias, and that their overt goal is the best one we could hope for.
“Failure” would be Iraq becoming subservient to a theocratic Iran, which is exactly what Mooky and his handlers have in mind.
Don’t want to seem insulting but there is some serious cognitive dissonance going on here.
They are sectarian militia. It’s not “Army of God” anymore it is “Peace Brigades”. Still armed, active and functioning and participating in battles with the plenty of backing from Iran. Suppression of the populace is just a side gig.
Little fuckers popular, gotta give him that. Seems like every house I “visited” had his poster on the wall.
The only allies we have left in Iraq are the Kurds and we’ve betrayed them by not giving them their own country.