I've been reading the American press, so I know that there is no Iraqi stability to threaten.

First, you're assertion is a strawman. Nobody ever said they were united. However, just because they're not against us at the moment doesn't me they're for us. SCIRI is an Iranian creation.

This whole manuever should be classed under the heading: Be careful what you wish for. By helping SCIRI defeat Sadr's group (temporarily), you're only defeating one group marginally connected with the Iranians by favoring another, which is intimately connected with them.

Also, this will only wind up being a temporary victory, as Sadr's group is far more entrenched in the Shiite community than you seem to be giving them credit for. The people who are killed in this battle, will be easily replaced by vengeful cousins (as we discovered in the Sunni triangle), and the bad blood the fight engenders will most likely end any hope for a stable democracy amongst the Shiites, not to mention the rest of the country.

Finally, I don't think a divided Shia' would be very helpful to your plans of turning the Shia' against the Sunni.

Derek:

Why should they be for us? We stabbed them in the back in '91 and haven't turned power over to them a year after the war was won.

Well, then, don't you find us helping them a bit troubling, especially since they'd just as soon repay us by helping Iran?

Is this really what we killed 800 of our guys and 10 to 15,000 Iraqis for?

No.

Yes.

Retaliation because of our failure to rush to the aid of Shia in 1991?

Yeah right OJ.

Derek -

First, the Left/anti-Bush naysayers have staked their credibility on so many worst case scenarios since we started to fight and die aganist the Islamofascists that when they do not materialize you all have the benefit of (to your credit) dismiss them as strawmen or worst (the rest) to ignore the claim was ever made. This particular claim of broad sympathies even included Sunni - Shiite cooperation and coordination over Fallujah and the Sadr kerffufles.

Second, on the topic of what is it worth fighting and dying for, I would start by referring you to

http://www.nationalcenter.org/2004/05/new-e-mail-from-front-in-iraq-i-ask.html

which refers to an email from an Army specialists who is doing the very specific fighting we are talking about here, and who (with all due respect) appears to know a hell of a lot more about the Sadr-Shiite-Iranian strategy than you (and oj) know. His answer to is it worth fighting needs no elaboration.

But let's not take his word or his vote (with his life) for it, I challenge you to go through the history of US military involvements since the Civil War, and not find an unlimited number of examples where the strategic objectives of a battle when measured against its costs could not evince the same comment. (Of course, no respectable analysts would refer to the casualties as having been killed by ourselves, that would be more approrpiate of a polemicist like Michael Moore.)

Iraq is a minor battle (in this context, measured in casualties in historical context) on a War against an enemy which inflicted more damage on us than any other did in one day and unprovoked. Iraq's reboot aims to create something unique in the Middle East, so the chances ought to be that it fails. Were it to succeed in one shot, how could any of us look at ourselves in the mirror and not say: Damm that we did not do this before was a sin! A well functioning Kurdish state alone (and is not) confers ourselves as much to be proud about as the "solving" the Palestinian "injustice".

Agreed to that last part, but if the Iranian Shias get in the saddle, there not only ain't gonna be a well-functioning Kurdish state, there won't be any kind.

Getting rid of Islamofascists is, whether a worthy goal or not, absolutely necessary to our own survival.

The question is, what Muslims are NOT Islamofascists? It takes a Pollyanna to think that SCIRI is different from the rest.

Kurdish state? What does that have to do with the Shi'a?

But it is the Shi'a who are not fascist, nor do the Kurds or Turks or Bengali or many others appear to be.

Derek - While all the leading Iraqi Shi'ite groups have some sort of connection to Shi'ites in Iran, Sadr is closely connected to Iran's Guardian Council and to Hezbollah - to the terrorist-and-tyrant Iranians. SCIRI is more connected to the traditional religious authorities, who are a moderate force. SCIRI is working with us in Iraq. If they go to war with Sadr and push his militia out to our waiting troops, that will be yet another instance of their cooperation with us. All is not doom and gloom ...

h:

What retaliation?

OJ, you and Harry can argue the definition of facist. Shia seem willing to step up to the plate and kill infidels as much as Sunni, so try focussing on what is important to me (an infidel)

oj --

Some people like Kurds more than Shiites, some like Shiites more than Kurds. Having freed both should satisfy all (or at least, more). I am not as laudatory about the Shiites as you are, but I do see potential in them and some of their leaders.

h:

I don't get it. Who's killing you?

Retaliation- Sadr's gang killing American Soldiers and the Government's Policemen. Why, are you getting forgetful?

MG:

But what does one have to do with the other? The Kurds have a state. It may be independent or may be part of a federalized Iraq. But they'll be free.

Who's killing you?

Do you perhaps remember 9/11?
One interpretation of that is the Osama Bin Laden was trying to kill infidels. He (Bin Laden I am refering to) seemed to interpret it that way. But who am I to say, maybe he just didn't like tall buildings.

h:

Yes? Bin Laden believes the Shi'a to be infidels as well. Your point remains elusive.

Where's that vigilante group when you need it?

OJ
You first start by suggesting that Shia resistance to the American effort is justified because 1) we did not adquately come to their aid in their rebellion against Saddam. 2) We have been there a WHOLE year. (Also justifing the killing of American Soldiers in the interim)

Now you say my point is elusive. Well my point is that if they were not caught up in the general Muslim hysteria against American, Europeans, Jews, since 1948 and rejuvenated by Khomeini in 1979 (they had our embassy personel captive for a WHOLE year) and juiced up by BIN LADEN in 2001, a rational person would expect to see nothing but elbows and a**holes moving to help us. Since we don't see that yet, I feel your optimism is uncalled for.

h:

We attacked Iraq in 1991, asked them to rise up against Saddam and then left them to his mercies. Then we sanctioned the country, affecting the people rather than their rulers. Now we invade and occupy their country.

If you were one of them how grateful would you be?

If I turned my brain off because of Blind hatred of Americans for there religious beliefs (or lack thereof) then I would blame them for all my problems.

If I looked at who had tried to remove their leader (for no economic gain that I discern) against world wide public opinion, and with at least significant threat of large death toll, I would work to aid them in removing and isolating the supporters of their hated leader and then ask them to leave.

The Confederacy received much moral support from the British and little else. I don't think southerners felt any special hatred of the British for letting them down, because they knew it was their own Battle.

H:

No, the Soiuth hated the North for occupying it and freeing it of slavery. But we all got over it....mostly.

That's right..mostly. Yeah sure I guess.

PS the slavery thing was going anyway. In Latin American it fizzled with out a civil war 20 years later. In the Carribean the same thing.

Good night

As Iran demonstrates, Islamicism fizzles in twenty years too.

>OJ, you and Harry can argue the definition of
>fascist.

The practical, in-use definition is "ANYONE WHO SAYS I CAN'T DO WHAT I WANNA DO IS A FASCIST! ANYONE WHO DOESN'T GIVE ME EVERYTHING I WANNA WHEN I WANNA IS A FASCIST!"

Kind of like that old Mad Magazine quote that "Anyone who can do anything better than me is a FAAAAAG!"

>As Iran demonstrates, Islamicism fizzles in
>twenty years too.

But how much damage can they do to us in those twenty years? The "Thousand Year Reich" lasted only thirteen years, but look at how much damage they did in the meantime.

'Islamofascist' isn't my term, nor is it one that I find helpful. I just stayed with it because that was the term of reference being used.

The question -- Lileks said it better than me on Wednesday -- is who is the enemy?

People who find Islam attractive like to separate out the bad elements as 'Islamofascists' or the like.

People, like me, who find the project of the religion abhorrent, approach from the other end: all Muslims are dangerous except the few who are, to coin a phrase that no one has ever thought to coin before, 'Islamodemocrats' or 'Islamolibertarians.'

There's a real good reason nobody ever thought to separate out Muslims that way.

Harry:

Shouldn't that read "People, like me, who find the project of ... religion abhorrent..."?

Since you don't understand the necessity of religious faith to a healthy society your opinion is worthless as regards Islam.

While I find religion personally distasteful, I don't think all religion is abhorrent. Universalist, monotheistic religions tend to be more abhorrent than others.

I don't give a hoot if Aborigines paint themselves and dance around to the digeridoo.

Besides, I'm not insisting that everyone adopt my view of Islam. Either I'm right or I'm not. We'll know more about that soon.

Don't expect sympathy if I am right and you don't like what you get, though.