How do you feel about Najaf? (was wrongly spelled "Fallujah" before)

[Bucky]

Poll question: How do you feel about Najaf? (was wrongly spelled "Fallujah" before)

Seriously. Of course we all want peace; we all want the killing to stop because it's just so damn needless. I'm not asking about your wants, but about your feelings.

I know this is exactly the kind of mess that we wanted to avoid when we opposed the war 18 months ago. What I'm asking about is how you feel now, now that the fighting is started and our countrymen are engaged in a shooting war with an enemy.

Do you secretly root for the Sadrists to hold out so that antiwar sentiment will ramp up and end the fighting? Do you, regardless of being a war opponent, long to see the Sadrists put down because they are a destablizing factor in a troubled land? Or do you wish a pox on all houses?

Comments urgently requested, but please let's keep it civil and assume that all of us are speaking sincerely...

edited to cover up wrong city name
How do you view the two leading sides in the battle of Najaf?

[NMDemDist2]

1. i don't know about you

but if there was a forgeign power with tanks and guns in my neighborhood, bombing our homes and churches, killing our family members and neighbors it wouldn't take much for me to take up arms, or at least to support those who did fight :shrug:

[sushi]

2. I agree with you

100%!:thumbsup:

[Bucky]

3. True, but Sadrists stepped up the fighting after the shooting ended

People like Moqtada al-Sadr are inevitable. But I see him as a bully and his followers as the unwitting puppets of Iran. The whole war, of course, is a result of Iran's extremist leaders playing the BushCo morons like a cheap fiddle--they KO'd their cheif rival, Saddam, and utterly discredited the United States in one fell blow. I think the Sadrists are a sideshow they've kept churned up for their own purposes. The use of a holy shrine for cover is pretty dishonorable to boot. Frankly, I'm not seeing a lot of good guys in this cockfight.

[bryant69]

8. See that's just it

It's hard for peopel to conceptualize that while we certainly shouldn't have invaded, that this guy might pretty bad too. It's a dpressing situation.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Vladimir]

18. This is hardly surprising

since before the shooting ended the Iraqi army was fighting the fight. I don't know why people find it so hard to accept that there might be a genuine home-bred resistance movement in Iraq. Of course they are going to recieve political support from Iran, the same way the during the war of independance, the US recieved Spanish support. None of this is very evil or sinister. I don't agree with most if any of their politics, but then this is not mine to judge since I'm not an Iraqi.

note: changed France to Spain on edit.

[Bucky]

23. US got much more support from France than Spain in RevWar

Spain was actually playing it real cheeky, giving enough to keep the Brits busy, but not enough to allow the US to grow up and threaten Spanish possessions in the interior and into the Mississippi Valley. In that regard, they were offering support in a way comparable to the support that Saddam was giving the Palestinians before he was taken out. He didn't want them to win, but he didn't them to lose exactly either--just to keep the Israelis tied down. Iran, near as I can tell, seems to be into Iraq whole hog. They are much more serious players in the power game than Saddam Hussein ever was.

[OMGBearisDriving]

4. sadr - iranian puppet or just another warlord

he is creating a big mess. most people i talk to say just wipe him out and the mosque he is hiding in. im christian and if some renegade priest was holed up in an church leading attacks, regardless of the cause, i would say blast it and make a new one.

better to kill him and rebuild the shrine now than let him continue to play with us while organizing the resistance.

freedom fighter my ass though. he believes in freedom just as The Reich believes in civil liberties.

[BeFree]

15. OMG

Now, that don't sound none too Christian to me:
"better to kill him and rebuild the shrine...."

The best course is for everyone to lay down their arms, move the soldiers out, ours, all the way out, and let nature take its course.

What you have expressed seems to be the kind of sentiment that got us into this mess in the first place. More of the same is no solution.

[thebigidea]

20. yeah, blast it. Great idea. Wonderful.

he is creating a big mess?

Who the fuck invaded Iraq?

[Ms. Clio]

5. Do you mean Najaf? Al Sadr is in Najaf, which is Shia

Fallujah is Sunni, and not under Sadr's control?

[Bucky]

7. excuse me, my ignorance is showing

Yes, I meant Najaf. I got the names crossed. That's the other reason why I oppose reckless overseas adventurism. All them ferrun names...

[Ms. Clio]

12. I imagine they would just as soon not learn any "furrin" names, either

Imagine how many people in the U.S. and the whole world wish they had never ever heard the names Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bremer, Negroponte....

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Do you mean Najaf? Or have there been developments in Fallujah? (n/t)

[liberalmuse]

9. I'm not voting, but...

It's just disgusting what we've done in Iraq. I don't want our guys killed and maimed, but Bush has unjustifiably invaded a sovereign nation and he is a war criminal, and by extension, it makes all of America guilty of war crimes and atrocities. If someone did to my country what we're doing to Iraq, I'd use the rest of my life to hunt every last fucker down responsible for killing my friends and family.

[Bucky]

10. Yet another 10,000 reasons to not jump callously into optional wars

I liked Wes Clark's description of Iraq as a "vanity war". How sad.

[Junkdrawer]

11. The influence of the Mullahs in Iran is dependent on ours and Israel's,,,

actions. Given the last 3 years, the mullahs are firmly in the drivers seat and much of what goes down in Iraq is now going to be influenced by the mullahs.

It's kind of like poison ivy - the more you scratch, the worse it gets.

[nosmokes]

13. al sadr can claim as much, if not more, legitimacy as the

US or it's puppet regime in my book. especially now - saddam's gone, there are no WMD, the only political prisoners are the ones we put there, so just WTF are doing there?

[Hippo_Tron]

14. I don't think that they are freedom fighters

I think that they simply want control of the government and if we gave it to them, they would rule just like Saddam did. Al-Sadar is just as much of a scumbag as Bin Laden and Saddam but the sad fact is that Bush is not much better. I think that while the majority of Iraqis do want the US forces out, I don't think that they necesarilly support people like Al-Sadar.

Anyway, what this all boils down to is that to solve this problem, we need a new commander-in-chief. One who will pull the troops out when we have left Iraq with a reasonably stable country instead of one who will keep them there for imperialistic reasons.

[Bucky]

17. Saddam & al-Sadr (& Allawi) are bad, but bin Laden is MUCH worse

Al-Sadar is just as much of a scumbag as Bin Laden and Saddam

I disagree. Saddam was certainly a first class evil bastard when he was in power. Al-Sadr is, by all accounts, a murderous thug too--a true by-product of Baathism and all forms of fascism, the revolutionary who is as bad as the dictator he replaces. Even Allawi has the potential to be as bad a dictator as any in that country, albeit one constrained by the US government, which in turn is constrained by democratic processes.

But none of them, even on their worst days, none of them is in the same league as Osama bin Laden. They haven't really attacked America. They haven't specifically targeted thousands of uninvolved innnocents in the hopes of inflaming an even huger world war. Don't even think of lumping Saddam and bin Laden in the same category. Failing to make obvious distinctions like that is one reason 12,000 Iraqi civilians have died in Mr Bush's vanity war.

[Hippo_Tron]

22. Saddam was genocidal

Again, not that I believe that justifies invading Iraq because that was several years ago, plus the administration used WMD's and ties to Al-Quaeda as the reason. But you are definately correct on one point, neither Saddam nor Al-Sadr have attacked America. Bin Laden has. And although I believe that they are all equally evil, throwing in the Bin Laden comparison was probably not the best choice of words.

[Darranar]

16. Sadr is out for his own power, so is Bush...

Sadr's interests, however, tend more to what I would prefer than Bush's.

The al-Mahdi Army is indeed fighting for the freedom of Iraq, and the cause I support, though I do not necessarily support their means in trying to achieve it. The US military is acting as the arm of our own leaders' goals, which is basically to control Iraq through a repressive dictatorship under the control of the US government. I disagree with both the means in the ends in their case.

I hope that the deaths on both sides, military and civilian, are kept minimal, and that the brutal US occupation ends as soon as possible.

[Zynx]

19. Al-Sadr is not a good guy with bad intentions.

He is clearly a man who seeks power and doesn't care how many of his followers, who are well intentioned, will blindly die for him.

As for our soldiers, they are almost all good people on a bad mission.

[gottaB]

21. other

Morally neutral power struggle? First off, I don't believe Sadr is a good representative of Shiism. As a Shiite cleric he speaks for millions of Shiite Iraqis but certainly not all of them. I believe many of the Shia who support his Mahdi army do so because of his nationalism and his opposition to the US, not because of his interpretations of the prophet's message. I reckon that many Shia see Sadr as cynically exploiting their religion for personal gain. They don't see his martyrdom or that of his followers as presaging the return of the Mahdi. Not at all. So that's one reason I didn't choose that option.

Of course the morality of the occupation forces is questionable. Apart from issues relating to the conduct of fighting, the US had it in for Sadr from the git go, and has taken many steps that could only lead to violent confrontation. So, it's hardly a morally neutral path they're on.

Honorable? Wicked? I just don't see things that way. Incompetent, unethical, negligent, stupid. Those are words I'd choose.