Good news and bad news

Moqtada al-Sadr, who had been keeping a low profile since announcing he would not participate in the Iraqi elections because they were being held under US occupation, has emerged first to lead a mass protest against the US presence in Iraq and then to make a dramatic gesture toward internal Iraqi reconciliation. (Perhaps I should say conciliation, since "reconciliation" implies there had been a conciliation in the past, but let that pass for the moment.) An AP report today brings the news:

Senior aides of anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr met a key Sunni group in a bid to soothe tensions that have flared amid violence that has killed at least 550 people, including 10 Shiite and Sunni clerics, since the new Shiite-dominated government was announced on April 28.

"There is a wound that needs to be treated and Muqtada was the first to offer his medicine," said Sheik Abdul Salam al-Kubaisi, spokesman for the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars after the talks with the al-Sadr delegation.

That's the good news. The bad news is that what prompted the meeting was the charge by the Association's leader, Harith al-Dhari, that the Badr Brigades were behind the killing of several Sunni clerics. That militia is attached to the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; SCIRI and the Dawa Party combine to make up the dominant Shiite bloc in the new government.

The response from the Badr Brigade was to accuse the Sunnis of wanting to "push Iraq into a sectarian conflict."

Meanwhile, the Muslim Clerics Association, in a further indication of escalating emotions, had announced that Baghdad's main Sunni Muslim mosques would close for three days "[i]n protest over attacks on mosques and killings of clerics, the detentions of worshippers and theft of their property."

In short, the good news is that the meeting was intended to diffuse conflicts that many fear are pushing Iraq toward civil war. The bad news is that the fact that it occurred shows just how deep and real those conflicts are and so just how real that threat is.

In fact, Sadr himself, probably unintentionally, revealed the conflicts' intractable nature:

"Iraq needs to stand side-by-side for the time being," al-Sadr told Al-Arabiya TV.... [emphasis added]

That is hardly a reassuring comment looking to a peaceful future for Iraq. It raises again the two questions that needs to be asked of anyone of the "well, now that we're there" school, who argue that things would be worse if we left:

1) Just what level of violence is it that you think we're preventing?

2) What makes you think that if we stay another - how many years are we talking about now? - with the day in, day out, dripping of blood, that the very same conflicts which you fear now will no longer exist?

Remember when there was going to be a "significant drawdown" of US forces in Iraq by the fall of 2003? Remember those days, with neocons heady with victory? Now the hope is for some significant withdrawals by the end of 2006 - three years late - and now even that date is in doubt, with Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, quoted by AP last Thursday as saying it's "too early" to predict when troops will come home. The fact is, there is only one way to get out and that's to get out. STDD/GTHO.

Footnote: AP also reports that

[s]even Iraqi battalions backed by U.S. forces launched an offensive in the capital on Sunday in an effort to stanch the violence that has killed more than 550 people in less than a month, targeting insurgents who have attacked the dangerous road to Baghdad's airport and Abu Ghraib prison.

Just think of that for a moment or two: It's been over two years since the invasion, over two years since "mission accomplished" - and they haven't even secured the damn capitol, much less any outlying areas. What an utter waste of life this has been - but the big fool says "push (or bring 'em) on."