Rather than seeing the drubbing the Sadrists endured as reason enough for them to call off the battle, USA Today looks for other reasons:
Iranian officials helped broker a cease-fire agreement Sunday between Iraq's government and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to Iraqi lawmakers.
The deal could help defuse a wave of violence that had threatened recent security progress in Iraq. It also may signal the growing regional influence of Iran, a country the Bush administration accuses of providing support to terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere.
I suppose that even if it is true that Iran was responsible in full, you might ask why the Iranians would want the fight ended if the Iraqi government was losing. You might even ask why Iran should have such a level of control over supposedly native Iraqi gunmen. Heck, you might even ask why Maliki--long viewed by our press as an Iranian puppet--was fighting Iran's friends in the first place.
But those questions aren't asked since the only purpose is to kill any image of an Iraqi victory over the gangs in the minds of American readers. Indeed, the story paints this end of combat as a sign of Iranian dominance:
"The government proved once again that Iran is a central player in Iraq," said Iraqi political analyst and former intelligence officer Ibrahim Sumydai.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but an English-speaking "former intelligence officer" would likely have been a Sunni Arab Baathist with reason to undermine Maliki and paint him as a stooge of Iran.
The spinning of a Sadr victory continues:
Vali Nasr, an Iraq expert at the Council of Foreign Relations, said al-Sadr had emerged stronger from the battle, which killed more than 300 people. "He let the Americans and the Iraqis know that taking him down is going to be difficult."
Al-Sadr's militia stood strong, forcing the government to extend a deadline for them to disarm.
"Everything we heard indicates the Sadrists had control of more ground in Basra at the end of the fighting than they did at the beginning," said al-Nujaifi, the Sunni mediator. "The government realized things were not going in the right direction."
This is amazing stuff. The 300 people killed were basically Sadrist gang members. I'd say the Sadrists realized that fighting the Iraqis and Americans is going to be difficult. I'd say that the message has been sent that Iraqi troops will kill Sadrists if confronted.
As for the extended deadline, that was actually a separate deadline for residents in general to turn in certain weapons and not a revision of the original demand on the gangsters fighting in the streets to give up.
And again, relying on the judgment of yet another Sunni, al-Nujaifi, seems a bit farfetched. And once you realize that the bulk of those casualties cited were Sadrists, the idea that many would have survived their "winning" campaign had it gone on much longer is shown to be farcical. More dead Sadrists is the right direction as far as I'm concerned.
Further, even the article indicates that the spokesman for Maliki hardly sounds defeated:
Al-Rikabi vowed Iraqi forces will continue a broad offensive against "criminal elements" in the southern city of Basra and elsewhere.
So the battle will go on. Perhaps not kinetically as the past week was, but we'd rather have a low-key campaign of arrests and killings when the targets don't go quietly. The key will be whether the agreement just leaves Sadrists alone or whether it allows the low-key campaign to defang the militias to continue and accelerate.
Max Boot recognizes that the fight against the Shia militias is a necessary step to winning in Iraq:
While most news coverage has focused on the renewed fighting as signs of impending doom–or at the very least evidence that the surge isn’t working so well–the FT correctly detects a silver lining: “If the prime minister succeeds, the pay-off would deliver a big boost to the credibility of a shaky government, proving that the growing national army is capable of taking on powerful militia.”
Boot also believes the Iraqi security forces are fully capable of taking on the militias if the government's forces are led well. I agree. The degree of difficulty depends on how many of the Shia militias are the hard core Iranian-backed killers and how well the Iraqi army is directed and led. The average gang member cannot stand in battle against well-led troops nor are the Sadrists as vicious as the Sunni jihadi terrorists.
The conventional wisdom all around is that Sadr won this round. I guess I could be persuaded that Maliki has lost this round. But I don't see the evidence of this interpretation. I certainly didn't expect that three years of gangster dominance could be undone with three days of military force. And I didn't expect that the Iranian-supported "Special Groups" would dissolve in three days.
Saying Maliki lost is like saying D-Day was a failure because on June 14, 1944, the Third Reich was still standing.
Sadr was bloodied this round. If Maliki continues the campaign to clean up Basra and other areas of the Sadrist influence, this week will just be one battle in a campaign. Obviously, if Maliki gives up, he will lose the campaign and this battle will in retrospect be a defeat.
But despite their weaknesses, the Sadrists will always be able to count on our press to speak of their mere survival as great victories over America.
And our press will continue to display their general incompetence. The battle against the Iranian-backed Shia thugs and the Shia gangs has long been an obvious step toward winning. Yet our press acts like this is all a big surprise, and demonstrates their inability to distinguish between the many enemies we have and are facing in Iraq.
UPDATE: After hearing the near-absolute consensus from left and right yesterday that Sadr won this round and wondering just how on Earth they could conclude this, finally some sanity is breaking out. Belmont Club notes reports of Sadr's defeat. Dean Esmay writes about the "near swoon" of our media over Sadr and notes reports of nearly 600 Sadrist killed in action. Contentions also writes about the Sadrist defeat and the media's determination to paint Sadr as a victor.
