We will regret letting this three-time insurrectionist survive the Iraq War and tear Iraq apart:
The Iranian-backed Shiite group responsible for most of the attacks against U.S. forces in the final years of the Iraq war is busily reinventing itself as a political organization in ways that could enhance Iran’s influence in post-American Iraq — and perhaps beyond.
In recent months, Asaib Ahl al-Haq — the League of the Righteous — has been rapidly expanding its presence across Iraq, trumpeting the role the once-shadowy group says it played in forcing the departure of U.S. troops with its bomb attacks against American targets.
The group’s chief officers have returned from exile in Iran, and they have set about opening a string of political offices, establishing a social services program to aid widows and orphans, and launching a network of religious schools, echoing the methods and structures of one of its close allies, the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.
This is very bad. And I'll say it again, our invasion of Iraq did not "give" Iraq to Iran. Our failure to contest Iraq after ejecting Saddam Hussein's government is giving Iran a near-free run at influencing Iraq. Plenty of Iraqis want nothing to do with Iran. But Iran will be happy to simply fragment Iraq like Lebanon is fragmented to keep Iraq from developing into a counter-weight to Iran and to allow Iran another playground for terror to develop.
Throughout the Bush administration, I asked why Sadr wasn't dead. And I said we'd live to regret not putting him in a cell or hole. And now here we are.
If Sadr doesn't deserve to be on a presidential "kill list" to distribute to our drone operators for the number of Americans Sadr has killed--let alone the Iraqis dead because of him--I don't know who does qualify.
It's so confusing. Is this the "smart" part of our diplomacy or the nuanced part?
