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Talking Story |
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Muqtada al-Sadr. (AP File Photo)
From The Asian Reporter, V18, #15 (April 8, 2008), page 7.
Muqtada matters
Most of us have seen him. His unhappy face. Muqtada al-Sadr’s frown, as fierce as can be, especially when TV cams come on, whirring. Many have noted not feeling very moved by this young man, not by his intelligence, not by his guile, not by any moral authority. But everyone’s got leaders like that. Like him. America included.
You have to wonder how on earth these guys got their jobs. Indeed, we need to worry.
We need to worry a lot because blunt instruments like Iraqi Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are big leaders. They lead ferocious armies that kill opposing soldierboys. They kill those young men’s daughters and grandmas, their fathers and uncles. They destroy tidy homes and lovely lives and delicate dreams. They do it for sure, both their bad leaders and ours.
About Mr. Sadr.
Muqtada al-Sadr is a frighteningly influential 34-year-old Iraqi. He is by traditional Arab standards, an inexperienced young man, but he has mighty sway among Iraq’s majority Shi’a Muslims, particularly his nation’s poor, young, and angry.
Mr. Sadr is not educated in law, management, or politics. He is not learned in Qur’anic Teachings as required by traditional Islamic conventions. The source of Muqtada’s power is his popular ascendancy after the murder of his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr, and the execution of his scholarly uncle, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr. The younger Mr. Sadr inherited the elder’s schools and social services, their students and recipients.
The young Mr. Sadr’s raw influence over awful Iraqi realities, over wired Middle East politics — and as result: over American anxieties — are rooted in his muscle with the well-armed and intensely motivated Mehdi Army, a fierce militia numbering up to 10,000 fighters, according to Mr. Sadr’s PR men.
In short: Muqtada al-Sadr matters because of his violence. Because he and his followers will kill. And because they do a lot of killing on Iraq’s streets. Every day. He matters a lot in neighboring Iran, particularly among those Shi’a institutions sharing common cause with Iraq’s suffering Shi’a families. And finally, Mr. Sadr matters a lot to Americans because this is a red-hot election year.
A twisted calculus
This man can mess up many things. Take our presidential election. Let’s say he hates the American invasion of his homeland (which he does). Let’s say he wants to hurt the U.S. (which he does). Let’s say he knows he can hurt America more by forcing the U.S. occupation for another decade, by turning us against ourselves, by isolating us from other democracies, by embittering Muslims worldwide — than he can by killing 20 American soldiers each month. Let’s say.
It’s a twisted calculus. It’s a logic based on our most brutal instincts, but it works. It always has. It made Osama bin Laden enormously successful, as an individual and as a franchised enterprise. Mr. Laden murdered 3,000 innocents in a matter of a few silent moments of air time, but he set into motion the Bush Administration war effort, which killed several hundred thousand more blameless bystanders. It’s on TV news, every night. Everywhere.
I’m not sure if anyone’s actually asked around and done the ugly arithmetic, but it doesn’t take a math major to figure which of these two leaders, the violent Iraqi cleric or the violent American president, has earned more universal disgust.
Over the last week, Mr. Sadr’s militias have been causing so much mayhem that his Shi’a Muslim coalition partner, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, was forced to finally stand up and make it his personal business to disarm the Mehdi Army.
Over the last week, Sen. John McCain has been standing pretty tall in Iraq as well. He also looked pretty presidential in Jordan and Israel. And Sen. McCain’s careless words — we’ll stay in Iraq if it takes 100 years — were surely quoted up and down every Arab Street and back alley. Repeated, much to the delight of weak leaders like Prime Minister Maliki, and straight into the hands of blunt pugilists like Muqtada al-Sadr.
Whether it’s in Sadr City’s most miserable slums or in Beaverton’s tidiest cul-de-sacs, you’ve got to wonder, we’ve got to worry when leaders get their jobs by promising more suffering. More revenge.
One confident in his angry following, the other sure of us anxious voters, both of them certain of this method. It’s a twisted calculus we need not contribute to. It needs to stop. It needs us to stop.