Stardate 20040405.1728

(On Screen): It's been said that it is impolite to correct an enemy when he is making a tremendous mistake. It's a truism in war that everyone makes mistakes, but that generally the side which makes the fewest mistakes will be the victor.

One could easily come to the conclusion that the situation in Iraq has gone into the toilet in the last two weeks. But there's definitely a silver lining in the dark cloud. Our enemies are making a tremendous blunder, and have given CENTCOM a priceless gift.

Our primary goal in Iraq is to establish a multi-ethnic tolerant liberal democracy, one which supports free expression. This is quite radical; there's never been anything like that before in an Arabic-speaking nation. And there's a natural tendency for those living in Iraq to wonder whether we're serious or hypocritical. After all, everyone believes in free speech when that speech agrees with them. Even under Saddam, anyone was free to praise him anytime they wanted.

The real test was whether we'd tolerate speech critical of us, and so far we have. Which is in the long run good. But it also meant we had to leave hands-off a lot of people in Iraq which we knew represented a terrible threat in the long run.

If we'd crushed them just for speaking against us, we would have been revealed as hypocrites, and the people of Iraq would not have come to support the process. By leaving them alone, they represented a danger but our tolerance also convinced other Iraqis we really meant what we said, and ultimately that was more important.

Now, however, we now have been given the opportunity to take the worst of them out without damaging broader Iraqi confidence in our commitment to freedom. We have proved that we will tolerate peaceful dissent, but we never promised we'd tolerate armed rebellion.

In Falluja there was a horrible attack against a truck convoy which killed 4 American security guards and led to the public desecration of their corpses. Apparently those who planned the attack (and who may have encouraged the subsequent riot, and certainly were pleased by how it turned out) hoped that it would cause an immediate military response, because they had set up other ambushes in the Falluja area and hoped to bloody whatever military unit responded.

CENTCOM did not respond rapidly; it took some time and analyzed the situation. I believe that was correct. But if there had been no further development of the situation in Falluja by insurgents there, then when the time finally came that our forces moved in, then for political reasons we would have largely been limited to finding those specifically involved in that attack. Others might have been detained and questioned, but ultimately we would have had to release them.

It would have been politically difficult to do what we really need to do: to find and take out all of the clan-based criminal organizations in that city which have been involved in much of the insurgent activity all over Iraq.

Making that attack in the first place was not really a blunder, except in a "for want of a nail" sense. Had that been the end of it, it would have been a partial victory for the insurgents even if we found and captured the small number of people specifically involved in planning and carrying out that attack.

But they are going to actively resist. They have attempted to turn Falluja into an armed camp and will defend it against the eventual reoccupation by the Marines and by Iraqi troops working with them.

That decision is a blunder of the first order.

The primary goal of guerrilla action is to use control of initiative to select time and place for attacks against an enemy which is much more powerful, and then to fade away and hide. To give the enemy a stand-up fight permits the enemy to use his superior power, and that's the opportunith the insurgents in Falluja are permitting us.

That means there will be a lot of fighting in Falluja, and sadly it means that quite a few Marines will pay with their lives. But it also means that the opposition in Falluja has transformed itself from "political dissident" to "rebel". Now we can kill or capture the lot, root and branch.

The same thing goes for the concurrent uprising amongst the Shiites. This is apparently not broadly supported, and is mainly to Shiites who still hope to establish an Islamic Republic in Iraq similar to the government of Iran.

There's been a power struggle among Shiite leaders. The most prominent leaders all seem to be clerics, but I think that it makes more sense to ignore that and to think of them as politicians. The most influential among them has been Sistani, and I think that he is in favor of establishing a democracy in Iraq, though he doesn't totally agree with all the goals we have for it in terms of liberty and equality and tolerance. And the majority of Shiites also are in favor.

He's been attempting to put himself in the position of speaking on behalf of all Shiites, which is why he deliberately provoked a crisis in January.

Like all centrist politicians he faces challenges from the fringe, and the most important fringe for our purposes has been Moqtada al-Sadr and his supporters. He's been a problem for a long time, because he's one of the most strident voices demanding establishment of an Islamic Republic.

However, for the most part he's been careful about what he's said and how he's acted and has never really crossed the line which would have permitted us to take him out. But he pushed that line, and that placed pressure on Sistani. I believe Sistani felt he had to move towards the position held by al-Sadr publicly. That's part of his motivation for recent denunciations of the constitution.

But now al-Sadr and his supporters have risen in open rebellion. And that means we no longer have to put up with them. It means more hard fighting, and more casualties. The next couple of months will see the worst fighting in Iraq since the invasion. Once it's over, the situation overall will be immeasurably better.

However, in the short run it's going to be painful. The rate of casualties will rise.

And the usual suspects will come out of the woodwork. Opponents of the war will point to these uprisings as proof that the project is a failure and that "Iraqis" (collectively) oppose "the illegal occupation". "Non-aligned" organizations will condemn nearly everything we do as being war crimes, or violations of "international law". The "legitimacy" of the process will be questioned, and second-guessers will say that if we'd only turned it all over to the UN none of this would have happened. Once this new phase of combat opens in earnest, there will be wild predictions of catastrophe. There will be predictions of huge numbers of civilian deaths and hordes of refugees; of destruction, misery, starvation, plague. We will be told that this will cause a broad uprising against us inside Iraq, and that it will anger the "Arab street". We'll be blamed for the next terrorist operation in Spain. News reports will slant everything to make the situation look as bad for us as possible. The word "quagmire" will once again become fashionable.

In other words, it will be just like it was last year in March and April, before and during the invasion. And it will make just about the same difference, i.e. "not a lot" in the long run.

It is not certain that the outcome for us will be positive – nothing in war is ever certain – but it's far more likely than not. And that will not be affected by strident sniping and self-righteous preaching by our opponents.

The most important thing that happened in the last few days is that many of the most dangerous people in Iraq gave us an excuse to destroy them. CENTCOM won't throw this opportunity away.

Update: We have a winner! It's the first new comparison to Viet Nam! Congratulations, Teddy! I knew we could rely on you.

Update: But it's a photo finish. This article claims that there has been "a Shiite Muslim uprising". That's perhaps true, but there is no reason to believe that it is broadly supported by the Shiites collectively.

Update 20040407: I just spotted a "quagmire"! And al-Sadr himself is now claiming Iraq will become a new "Viet Nam".