Describing the recent shift in the U.S. policies in Iraq as an outright strategic incompetence and even outrageous foolishness is an understatement. It’s Lebanon 1983 all over again! We are now a party in a local ferocious power struggle and our soldiers have become clear targets for a fast growing list of enemies.

Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi mastermind of the “regime change project” and acting president of the U.S. appointed Iraqi Governing Council, worried of the growing influence of the young Shiite leader Muqtada Al-Sadr, succeeded in making the young cleric the new “ace of spades” for the U.S. led coalition forces.

The reason given for shutting down Al-Sadr’s “Hawza” newspaper on March 28, which triggered this whole ordeal, does not really stand an objective analysis. The paper, which is not even read outside the slums of Sadr City, was charged with publishing false articles that "incited violence." However, up until that day, no serious violent acts were reported by Al-Sadr’s supporters against the coalition. In a world where countless satellite channels, such as Al-Jazzera, Al-Arabyia and others, are filled with unreliable and “false” reporting that seeps instantly into every Iraqi house, it’s hard to imagine the seriousness of such claim. It’s but a little reminder of the now defunct and forgotten WMD claim based on which the invasion of Iraq took place.

The closure of the newspaper triggered daily demonstrations in the poor suburbs of Baghdad. However, it wasn’t until six days later when the U.S. troops arrested Al-Sadr’s deputy, Mustapha Al-Yacoubi, for his alleged complicity in the murder of another Shiite cleric last year, that this Pandora Box was opened. 

And just like most of the WMD false documentations and reports were furbished by Chalabi and company before the war, it was because of Chalabi’s continuous lobbying that the orders to “terminate” Al-Sadr were finally given. The vicious irony is that Chalabi, using the U.S. military as his private militia, wants to finish what Saddam has started more than a decade ago when he ordered the assassination of the influential Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq Al-Sadr, Muqtada’s father, along with his two sons and hundreds of his followers!

Where does this leave the millions of impoverished and disfranchised Shiites who, just a year ago, felt joyously free and careless to what other Arabs and Muslims outside of Iraq thought of the U.S. invasion? They are in square one again! The only difference is that under the dictator’s regime there was, at least, some law and order!

General Sanchez, the coalition forces commander, may have been obliged to put a strong face today while declaring that he ordered his troops to arrest or kill Muqtada Al-Sadr. However, the execution of such orders would certainly means the beginning of a long new era during which we would sorrowfully remember more of Iraq than Vietnam!

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