Iranian Alert -- April 9, 2004 [EST]-- IRAN LIVE THREAD -- "Americans for Regime Change in Iran"

Iraq: The Iranian Connection

April 09, 2004
Strategy Page
strategypage.com

Fighting continues in Fallujah and Shia neighborhoods in three southern cities. The biggest disappointment has been the failure of police, or their commanders, to confront the anti-government militias.

This was not unexpected, however. The Iraqi police, even under Saddam, were not a powerful force. Even before Saddam, the police directed traffic and chased burglars, and got out of the way when large groups of armed men came by. Saddam used secret police, criminal gangs and militias to maintain control of the population. However, all the training given to members of the new police (two thirds of the 77,000 Iraqi police have had at least a few weeks instruction on modern police techniques and police responsibilities) has produced some that can be depended on. But few competent police commanders are available, and this also causes problems in organizing units of reliable police. Coalition authorities are combing the country to get police volunteers for work in the areas of unrest, as the local police there have largely deserted their posts.

The police, and the even more numerous (and less dependable) Iraqi security forces are particularly needed because both Sunni and Shia fighters use tactics that take advantage of the reluctance of coalition troops to fire at civilians or into mosques. As German statesman Otto von Bismarck put it over a century ago, “We live in a time when the strong grows weak because of his scruples, and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.” But coalition troops will fire at gunmen firing from behind civilians or from mosques, they just aren't quick to do so until it's clear that the opponent is using these tactics deliberately. However, the Sunni and Shia gunmen want to get civilians and mosques shot at in order to inflame the population. They know that many Iraqis are reluctant to accept personal responsibility for their actions and quick to blame all misfortune on forces beyond their control. Saddam, and earlier dictators, took advantage of this character flaw to dominate the population. But now, as democracy, and personal responsibility, looms, there are many who would fight and die to prevent these alien concepts in. Arab media like al Jazeera take advantage of this, as is very obvious, spinning every event to absolve Arabs and blame external forces.

What are the armed Iraqis fighting and dying for? The Sunni Arabs want to somehow avoid the retribution for crimes committed during Saddams rule. They know that, once the Shia and Kurds are in charge, that many Shia and Kurd families who lost loved ones to Saddams thugs know who did it. And many of the guilty men are from Fallujah and nearby Sunni Arab towns. There are also some powerful criminal gangs in Fallujah and the Sunni Triangle that see a "law and order" government putting them out of business. For the Shias who are fighting, it's to establish an Islamic Republic and protect their leader, al Sadr, from getting prosecuted for killing other Shia clergy who opposed him. There are also Shia and Sunni who are out there fighting because it's fashionable, in the Arab world these days, to hate Americans. And then there's the Iranian connection. Since 1979, Iranian Islamic conservatives have preached that the United States, with all its democracy and freedoms, is the Great Satan and enemy of Islam, especially Shias. This hatred springs largely from the religious freedom practiced in America, instead of a police that recognizes Islam as the one true religion. While Iraqi Shias fought for Saddam against Iran in the 1980s war, you still have a generation of Shias who were raised on anti-American propaganda. To many Iraqis, it was stupid propaganda, but it got through to many. And if you can get a few thousand people with guns to die for you, as al Sadr has, you can make a mess. Iranian Islamic conservatives appear to be directly involved in working with Sadrs fighters. Yesterday, Sadr's men began kidnapping foreigners, and demanding that foreign governments withdraw their troops. In one case, three Japanese civilians were taken, and the Shia gunmen who captured them demanded that Japan get it's 550 soldiers (all support troops working on rebuilding projects) within three days, or the captives would be burned alive. The Japanese refused to withdraw its troops. But such barbaric tactics were used frequently by Iranian Shia radicals in Iran itself (where the American embassy staff was held captive for over a year) and in Lebanon (where it is used to this day.) The Iranian government denies any involvement, but they can say that with a straight face because the Iranian constitution allows the Islamic conservatives to run a parallel government, control the police and military and build atomic bombs.

How are American troops going to deal with the uprising? The army and marines have new tactics and equipment to deal with street fighting. The tactics keep American casualties down to unheard of low levels for urban combat. But the fighting takes time. It may be weeks before the last of the resisting Iraqis are killed or captured. Meanwhile, American troops in the process of leaving, are being held back for three or four more months of duty in Iraq. Just in case. The original plan was to withdraw most coalition troops from Iraqi towns and let the Iraqi police maintain order. That was working, except in areas where large criminal, political or religious gangs were growing bolder, more heavily armed and more aggressive. Now the gangs are at war, and have to be destroyed. No one knows exactly how many troops that will take. But as any combat commander knows, in situations like this, too much ain't enough.

But a more important campaign is how well the coalition plays the Information War angle (with the Iraqi population) and how much cooperation they get from the Iraqi leadership (official and unofficial, who have a lot to lose if the Sunni Arabs and radical Islamic Shia like Sadr gain more power) is not used properly. Most Iraqis are not up in arms against the coalition, but this is not considered news and thus rarely gets reported. Most Iraqis understand what their situation really is (a coalition, led by the United States, deposed the tyrant Saddam and is now pouring billions of dollars into the reconstruction of their country). In a country where personal responsibility often does not extend beyond second or third cousins, everyone is constantly calculating what's in it for their clan or tribe. Most Iraqis see no future in having the thugs of Fallujah running things again, and the Islamic Republic of Iran has no broad appeal either. But few Iraqis are willing to "get involved." That would involve risk, and risk is to be avoided, or shoved onto someone else. It's easier to shout anti-American slogans, make deals with the Americans in the back room, and wait for the dust to settle. Western politicians must love this, because it makes their often morally suspect methods look pristine by comparison.

April 8, 2004: Fighting continued in Fallujah, with the marines holding nearly half the city, and inflicting over a hundred casualties on the armed Iraqis. The marines are using a combination of tanks, aircraft and infantry to advance against the Iraqis defending from the tightly packed, low rise (one or two story) housing that covers most of the city. There are numerous different groups resisting the marines, so there is no coordinated resistance. The criminal gangs appear to be the best organized. The gangs of Fallujah, like many Sunni Arab criminal organizations, proved resistant to Saddam's attempts to destroy them, so Saddam made a deal with the gangs, and got a cut of their loot. The former Saddam military and secret police people have formed anti-American (and sometimes criminal gangs, which causes tension with the existing gangs.) There are also groups of Arab nationalists (whose philosophy seems to be "better to be a slave under another Arab than to be free through the efforts of a non-Arab) and Islamic radicals. This lack of centralized organization makes it harder for the marines, as killing off one group does not have an immediate effect on the others. However, killing the resisting Iraqis does have an effect on others. The number of Iraqi gunmen is diminishing as Iraqis note that the marines kill all who fight them, and the marines are not taking nearly as many casualties as the Iraqis.

American troops have arrested over a hundred Arabs trying to cross the Syrian border to join the fighting against American troops.

The al Sadr Shia militia that have taken control of towns and neighborhoods from Baghdad to Basra. These militias are not well organized, nor do they have very effective leadership. American and coalition troops are arresting and killing the Sadr men who are armed and resisting. The Sadr followers have little military training (or if they do, it doesn't show) and poor organization. Sadr is trying to get more Shia to join the fight. But this becomes more difficult as more Iraqi fighters are killed fighting the better armed and organized coalition troops.

The Iraqi police and security troops have been a disappointment. With few exceptions, they refused to oppose armed Sunni Arabs in Fallujah or Shia areas in the south. This was expected from the security troops, who are basically security guards. The police, although they received training, were recruited locally. So if a local strong guy gathers together enough armed men, the local cops will back off. This is a vestige of the Saddam era, where the police were basically security guards, which the heavy duty terrorism was performed by various secret police, pro-Saddam militias and intelligence organizations. Coalition troops are able to use the security troops and police and the current fighting, putting the Iraqi forces in charge of security in areas that have been pacified.

The annual rotation of new American troops relieving those who have already served a year has been halted, and experienced units held until the current unrest in Fallujah and Shia areas is over.

April 7, 2004: In the past three days, some 30 American troops and over 130 Iraqi attackers have been killed. The fighting has been taking place west of Baghdad, around Fallujah and nearby Ramadi, where U.S. Marines are fighting Sunni Arabs. Yesterday, over fifty Iraqis attacked marines guarding the governors palace in Ramadi, leaving a dozen marines, and several dozen Iraqis, dead. The Ramadi attack was not expected, as the area had been generally quiet, as had most of Iraq for the past year. Several thousand marines fought their way into Fallujah, raiding specific locations and capturing several armed foreigners in an improvised weapons factory. In one case, marines were fired on from a Mosque. When the marines attacked the Mosque, they found it full of weapons and ammunition.

http://www.strategypage.com//fyeo/qndguide/default.asp?target=IRAQ.HTM

Friday, April 09, 2004

Fallujah and Kut
More speedblogging. No time for style.

Personal Take

The most serious aspects of the current crisis are political rather than purely military. It has been suggested the Hezbollah units (with long association to Iran) were behind the kidnappings of expatriate civilians. Some have also wondered whether the Iranians and the Syrian secret service are now actively engaged, in view of the actuations of Sadr and the number of Syrian nationals found captured or killed in Fallujah. Lastly, it underscore the need to maintain the June 30 deadline at all costs. Let's each point in turn.

The pitiful accounts of the battle of Fallujah should put paid to the silly press suggestions that the US military is "overwhelmed". The problem is that the terrifying combat efficiency of the Marines may in fact lead to the literal extermination of enemy forces. US authorities, with a longer term end game in mind, are balancing the political outcomes of letting the Marines continue, even in their restrained mode, and taking more US casualties from holding back. When the media learns the full extent of enemy casualties in Fallujah, Kut, Ramadi, Saddam city and elsewhere, the image of the US military will be switched from "hapless" to "bullying" in a millisecond. As pointed out previously, the real problem in this cycle is intel and planning and not so much the shooting. Finding the right targets to hit to advance our political goals is the crucial part. CENTCOM I think, has been trying to use force to shape the situation.

About three days ago, I suggested privately to a reader that the retention of some units scheduled to rotate to the US was really a contingency against possible Iranian involvement. Ralph Peters, in the New York Post, is openly claiming Syrian and Iranian involvement. This would create, for the first time, the basis for guerilla war. Many posts ago, I recalled that the three requirements for guerilla activity are: sanctuaries, a source of logistical support and a national front. If the Syrians and Iranians are involved, these now exist. They did not exist for Saddam's stay behinds, who the Press called guerillas. They were wrong then and they do not see it now, when the prospect actually exists.

In a way, it fulfills the strategic goals of Operation Iraqi Freedom far better than hoped. Iraq has forced a decisive showdown between the US and the enemy in the Middle East. Even Kerry will find it hard to back down now. In a sense, George Bush has won his gambit to set up a winner take all confrontation. The basic plan now must be to hammer down the fighting, which is contracting faster than expanding. Kut nearly down and Fallujah down for military all purposes. Then the US must switch gears to shift this engagement to the political arena.

The problem is that the occupation has made Sadr the only Iraqi politician by default. Therefore all Arab forces will instinctively rally to him. The problem can never be corrected until an Iraqi government, even a nominal one, takes control. Then, there will be two Arab power centers grappling for control. Relative moderates like Sistani have cast their lot with the Council. If the Council's accession is now delayed or indefinitely postponed he will have no role and will probably take to the streets himself to prevent an erosion of support to Sadr.

To recapitulate. The press has got it absolutely backwards. There is no crisis in military capability. The real problem is political. There are now huge strategic opportunities and dangers. But the first step is to put the revolt down, and this is near to happening, and to install the Iraqi Governing Council as soon as possible. Then we should focus on how to turn the tables on the Syrians and the Iranians. The crown sits none too easy on their heads.

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/

Western Cannibalism
Eating each other while our enemies smile.

NRO
April 08, 2004, 8:15 a.m.

This war grows stranger here at home and abroad all the time. Despite the horrific barbarism in Fallujah and the gun-toting and killing by the Shiites, the United States is ever so steadily establishing a consensual government of sorts under impossible conditions in Iraq. Meanwhile the Middle East watches the pulse of the conflict, wondering whether the Fallujah savages and the primordial Shiite extremists will succeed in Lebanonizing Iraq.

Or will the American pressure for democracy and reform reverberate beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to move Libya, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, and the Saudis to greater transparency, consensual rule, and an end of their support for terrorists? The courage and sacrifice of thousands of American soldiers now determine whether those who dream of freedom step forward boldly into the light, or retreat meekly into the shadows — and whether we will be safe in our own homes.

Out of all the recent chaos emerges one lesson: Appeasement of fundamentalists is not appreciated as magnanimity, but ridiculed as weakness — and, in fact, encourages further killing. A shaken Spain elected a new government that promised to exit Iraq. In return, the terrorists planted more bombs, issued more demands, and then staged a fiery exit for themselves. France, as is its historical wont, triangulated with the Muslim world and then found its fundamentalist plotters all over Paris. The Saudi royals thought that they of all people could continue to blackmail the fundamentalists — until the suicide-murderers turned their explosives on their benefactors and began to blow up Arab Muslims as well. General Musharraf once did all he could to appease Islamists — and got assassination plots as thanks.

Following the Iranian hostage takeover in 1979, the United States had embraced a quarter-century of appeasement that had resulted in far more American deaths than all those lost during the present war against terrorists abroad — flaming ships, embassies, planes, skyscrapers, and people the wages of its mollifying. And every time in Iraq we have tried to offer conciliation before complete military victory — low profiles, tolerance for looters and militias, allowance for vicious mullahs — we have seen more, not fewer, killed.

The sad truth is that civilization itself is engaged in a worldwide struggle against the barbarism of Islamic fundamentalism. Just this past month the killers and their plots have been uncovered in London, Paris, Madrid, Pakistan, and North Africa — the same tired rhetoric of their hatred echoing from Iraq to the West Bank. While Western elites quibble over exact ties between the various terrorist ganglia, the global viewer turns on the television to see the same suicide bombing, the same infantile threats, the same hatred of the West, the same chants, the same Koranic promises of death to the unbeliever, and the same street demonstrations across the world.

Looking for exact professed cooperation between an Islamic fascist and the rogue regime that finds such anti-Western violence useful is like proving that Mussolini, Tojo, and Hitler all coordinated their attacks and worked in some conspiratorial fashion — when in fact Japan had no knowledge of the invasion of Russia, and Hitler had no warning of Pearl Harbor or Mussolini's invasion of Greece.

In fact, it didn't matter that they were united only by a loose and shared hatred of Western liberalism and emboldened by a decade of democratic appeasement. And our fathers, perhaps better men than we, didn't care too much for beating their breasts about the exact nature of collective Axis strategy or blaming each other for past lapses, but instead went to pretty terrible places like Bastogne, Anzio, and Okinawa to put an end to their enemies all.

Now, in the middle of this terrible conflict, unlike the postbellum inquiry after Pearl Harbor, we are holding acrimonious hearings about culpability for September 11. And here the story gets even more depressing than just political opportunism and election-year timing. After eight years of appeasement that saw repeated attacks on Americans, Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons under Dr. Khan, and Osama's 1998 declaration of war against every American, we are suddenly grilling, of all people, Condoleezza Rice — one of the few key advisers most to be credited for insisting on using our military, rather than the local DA, to defeat these fanatics.

Over the last two years, each time a U.S. senator in panicked and wild-eyed passion screamed that we could not win in Afghanistan, she proved resolute and confident. On every occasion that an ex-general, a dissatisfied bureaucrat, or a wannabe journalist-strategist pontificated about what the United States could not do, she was unwavering in her determination to take the war to rogue regimes in the Middle East with a history of hostility against Americans and a record of providing easy sanctuary for terrorists. This present charade would be like holding public hearings on the eve of the 1944 election about the breakdown of intelligence and missed opportunities before Pearl Harbor — and then blaming Harry Hopkins and Secretary Stimson for laxity even while the country was in the very midst of a two-front war.

Then we have the creepy outbursts from commentators and screams from Democratic senators. We are told by Senator Graham that we smashed al Qaeda only to discover that we had hit a mercury-like substance that now has hopelessly scattered. Well, yes, that is what happens when you strike back in war. The alternative? Allow this elemental terrorism to remain cohesive and united? War is not a decision between good and bad choices, but almost always between something bad and something worse — and so it really is preferable to have toxic mercury scattered than to have it concentrated and pure.

Another pundit assures us that terrorists after American action in Iraq are more active now than before. Well, again yes — in the sense that Germany was messier in 1944 than in 1933, or that Japan was more dangerous for Americans in 1943 than in 1935. Danger, chaos, and death are what transpire for a time when you finally decide to strike back at confident and smug enemies.

Senator Kennedy, the past exemplar of sober and judicious behavior in times of personal and national crisis, has gone beyond his once-wild charges of Texas conspiracies to slur Iraq as Bush's Vietnam — his apparently appropriate moral boosting for the young Marines, who, even as he spoke, were entering Fallujah to hunt down murderers and mutilators.

But did he say Vietnam? Apparently the senator thinks that the cause of these medieval fanatics who want to bring the world back to the ninth century will resonate with leftists the same way Uncle Ho's faux promises of equality and egalitarianism swayed stupid anti-war protesters of the past. Or is the real similarity that, once more, as promoters of anti-Communist realpolitik, we Americans are installing a right-wing government rather than promoting pluralism, elections, and the protection of minorities and women — the "dream" of the 1960s? Or perhaps Kennedy's comparison revolves around 600 combat dead in Afghanistan and Iraq, the liberation of 50 million from the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and the emergence of proto-consensual governments in less than two years of hostilities? Does all that suggest to Senator Kennedy that we are embarking on a 12-year war, will lose 50,000 men, and are stymied by a bellicose nuclear China and Russia on the borders of Iraq?

Yet Kennedy is right on one count in his evocation of Vietnam. If there is any similarity between Vietnam and the current war, it is not 1963, when his late brother convinced us to commit troops to stop Communist aggression. A better year for comparison is 1974, when Kennedy and other senators began to cut off funding for air support promised to enforce the Paris peace accords, resulting in the collapse of South Vietnam, mass murder in Southeast Asia, and over a million boat people, with more still sent to the Communist reeducation camps.

A New York Times columnist (who before the routing of the Taliban warned us of hopeless quagmire in Afghanistan) chimes in about Fallujah with neat metaphors like "block party" and "slam dance," and then ends by quoting the old tired canard from Vietnam that "We're going to destroy the village to save it" — apparently unaware that the supposed postmodern aphorism was probably made up, was never traced or attributed to any particular military officer, and was more likely the creation of a like-minded journalist also eager for some cute phraseology.

There are plenty of things to argue about and there will be plenty of time in which to do it. In a crisis and with worries about national security, many of us thought it was the wrong time to embark on deficit spending, allow near amnesty for those who cross our borders illegally, and not compromise about the need for both American conservation and exploration of oil, in an effort to wean us off Middle Eastern petroleum.

More specifically, in our postwar paranoia about being too brutal in Iraq, we were too lenient — and thus ultimately will probably be more brutal than we would otherwise have had to be. During the prewar exegeses, there was too much emphasis on WMD and not enough on other legitimate casus belli, ranging from violations of the 1991 armistice agreement and U.N. accords, Saddam's past invasion and assassination attempts, the unending no-fly zones, Baathist mass murder, environmental catastrophe, and bounties for suicide killers.

More troops were probably needed; the Iraqi army should have been immediately reconstituted; and Iraqi officials might have had a more public role in the reconstruction. All these are legitimate tactical issues that could have been discussed and debated within the general parameters that we are at war against horrific enemies who wish to end our civilization, and who cannot be bought off or talked to, but only defeated, and yes, often killed.

Instead, we see more of the same hysteria and invective. It has been almost three years now and many Americans are becoming sickened by this continual procession of collective madness delivered up in doses of twenty-four-hour new cycles. This country has gone from the shouting and screaming about quagmire in Afghanistan, its high peaks, Ramadan taboos, the supposed unreliable Northern Alliance, Guantanamo meals, our failure to get bin Laden — to "millions" of refugees in Iraq, the toppling of moderate governments in the region, an envisioned 5,000 American dead in battle, Saddam and his sons forever uncatchable, worry over legal rights of the Husseins, Bush's landing on a carrier, looting of museums, WMD acrimony, tell-all books from ex-Bush-administration employees, and the present election-year 9/11 inquiry circus.

And this culminates now in the animus toward Condoleezza Rice, who has weathered it all and never for a moment evidenced the slightest lack of resolve. I suppose we are witnessing a sort of American pop version of the French revolution — journalists and politicians on the barricades and guillotines constantly searching for an ever-expanding array of targets, their only consistency blind and mindless fury at the old regime.

So let us get a grip. Bush yet again must remind the American people that we are at war not merely in the Sunni Triangle or in the Afghan badlands, but rather globally and for the liberal values of Western civilization. There is no mythical pipeline in Afghanistan; Halliburton executives are not lounging around the pool in Baghdad chomping on cigars and quaffing cocktails; and in this age of sky-high gas prices there is no sinister cabal that has hijacked Iraq oil. Sharon is not getting daily intelligence briefings about Iraq. The war is what it always was — a terrible struggle against an evil and determined enemy, a Minotaur of sorts that harvested Americans in increments for decades before mass murdering 3,000 more on September 11.

Everything that the world holds dear — the free exchange of ideas, the security of congregating and traveling safely, the long struggle for tolerance of differing ideas and religions, the promise of equality between the sexes and ethnic groups, and the very trust that lies at the heart of all global economic relationships — all this and more Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and the adherents of fascism in the Middle East have sought to destroy: some as killers themselves, others providing the money, sanctuary, and spiritual support.

We did not ask for this war, but it came. In our time and according to our station, it is now our duty to end it. And that resolution will not come from recrimination in time of war, nor promises to let fundamentalists and their autocratic sponsors alone, but only through the military defeat and subsequent humiliation of their cause. So let us cease the hysterics, make the needed sacrifices, and allow our military the resources, money, and support with which it most surely will destroy the guilty and give hope at last to the innocent.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200404080815.asp

TIME TO TAKE OFF THE GLOVES

By AMIR TAHERI

April 9, 2004 -- AS expected, the latest spate of fighting in Iraq has triggered a chorus of demands for "a radical change" in the U.S.-led Coalition's policy on the newly liberated country.
The key radical change most often recommended is that the Coalition hand over Iraq to the United Nations while continuing to provide the troops and the money needed to stabilize and rebuild the country.

That, however, is a recipe for disaster.

The U.N. remains divided over the justice of ending Saddam's rule; some members, notably Russia and France, have a direct interest in an at least partial restoration of Ba'athist rule. The U.N.'s best-case scenario for Iraq is to install a less sanguinary version of the fallen regime. The only positive role that the U.N. can play in Iraq is administrative, especially in helping organize and supervise elections. Give the U.N. a political role, and you will plunge Iraq into years of uncertainty, if not actual instability.

Others who call for "radical change" in policy want the Coalition to abandon the June 30 deadline for formally ending the occupation by handing over power to an Iraqi transitional government.

The argument is that no Iraqi authority capable of assuming power has yet emerged. This is partly true. But the reason is that many Iraqi politicians still doubt that the deadline will be honored. Abandoning the deadline altogether would remove the incentive for the Iraqi leaders to close ranks and prepare to assume power. The deadline must be seen as a guillotine, the sight of which concentrates Iraqi minds.

The battles in the Sunni Triangle and against Muqtada al-Sadr's Shiite militia in a suburb of Baghdad and three other cities are nothing but overdue pacification operations.

The Coalition never tried to impose control over Fallujah, allowing it to become a hideout for Saddam loyalists, including members of his Presidential Guard, who had fled from the battlefields of the liberation war. It is a mystery why the Coalition allowed the Saddamites the luxury of a safe haven in which to regroup, rearm and plot attacks against the Americans. Ramadi and other towns where the Coalition kept a low profile have also attracted a motley crowd of professional criminals, contrabandists, and, more recently, self-styled jihadists from outside Iraq.

Experience has shown that wherever the Coalition has been prepared to come in big and strike hard, it has won a decisive victory.

The latest example of this came last month in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, which was once the center of the Ba'athist insurgents and their foreign terrorist allies. By taking off the kid gloves, the Coalition forces were able to flush out the insurgents and protect the local population against terrorist blackmail and extortion. Tikrit is not a haven of peace as yet - but neither is it a safe haven for the fascists.

Why the Coalition allowed Sadr to organize his militia and carve off a fiefdom in parts of Baghdad is also a mystery. In the early days of liberation, Coalition forces watched as Sadr's henchmen looted the arsenals of the disbanded Iraqi army and police. Later, everyone knew that Sadr visited Iran at least four times and that he had received money and arms from a network of radical mullahs in Tehran and Qom. His family and political ties to the Lebanese branch of the Hezbollah were no secret, either.

Yet even when an Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant issued against Sadr and six of his aides on charges of participation in last year's murder of Abdul-Majid al-Khoei, the CPA did not move against Sadr.

The idea was that, excluded from the Governing Council, Sadr should not be unduly antagonized. This echoed the arguments used to justify the softly-softly approach to Saddamites gathered in the safe havens of the Sunni Triangle. In every case, U.S. restraint was mistaken for weakness, encouraging the Saddamites and the Sadrites in their agitations.

Provided the Coalition reduces the number of symbolic patrols (which often turn its troops into easy targets for bombs planted on roads at night), its commanders in Iraq have enough force to crush any attempt at organized insurgency either by the Saddamites or by Hezbollah-style Shiite militants.

As things stand, the Coalition does not need large numbers of fresh troops because the overwhelming majority of Iraqis still support its policy, including the promise to end the occupation by the end of June. If the Coalition lost that support, no amount of troops would be able to control a country of 27 million.

Both the Saddamites and the Sadrites fear elections and will do all they can to prevent them. Their fears are not groundless. In every one of the 17 cities where municipal elections have been held so far, victory has gone to democratic and secularist parties and individuals. And it is no accident that these are precisely the cities where attempts at fomenting insurgency have failed.

Democratic and secularist figures have also won all the elections held by professional associations representing medical doctors, lawyers, teachers, academics and businessmen.

Despite the fact that Sadr and his friends have spent vast sums of Iranian money, often entering Iraq in the form of crisp notes in briefcases, even the theological seminaries of Najaf and Karbala have kept their doors shut to his brand of religious fascism. Numerous opinion polls, including some financed by the opponents of the liberation, show that in any free election the overwhelming majority of the Iraqis will not vote either for the Saddamites or the various brands of Islamist fascism.

The scoundrels trying to prevent the handover of power to the Iraqi people may pose as Arab nationalists and/or defenders of the Islamic faith. But the truth is that they are making a naked bid for despotic power for themselves.

In a sense, therefore, the Coalition, having liberated Iraq from one form of fascism, is now fighting to make sure that other forms of fascism do not emerge to threaten the nation's democratic aspirations.E-mail:

amirtaheri@benadorassociates.com

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/18443.htm

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