Can't Bear News This Good

Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia has not only been routed militarily, but its popularity among Baghdad Shiites has taken a fatal hit as well:

Four summers ago, when militiamen loyal to hard-line Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr were battling U.S. forces in the holy city of Najaf, Mohammed Lami was among them.

“I had faith. I believed in something,” Lami said of his days hoisting a gun for Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. “Now, I will never fight with them.”

Lami is no fan of U.S. troops, but after fleeing Baghdad’s Sadr City district with his family last month, when militiamen arrived on his street to plant a bomb, he is no fan of the Mahdi Army either. Nor are many others living in Sadr City, the 32-year-old said. Weeks of fighting between militiamen and Iraqi and U.S. forces, with residents caught in the middle, has chipped away at the Sadr movement’s grass-roots popularity, Lami said.

More than 1,000 people have died in Sadr City since fighting erupted in late March, and hospital and police officials say most have been civilians. As the violence continues, public tolerance for the Mahdi Army, and by association the Sadr movement, seems to be shifting toward the same sort of resentment once reserved for U.S. and Iraqi forces.

“People are fed up with them because of their extremism and the problems they are causing,” said Rafid Majid, a merchant in central Baghdad. Like many others interviewed across the capital, he said the good deeds the group performs no longer were enough to make up for the hardships endured by ordinary Iraqis who just want to go to work and keep their families safe.

No matter what "cure" some Iraqis try to come up with for the violence al Qaeda, Iran, and they have inflicted on them(selves), it has always proven to be worse than the "disease" of American liberation and reconstruction.  Perhaps that's why the "Surge" has worked so well that said violence is at its lowest level in over four years:

The U.S. military said Sunday that the number of attacks by militants in the last week dropped to a level not seen in Iraq since March 2004.

About 300 violent incidents were recorded in the seven-day period that ended Friday, down from a weekly high of nearly 1,600 in mid-June last year, according to a chart provided by the military.

The announcement appeared aimed at allaying fears that an uprising by militiamen loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr could unravel security gains since 28,500 additional American troops were deployed in Iraq in a buildup that reached its height in June.

Navy Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll, a military spokesman, credited the decrease to a series of operations launched by the Iraqi government in the last two months to extend control over parts of the country that have been under the sway of armed Sunni Arab and Shiite militants. They include crackdowns in the southern oil hub of Basra, the northern city of Mosul and Baghdad’s Sadr City district. [emphasis added]

Behold what Ensign Ed dubs "the secret surge" - or what the Bush Administration has all along called "Iraqis standing up while we stand down."  Now the decks can be cleared not only for a redeployment of U.S. forces for action against Iran and/or Syria, but the transition of our relationship with Iraq from defeated foe to reconstructing protectorate to full-fledged ally in the model of Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker echoed the Iraqi's progress - which, given how timid the Bushies have become about making premature declarations, is really saying something:

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Saturday that al-Qaida’s network in the country has never been closer to defeat, and he praised Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for his moves to rein in Shiite and Sunni militant groups…

“There is important progress for the Iraqi forces in confronting the Sunni and Shiite militias,” he said, speaking Arabic to reporters. “The government, the prime minister are showing a clear determination to take on extremist armed elements that challenge the government’s authority … no matter who these elements are.”

“You are not going to hear me say that al-Qaida is defeated, but they’ve never been closer to defeat than they are now,” Crocker said.

That lingering bet-hedging is because he knows that if the bad guys can hold out for another nine months, Rodbama will retreat and hand the country over to them lock, stock, & barrel, no matter what condititions on the ground are or how much progress has been made.  This really is a race against time, which is on al Qaeda's and Iran's side.  Hearteningly, it appears as though we're winning it anyway.

That most likely explains John Sith McCain's challenge to Barack Hussein Obama for the two of them to take another Iraqi "road trip":

Republican John McCain on Monday sharply criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for not having been to Iraq since 2006, and said they should visit the war zone together.

“Look at what happened in the last two years since Senator Obama visited and declared the war lost,” the GOP nominee-in-waiting told The Associated Press in an interview, noting that the Illinois senator’s last trip to Iraq came before the military buildup that is credited with curbing violence.

“He really has no experience or knowledge or judgment about the issue of Iraq and he has wanted to surrender for a long time,” the Arizona senator added. “If there was any other issue before the American people, and you hadn’t had anything to do with it in a couple of years, I think the American people would judge that very harshly.”

Well, mayhap they would and mayhap they wouldn't.  Frankly Iraq is as unlikely to be a front-burner issue in 2008 as it was likely to be one in the run-up to the 2006 midterms, and we saw how the latter turned out.  For a change, Team Hussein actually recognized the trap Lord Queeg was leading their boss into, and refused to bite:

John McCain’s proposal is nothing more than a political stunt, and we don’t need any more ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners or walks through Baghdad markets to know that Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the stated purpose of the surge. The American people don’t want any more false promises of progress, they deserve a real debate about a war that has overstretched our military, and cost us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making us safer.

Basically the usual left-wing/pacifist/defeatist bluster applying a cover of spittle over the fact that they know that such a trip would be an onrolling humiliation of BO and every last one of his know-nothing doomsaying pronouncements on a war he's been ignorantly condemning from afar.  Sure it would be a "political stunt" - simply one that would not suit His Holiness' purposes.

Ironically, this would be a golden opportunity to ply that "unity" spiel he's been so fond of for the past year and a half, and leaven it with some honest-to-goodness humility for good measure.  Simply take up McCain on his offer, go with him to Iraq, listen honestly and with an open mind to Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus and Prime Minister Maliki, even go to Basra and Sadr City and Mosul and see the progress for himself, and then hold a presser and announce to the world that he....was wrong.  That he'd had the courage to come there with open eyes and what he'd seen had changed his mind on the worth of the American mission there, and persuaded him that we must finish the job we started.

The hard left would scream bloody murder.  But hey, if Hillary Rodham Clinton really is "finished," it couldn't cost him the Donk nomination, now could it?  And it would call Maverick's bluff, and blow him out of the water with the "moderates" and "centrists" whose votes he wants so much, right?  Besides, it's not as though he couldn't "reconsider" after he was safely ensconsed in the Oval Office, and no longer needed that "unity" crap until 2012.

I guess St. Barry is not a gambler at heart.  He prefers to play it safe.

Pity he'll almost certainly get away with it, too.

UPDATE: Eulogy of al Qaeda's crushing defeat in Iraq - in their own words.