according to Bartle Bull in the Wall Street Journal. This is a very strange piece. Yes, the Sunni insurgency has been weakened and casualties are down–in part, because of the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad–but Bull seems to think that Muqtada Sadr is a happy camper, part of the Maliki government:
Today, controlling five major ministries and about 30 members of Parliament (one of the two largest blocs in the government) [Sadr] underwrites the pluralist project in Iraq as he has done since late 2004.
Except, last time I checked, the Sadrist ministers and MPs were boycotting the Maliki government–and engaged in an internecine Shi’ite struggle against the Hakim family forces for control of the South.
But I’m happy to take Bull at his word, sort of. Just as I was happy to learn from Nouri al-Maliki last week that civil war had been averted. And since things are going so swimmingly, can we start coming home now? How about this experiment: Since Sadr controls most of Baghdad and he’s part of the “pluralist project,” why don’t we start pulling our troops out of the east side of town right now? It’s pretty quiet these days. The Sunni insurgents have been mostly kicked out or walled off. That would be the truest test of the prevailing propaganda. Somehow, though, I suspect the Maliki government wouldn’t approve.