You Must Not Know ‘Bout Me»

Judging from James Glanz’s review, Patrick Cockburn’s new book about Moqtada Sadr is a number-one must-have:

In telling this story, Cockburn argues that early descriptions of Moktada as some mix of Mafia don, opportunistic thug and renegade holy man had it wrong. No one disputes that Moktada draws much of his support from the poor and the rampantly unemployed lower classes, and that many of the young males who fill the ranks of the Mahdi Army are among the most not-nice people in Iraq. But Cockburn argues that Moktada had the chance to muster that support because he was clever enough to stay alive under Hussein and become his family’s representative to the people after the death of his father and two brothers, who were killed by Hussein in 1999.

Hussein disavowed any involvement in those murders, fearing another Shiite uprising like the one that followed his disastrous retreat from Kuwait in 1991; government officials duly attended the mourning ceremonies for Moktada’s father. Cockburn points out that far from behaving like a “firebrand cleric,” as he would later be characterized, Moktada undertook the first of the tactical retreats that would become one of his hallmarks. “He neither accused the Iraqi security forces of murdering his father and brothers, nor did he play any role in the sporadic uprisings that followed,” Cockburn writes. Moktada understood the lesson of Hemingway’s guerrilla commander in “For Whom the Bell Tolls”: in politics and warfare the most important thing is to continue to exist.

And the U.S. thinks it can outplay this guy on his own turf? Could Dick Cheney have survived Saddam Hussein’s goons? Moqtada Sadr is the new Che Guevara. Bring on the t-shirts for every sophomoric lefty college student.

PS I plead guilty to spreading a simplistic depiction of Moqtada myself. Sorry.