Some Generals Never Get the Message (revised)

Some people don't know when they're desperately not wanted.

American generals are beginning to plan for a summer 2008 drawdown if they can get the Bush administration to stopo being delusional. However, they persist in believing that anti-American Iraqis like Moqtada al-Sadr don't really want them to go.

U.S. officials also calculate that underneath the anti-American rhetoric, even Shiite radicals such as cleric Moqtada al-Sadr don't really want to see a total U.S. pullout, especially while they feel threatened by Sunni insurgents.

The generals are deceiving themselves! Al-Sadr really, really wants us to go. Sadr's militia went to war with American troops in 2004, Sadr knows that one of the primary objectives of the surge was to eliminate him and the Mahdi Army as a factor in Iraqi politics, and Sadr's just emerging from four months in hiding from American forces. Not surprisingly, Sadr has recently been sending signals to Sunni insurgents that he wants a common front against the American occupation.

Looking at the issue from another angle, Sadr probably feels much less threatened by Sunni insurgents when his own militia is operating freely. The death squads associated with the Mahdi Army put a lot more pressure on the Sunni insurgency in 2006 than the surge has generated in 2007. Iraqi Shiites as a whole will be more secure when American troops are gone.

So will Moqtada al-Sadr.