Surge Moves to Its Real Target--The Mahdi Army

Over the last two days, the Iraqi Army has launched an assault on the Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army Shiite militia in Basra. The Iraqi Army troops have American air cover but seem to have been carrying out the operation on their own.

Basra is the second largest city in Iraq and has been largely under the control of the Mahdi Army since the British withdrew to their bases.

But the Iraqi government did not launch the attack so they could control Basra.

Instead, the main objective is to destroy the Mahdi Army and that's been the main objective of the surge all along. The American military got the gift of Sunni defections from al-Qaeda and a couple of stand downs from al-Sadr.

However, what the U. S. and Nouri al-Maliki want is the destruction of the Mahdi Army as an independent power base for Iraqi Shiites.

Here I think they're going to fail however the military attack on al-Sadr plays out. If the Iraqi Army destroys the Mahdi Army, the al-Maliki government will lose its own base of support among the Shiite population and they will be a tremendously weak government in a hostile environment. It will be the mother of all Pyrrhic victories.

Of course, if the attacks fail, the Maliki government will lose face and perhaps be even weaker.

Anyway, attacking the Mahdi Army in Basra looks like another bad idea whose time has come. Too bad the Bush administration has had so many ideas like that.