Abstract

You Can't Bomb Beliefs

The article offers a firsthand look at the conflict in Iraq as of October 2004. My first run-in with Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army came on March 31 in Baghdad. The U.S. occupation chief, Paul Bremer, had just sent armed men to shut down the young cleric's newspaper, Al Hawza, claiming that its articles comparing Bremer to Saddam Hussein incited violence against Americans. Sadr responded by calling for his supporters to protest outside the gates of the Green Zone, demanding Al Hawza's reopening. Demonstrators had printed up English-language banners that said, "Let Journalists Work With No Terror" and "Let Journalists Do Their Work." Sadr is not an anti-imperialist liberator, as some on the far left have cast him, but someone who wants the foreigners out so he can shackle and control large portions of Iraq's population himself. Neither is Sadr the one-dimensional villain painted by so many in the media. He deserves to have his right to publish a political newspaper--not because he believes in freedom but because we supposedly do. Similarly, Sadr's calls for fair elections and an end to occupation demand our support--not because we are blind to the threat he would pose if he were actually elected but because believing in self-determination means admitting that the outcome of democracy is not ours to control. There is no question that Iraqis face a mounting threat from religious fanaticism, but U.S. forces will not protect Iraqi women and minorities from it any more than they have protected Iraqis from being tortured in Abu Ghraib prison or bombed in Falluja and Sadr City. Liberation will never be a trickle-down effect of this invasion because domination, not liberation, was always its goal. Far from reducing the draw of extremism, the U.S. attack on Sadr has greatly strengthened it.