Friday, December 9, 2005
When Iraq can pass Sharansky's 'Town Square test,' and there is a legitimate and protected marketplace of ideas, will this attitude change? I think it's a long, long way off. Those of us who have high hopes for the ability of a free Iraq to truly have an effect on the region and the world have to face that.
Signed by factions belonging to followers of Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Ja’afari, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Sunni Iraqi Consensus Front, the code brings together Shi’ite and Sunni factions. It also demands a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led occupation troops and condemns terrorism while upholding the legitimacy of “resistance.”
Elections are next week, and the code suggests how the various parties might align. Al-Sadr was the driving force behind the code, The Associated Press reported.
They could have taken this guy out too early on. They knew or believe strongly that he was behind the murder of the respected Shiite moderate cleric who returned from England after Iraq was liberated as well, yet they didn't touch him.
Iraq will go the way of the rest of the Middle East where the extremes dominate the conversation and the more secular moderates are unimportant, marginalized and have to prove their allegiance by showing how strident they can be. Whether Chalabi falls into the latter category or is a pragmatist hungry for power or all of the above, it does not even matter 1 iota.
It is what it is and will be this way for years to come.
What is so ironic is how the secular anti religious left in the West embraces the Islamist radicals while lambasting Israel and the Christian Right as the downfall of the Western Democracy.
Guys like Sandmonkey, Omar in Iraq etc.. are the enemy to them.