A must-read from the Wall Street Journal by Dan Senor and Roman Martinez leads with this quote from Moqtada:
Senor and Martinez trace Sadr’s ascent, and his decline:
There are three major forces at play in Iraq: the surge, the Awakening, and the Sadr cease-fire. There is a lot of debate about which of these forces is dominant, i.e. which is most responsible for the turnaround in security. I think in the case of the Awakening, it’s clear that the surge facilitated the progress in Anbar, but was not solely responsible for it. In fact, the Awakening may have reinforced the surge by freeing up units from that once-restive province to augment operations in the Baghdad belts. In any case, Senor and Martinez make a compelling case here that the surge has been critical to beating back the Sadrists in Baghdad. This other quote from Sadr–“one hand cannot clap alone”–is offered without much context, but if Sadr required chaos in order to leverage support for his Islamist agenda, as Senor and Martinez suggest, then the surge has clearly chopped off that other hand.
