I honestly have no idea how the Bush administration thinks Iraqi democracy is supposed to work. Here's the thing: Democracy means, in general, government by majority. Iraq's majority is religious Shia. Ergo, under the political system we set up in Iraq, religious Shia are going to control the government. If administration officials don't want Iraq's majority to actually run the country, maybe they should stop talking about democracy. If they do *actually* believe in democracy, as opposed to "rule by people we like," they need to come to terms with what that looks like.



Part of what it looks like is a significant role for Moqtada al-Sadr and his millions of followers. The administration hates Sadr because he hates us, and he has frequently encouraged his followers to fight Coalition forces. Ironically, the actual Sadrist positions are not entirely opposed to our ostensible goals for Iraq: Sadr is a nationalist, opposed to splitting up the country; he somehow manages, despite his Mahdi Militia often attacking Sunnis, to maintain a kind of legitimacy with Sunnis; he is not nearly as tied to Iran as other Shia leaders.



So we have a leader who is independent, nationalist, relatively free from Iranian influence, and connected to Sunni groups, and we . . . call him the most dangerous man in Iraq because he hates us. Now, I'm not a fan of Sadr. I think his views on religion, rights, and, er, the rule of law are horrific. But he's the reality, and I prefer to deal with that than the fiction that we can isolate a group that controls the largest Shia bloc in the entire Iraqi parliament.



The Bush administration, of course, continues along in fantasyland:

Gates's comments also unsettled Iraq strategists on the Bush team who fear that too many signals about the limits of U.S. patience could backfire, rather than induce the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to get its act together. "If they feel we're going to leave, they'll cut deals with Moqtada Sadr" and other bad guys, says one Iraq expert who consults with the White House.

We don't want Maliki to think we're going to leave, because if he does, he'll cut political deals with powerful leaders who can control the levels of violence and influence the civil war, which is, of course, the reason we still have nearly 150,000 troops in Iraq? Well, then. One would think it's a big story that the Bush administration doesn't want a political solution in Iraq. I suppose if they don't recognize how democracy works in the U.S., then I shouldn't expect an understanding of how it works in Iraq. Meanwhile, though, thousands continue to die for this stupidity.