Antiphony

Antiphony in music is the practice of using two alternating choirs or orchestras. When the choirs are placed in choir lofts or even catwalks facing each other across the nave of the church the effect can be quite remarkable. Antiphony can be incredibly beautiful and sublime as in Gabrieli’s Hodie Christus Natus Est or it can be discordant, cacophonous, and even funny as in P. D. Q. Bach’s Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments.

The struggle by Coalition and Iraqi government forces against Moqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi Army in Najaf has been going on for quite some time with a rising level of violence. As the level of violence increases it threaten the holy sites in Najaf, particularly the shrine of the Imam Ali which has been used as a refuge by al Sadr and his forces, knowing that the Coalition would be reluctant to use the required level of force against them while they hide there for fear of the political repercussions of damage to the shrine.

In response to these events on the ground, two choirs face each other across the expanse of the blogosphere. Michael J. Totten, Steven Den Beste (in private correspondence with the author), and Armed Liberal at Winds of Change call for the death of Moqtada al Sadr in order to stabilize the situation in Iraq and to demonstrate that insurrection against the fledgling Iraqi government has consequences. Juan Cole, John Quiggin of Crooked Timbers, and Matthew Yglesias warn of dire consequences if al Sadr is killed. Michael Totten writes:

Moqtada al-Sadr cranked up his “revolution” and says he wants to fight to his “last drop of blood.” Fine, then. Give the man what he wants.

Den Beste agrees:

I agree with Michael that al Sadr must be killed. […] I believe that attempting to capture him to place him on trial would weaken democracy, not strengthen it.

Juan Cole responds:

Muqtada al-Sadr is not just any Sayyid [ed. i.e. descendant of the Prophet]. He is the son of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who is almost universally idolized for his strong stance in the mid- to -late 1990s against Saddam Hussein, who had him killed in Najaf in 1999. The Americans and the Allawi government increasingly look to pious Shiites as though they are very little different from Saddam. Muqtada is also the son-in-law of Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, the theorist of an Islamic state for Iraq whom Saddam had executed in 1980.

The Americans and Allawi cannot compete with Muqtada’s religious authority. They also cannot stop his movement by killing him.

[…]

My guess is that if Muqtada is killed, and maybe also if he is captured and imprisoned, that will tip the Sadr movement into conducting a long-term low-intensity guerrilla war, similar to what Sunni radicals and Arab nationalists have done in the Sunni heartland for the past 16 months.

John Quiggin adds:

Sadr would be far more dangerous dead than alive. As the grandson of an Iraqi prime minister and the son of a social activist, both of whom were murdered by Saddam Hussein, he would make the perfect martyr for a Shi’ite equivalent of Al Qaeda. If you wanted to supply the basis for a claim that Bush=Saddam, you could scarcely do better than martyring Sadr.

My own opinion is that our actions should be be weighed very carefully against the grand strategy for the War on Terror. Actions which further the grand strategy should be taken. Actions which fail to do so should be avoided.

As I understand it the grand strategy of the Bush Administration is to undercut support for terrorism in the Middle East by spreading liberal democracy throughout the area. Iraq is the pilot site for this activity. This is sometimes called the “neo-con plan”. I’ve never heard this plan articulated particularly clearly by anyone in the Administration but Steven Den Beste has an excellent essay on this subject called Strategic Overview.

For those who favor killing Moqtada al Sadr, how does this act further the establishing of liberal democracy in Iraq? How is this different from the strongman tactics employed by Saddam Hussein? Wouldn’t demonstrating the functioning of the rule of law by capturing him and trying him for murder and insurrection serve the grand strategy better? Has the grand strategy changed to one of pacifying Iraq by whatever means necessary and putting a strongman in place who can keep the peace? Is this ABS (Anybody But Saddam)?

For those who favor bringing Moqtada al Sadr into the political process (even though he has explicitly rejected this alternative), how does this act further the establishing of liberal democracy in Iraq? Does demonstrating that insurrection against the Iraqi government has no consequences bolster the rule of law? Do you advocate some other grand strategy in the War on Terror? What is it and what is needed to be done to further this grand strategy?

The choirs are now discordant. Can any choirmaster bring these antiphonal choirs to heel bidding one to sing more softly, the other to bring their pitch into tune? It certainly doesn’t look that way right now. How does one choir shouting the other down or continuing cacophony contribute to the good of the Republic?

4 comments… add one
  • J Thomas Link

    Here’s why Muqtada must be killed instead of tried for murder: The secret arrest warrant was made by a judge appointed by americans, who had no connection to the iraqi justice system which is now being established. While outside observers like us can’t be certain what the evidence is, there is no particular reason to think we have evidence that would stand up in court. If Muqtada were to have an iraqi trial where the US military provided the evidence against him, we might look utterly stupid. This would not be a problem if we actually do have solid evidence against him that we could present in court — do you think we do?

    So Muqtada must be killed instead of captured for trial.

    Why must Muqtada be killed or captured instead of allowed to run for office? Because he isn’t dedicated to democracy. He might win, and then never hold another election. Also he would definitely demand that the US army leave iraq.

    So that’s the argument. He’s too popular, and he doesn’t do what we want, so we can’t take the chance that he’d win in a democratic election.

    (Muqtada says he doesn’t intend to run for office anyway. There is a shia tradition that clerics don’t run the government but let somebody else do that while they criticise and instruct. So it isn’t just like an american politician saying he won’t run. But that doesn’t matter, whoever won an election for the Sadr party would do whatever Muqtada said.)

    What if we kill Muqtada but the Sadrists win the election anyway? Well, they can’t. We’ll make sure they aren’t allowed to run. No party that advocates throwing the US army out of iraq will be allowed to run. No party that is likely to cancel the elections will be allowed to run. We will stop them.

    Did somebody say we intend to promote democracy? They were not exactly right, were they?

    So here is my suggestion. Suggest to Allawi that he deal with the murder warrant. He publicly tells Muqtada, “The americans say you murdered somebody. Will you voluntarily show up for an iraqi public trial? We will let the americans present their evidence, and you can present your evidence, and if they can’t prove it we will drop the whole thing.” No need to jail Muqtada, if he gives his word that he will show up.

    Then let Muqtada or his party run in the elections, and give them however many seats they win in the assembly. I personally believe that if we stop attacking him, he’ll get less than 10% of the vote. That isn’t enough to cancel elections.

    For the shrines, ask the shi’ite structures — whoever has the respect or the authority — who they want to defend the shrines from the americans or whoever might attack them. Chances are it won’t be the Mahdi Army they choose. Publicise their answer. Get an agreement with whoever it is about which areas they will control and which areas civil police will control. Don’t send the US military into the areas the shi’ite militia (or whoever) controls. This has the risk that whoever controls the shrines might attack americans and run back into their safe areas. So don’t put american forces that close, let iraqi forces patrol Najaf. If the religious defenders fail to control terrorists in their areas, that’s something for the iraqi government to negotiate with them — perhaps agree to reduce their area of control to something they are more able to handle.

    If Sadr gets a fair public trial, and (assuming he is not convicted) he gets to run his own party in the elections, he might stop his violence. He’s done that before, when he was offered a similar deal. Note that this is not a big concession. Anybody else can run in the elections, if they aren’t convicted of a major crime.

    If the violence continues, we can go on killing his violent supporters.

    Democracy means iraqis can ask the US forces to leave if they want to. Democracy means they can pass blue laws or prohibition if they want to. When we say some iraqis are bad people who mustn’t be allowed to run for office, we are being undemocratic. We don’t need it.

  • J Thomas:

    Let me preface my response by saying that I’ve always been a skeptic about the prospects for liberal democracy in Iraq. And before the invasion of Iraq I was opposed to it not because I felt we had no grounds or casus belli but because I doubted that we had the stomach to prosecute it to a successful conclusion. I fear that events are proving me right.

    That having been said I don’t believe that any strategy can succeed unless one does what it necessary to advance the strategy and avoid actions that impede the strategy. If, indeed, democracy in Iraq is next step in the Bush grand strategy on the War on Terror, then our actions should reflect this.

    It’s clear that something should happen to Moqtada al Sadr. His actions must have consequences or the new state in Iraq can’t survive. It may be touch-and-go at best. I’m not much worried about his being acquitted—insurrection would be enough.

    As to the disposition of the holy sites, I suspect that what you’ve described is what’s on the table—leaving the Iraqi military in charge of the area.

    If liberal democracy in Iraq is no longer our next move, by all means kill him. And be willing to put down the insurgency that would be likely to spring up afterward.

  • J Thomas Link

    Dave, I have faith in *some* sort of democracy in iraq partly because it’s about all we have left to work with.

    If we depend on Allawi or whoever to be the dictator who replaces Saddam, um. He’s facing a whole lot of people who recently had freedom. They compared notes about whose relatives Saddam killed. I expect a lot of them will be ready to die to keep it from happening again now. It’s like what the israelis would have done if somehow another german army came at them in 1949 or 1950.

    How is Allawi going to get a paid army to suppress those people? Fighting to stop an invasion, sure. Killing civilians for Allawi? The desertion stats among iraqi forces in Najaf are classified but rumors claim it includes a whole battalion. How can a dictator possibly get a strong enough force to suppress everybody, unless he depends on the US marines?

    Just as Allawi can’t get an army that can suppress the militias, no one militia is that strong either. So one way it can go is they hunker in their own areas, and they make shifting alliances, and whenever one of them loses at that game there’s a fight and one militia gets slaughtered with a lot of collateral damage, and maybe they keep that up until there’s only one left.

    And another way it could go is they send representatives to an Assembly to talk things over, and each issue gets voted on by every militia that’s interested, in proportion to their size, and it’s usually considered better to give in gracefully when you lose the vote than to take it to the streets and lose lives. If they have the numbers then the fighting will probably hurt you more than them.

    Get people voting when they could be fighting instead, and that’s democracy. If the national forces are like just another militia, then it’s real likely they’ll have easy handovers.

    It could work. Whoever gets left out is likely to work toward making it fail instead. Let them into the political process and the worst that happens is they argue in the assembly.

    You say Sadr should suffer consequences. What for? Lots of iraqis believe that Allawi is an american puppet. Certainly nobody elected him, unless it was the IGC that we appointed.

    I say, get a good election as soon as possible, and let anybody run. *After* the election, there’s a government that can get some support when somebody revolts. I don’t know how much the mahdi army has grown in the last few months, but it wasn’t that long ago that the media was saying Badr brigate could beat them easily. Let them break laws that Badr people believe in, and that just might happen.

    Allawi’s trouble is that there aren’t many people who believe in him the way a lot of sadrists believe in Sadr. His government doesn’t look legitimate, the main thing he has backing him is the Marines. If Sadr does insurrection and it *gets him votes* that means we’ve already lost that particular battle. He has more political legitimacy than we do, and our “punishment” will backfire — unless we can find a way to smear him first that actually sticks.

  • Greetings

Leave a Comment