Cheeks in a Chunk, Cheese in the Cash. They All Gonna Be There, At that Million Mehdi Bash

Next Wednesday, in Baghdad, Moctada al-Sadr is calling a non violent demonstration, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the fall of Saddam. The point of this demonstration is to show public dissatisfaction with the continuing American occupation and its puppet civil authority. Maliki and the Americans have no choice but to allow it, to do otherwise would destroy the fiction of Iraqi democracy.

Originally, this demonstration was to be held at a Shiia shrine, in the holy city of Najaf, in the South. It has been changed to a non sectarian gathering, in the Capital. Sadr wants to expand his movement, to all political and religious factions in Iraq. It is a bold move and one that would have been previously unthinkable, without the mutual hatred of the infidel occupation, to bring these disparate groups together.

Sadr has nothing to lose and everything to gain from this move. A huge, successful, anti American rally in Baghdad, during the same day as Petraeus meets with Congress demonstrates Iraqi solidarity and dissatisfaction with the American yoke of oppression. A demonstration disrupted by violence, on the part of governmental or American forces, poses an even more graphic picture for Iraqis, Americans and the World to view. Sadr needs only to keep his people weaponless. An aggressive, unarmed crowd, set upon by an armed force is politically, the best outcome possible for him and one which sets the stage for large scale, violent insurrection.

Sadr is getting smarter. As is so often the case with American foreign adventurism, we construct our own instrument of defeat.