Why is this guy still alive?

He hides well, for one thing.

Also because he's a moderate, who can keep a sort of a lid on the Shia insurgency,

and because he is useful in the war against the Sunni - his militia will cooperate in an overall strategy. During the "surge" recently, for example, the Sadrists backed way off on their terrorism - made the surge look hopeful, for a couple of weeks anyway. This played well in the US press, something the war administration badly needed.

Kill him, and the Shia may blow up the way the Sunni did.

Other than the quip about him being a moderate, I actually agree with most of what you write.

My point in asking my rhetorical question was to expose the silliness of trying to deal with this man. If he is not an example of a terrorist that needs to be shot straight to Allah, then who is?

He has 6 cabinet ministers and his parliamentary bloc is in the governing coalition. I dont know how killing him would do nothing other than to incite further hostility from his suporters. But then again thats the problem with bringing democracy and self determination to the Iraqis, they may not always choose the person [i]you[i/] want.

Why is this guy still alive?

It's because he's a big player in the Iraqi government...one of the people we propose leaving in charge (or rather, one of the people free and fair elections would leave in charge, and we back those elections). Unfortunately, it's hard to back democracy as an ideal and then say, "Oh, but not if you're going to elect him and his people to office."

You mean like when we controlled the initial elections in Germany and Japan after WW2. Yeah, look how those nations turned out...

Sadr is obviously a bad apple and not someone who is in it for the betterment of his country or the region. For starters, he's an obvious pawn of Iran's. The man should have been killed years ago. Now I fear he's too big of a target...

You mean like when we controlled the initial elections in Germany and Japan after WW2. Yeah, look how those nations turned out...

Sadr is obviously a bad apple and not someone who is in it for the betterment of his country or the region. For starters, he's an obvious pawn of Iran's. The man should have been killed years ago. Now I fear he's too big of a target...

I don't think it's fair to say that he's a pawn of Iran. Iran has traditionally backed the Sciri militia, not the Mahdi Army (al Sadr's personal forces). The Mahdi Armi and the Sciri militia have historically been rivals more than allies, despite having a common enemy in Saddam Hussein. While it is true that al Sadr has had more and deeper connections with Iran since the fall of Hussein, Iran is still clearly supporting the Sciri, both in its role as militia and as a political party (in fact they are the largest party in the Council of Representatives). That puts them in opposition to his own potential grab at power later on.

One good thing about al Sadr is that he's vehemently bent on murdering all the so-called Nawasib, which includes all the al Qaeda militants in Iraq. Unfortunately, the Nawasib includes a lot of other Sunnis as well who might be brought into the political process (eventually) if they were not targets.

Iraq is a complicated place right now. and one one easily susceptible to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" style analysis, nor the supposition that just because to groups have common enemies, that they will be allies.

True, but I can't help but think that if men such as Sadr had been removed the process very early on, we'd have a different Iraq now. One that is more stable and less prone to problems that comes with well-armed religious zealots. A democracy cannot flourish if a society is divided into several armed factions, all of whom think exterminating the other is the best path to a free and open society. And while removing Sadr wouldn't alleviate that problem in Iraq, I wager it would make it easier to resolve in the long run...

True, but I can't help but think that if men such as Sadr had been removed the process very early on, we'd have a different Iraq now. One that is more stable and less prone to problems that comes with well-armed religious zealots. A democracy cannot flourish if a society is divided into several armed factions, all of whom think exterminating the other is the best path to a free and open society. And while removing Sadr wouldn't alleviate that problem in Iraq, I wager it would make it easier to resolve in the long run...

I trend to agree, though part of that agreement comes from my gut feeling that Iraq is not a country where the "marketplace of ideas" will weed out the bad eggs naturally. The majority of people in Iraq support al Sadr and al Hakim and others like them (and so do we to some extent, as we seek to support democratic ideas--al Hakim met with the President in the White House).

Sometimes democracy leads people to a dark place...and you get governments with the likes of Hugo Chavez, Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, Sciri and al Sadr's followers being handed the reins of power. There's no bright line that differentiates the democratically supported leaders it's okay to assassinate from those it's not.

You're absolutely right. Sometimes democracy does lead nations to dark places, but unlike the past, say Germany and Japan and South Korea after the respective wars in those counties, instances when the US could get away with temporarily imposing its will on elections to ensure true democrats were elected, we can't overtly set up countries governments nowadays, or the world press, the UN and all manner of socialists would froth at the mouth and accuse us of being the devil, when in fact, we were doing a pragmatic and well-intentioned thing for whatever nation (Iraq) we influenced.

In other words, in the past, we liberated countries, stuck around and made sure they elected decent people, then left them the hell alone. That formula isn't allowed to transpire now, people like Ice would go mad if it was. And my gut tells me that people like Sadr wouldn't have been tolerated to standing in the way of peace and democracy, say 50 or 60 years ago...