“Attacks on U.S. Forces Soared at End of March.” So proclaims the headline to this story in the Washington Post. If one reads far enough, one learns that the "soaring" was a six-day spike that coincided with the government’s offensive against Shiite militias. On March 31, after the six days, attacks “subsided close to levels seen before the government offensive” and this reduction “appeared to continue on Tuesday.”

Post reporter Sudarsan Raghavan attributes the end of the spike to Moqtada al-Sadr, who ordered his militia to lay down its arms. In fact, Raghavan wants to give Sadr major credit for the huge reduction in violence that accompanied last summer’s troop surge:

The rapid containment of the fighting suggests that the “surge” of U.S. forces is but one factor in bringing down violence in Iraq and that in Shiite areas, a cease-fire imposed by Sadr on his militiamen last August may be more significant.

Raghavan never considers (at least for public consumption) the overwhelmingly obvious possibility that Sadr imposed the cease-fire in response to the surge. Similarly Raghavan does not acknowledges that Sadr may have told his militia to stop fighting this week because of the pounding it was receiving and/or the prospect that it would be decimated if it kept fighting.

It’s possible, I suppose, that Sadr is an unconstrained force of nature who makes decisions to stop fighting based on whim or out of the goodness of his heart. More likely, Raghavan and his editors assign Sadr this improbable exalted status in the hope of convincing readers that the U.S. is just a bit player in a drama over which we have no control.

To comment on this post, go here.

Posted by Paul at 8:31 PM  |    |