A must-read from the Wall Street Journal by Dan Senor and Roman Martinez leads with this quote from Moqtada:
"I have failed to liberate Iraq, and transform its society into an Islamic society."
Senor and Martinez trace Sadr's ascent, and his decline:
In 2007, the U.S. military shifted approach, putting in place for the first time a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy backed by a surge of troops to support it. The new strategy paid large dividends against al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents, as attacks dropped to 2005 levels and Iraqi deaths due to ethno-sectarian violence declined 90% from June 2007 to March 2008. As Sunni attacks against Shiite civilians declined, so did the rationale for Sadr's authority.
As the International Crisis Group concluded, one "net effect" of the surge "was to leave the Sadrist movement increasingly exposed, more and more criticized and divided, and subject to arrest."
There are three major forces at play in Iraq: the surge, the Awakening, and the Sadr cease-fire. There is a lot of debate about which of these forces is dominant, i.e. which is most responsible for the turnaround in security. I think in the case of the Awakening, it's clear that the surge facilitated the progress in Anbar, but was not solely responsible for it. In fact, the Awakening may have reinforced the surge by freeing up units from that once-restive province to augment operations in the Baghdad belts. In any case, Senor and Martinez make a compelling case here that the surge has been critical to beating back the Sadrists in Baghdad.
This other quote from Sadr--"one hand cannot clap alone"--is offered without much context, but if Sadr required chaos in order to leverage support for his Islamist agenda, as Senor and Martinez suggest, then the surge has clearly chopped off that other hand.
