in the middle of a post explaining how muqtada al-sadr had completely outwitted the dim wits running the war in iraq, juan cole used a great analogy to describe the mahdi army:
Posted by drewish at June 12, 2004 06:03 PMMuqtada has so far cleverly outwitted and outflanked this American attempt to marginalize him on the political stage. Although his ghetto youth gangs, which are not really a Mahdi Army or army of any sort, are easily defeated by US troops in firefights, they cannot be made to disappear permanently by this kind of foreign pressure. If foreigners occupied Los Angeles and engaged in some clashes with ghetto gangs like the Crips and the Bloods, do you really think the gangs could be wiped out by these foreign military incursions? Of course not. The foreigners don't have a prayer of uprooting a phenomenon even local police could never crush.
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