Mike Davis: The "Surge", a desperate gambit

A month or so ago, an editorialist for Beirut's L'Orient Le Jour, Christian de Merville, reflecting on the five brigades deployed to Iraq, observed that the contingent, too small for "pacifying" Anbar Province, was obviously destined for Sadr City. Nothing was lost on Moqtade al-Sadr, who, upon hearing the news, went to the maquis.

Writing in the Jan/Feb edition of New Left Review, Californian historian Mike Davis (because, you know, almost no American publication would actually allow an intrusion of the state of affairs), has come right out and spilled the beans in his article, The Democrats Return:

In a desperate gambit to appease the Sunnis and defend a zone of control in Baghdad, the Bush administration is currently weighing an all-out assault ("surge" is its military precondition) on the slum militias of Moqtada al-Sadr. A new war with the Mahdi Army (hugely enlarged and better trained since its first battle with American troops in 2004) would open up another Pandora's response from the entire Shi'ite world. (Inevitable US air strikes on Sadr City would produce grim scenes reminiscent of the Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon...

You-know-who will be cheering all the way:

In the Senate, the hawkish Joe Lieberman...will be a powerful swing vote in favor of escalation.

As we now know, Pelosi and Reed have bought into Operation Desperate, which is also to escalate to $3 billion a month from the current $2 billion.