Bush: Getting Serious

Interesting piece in the Spectator by Lisa Fabrizio, which notes an overlooked part of the President's speech last week, and it's something with which I heartily concur. Muqtada al-Sadr has to go.

All of Washington is up in arms, so to speak, over President Bush's revamped plans for securing the peace in Iraq and winning the War on Terror. As usual, those doing the yapping are parsing words the president did, and did not use, such as "surge." And as is also usual, they missed seeing the forest for the trees. Here are the money lines from the president's speech:

"In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence. This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter those neighborhoods -- and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated."

In other words, bye-bye Mahdi Army. That force, led by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was cornered by our troops back in 2004, but allowed to regroup and re-arm. But since the president's speech last week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had previously protected al-Sadr's group, has no choice but to go after insurgents of every stripe or risk losing U.S. support.

Read the rest.