But the battle did settle one thing. It should cement in the minds of the American people that U.S. forces are hopelessly trapped in a multi-faceted civil war that is nowhere close to an end.
Not only are the Shiites fighting al-Qaida and the Sunni insurgency, but the Shiites are fighting each other, as they did in Basra. The dominant parties in the government of Iraq, including the followers of al-Sadr, are all part of Iraq's Shiite religious majority. (John McCain, please take note.)
Five-plus years into this war, despite the propaganda from the White House about the success of the U.S. surge, there is no end to the chaos in sight. Nor is there any real prospect on the horizon that anything the United States can do will stanch the killing. It is past time for the United States to face up to that reality and get out.
Judging by the polls, the American people realized this a long time ago. Only their government is in denial. The mess in Basra is only the latest illustration of the hopelessness of the American position.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched the fighting in Basra in an attempt to assert his government's control over the country's most important port and the key to its oil industry in the South. But al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, a militia that has controlled vast areas of the city for years under the benign neglect of the British, fought government forces to a stalemate. It took religious leaders in Shiite Iran (got that, Sen. McCain?) to broker a face-saving cease-fire.
The conventional wisdom holds that Maliki attempted to dislodge the Mahdi Army in advance of provincial elections, to take place before Oct. 1, the idea being that people would see who the emerging power in Iraq is and vote accordingly. Now, Maliki's strategy lies in shambles.
Meanwhile, American talk about training and standing up Iraqi government forces to take control of the country also lies in ruin.
And the political winner of the battle of Basra? That would be Muqtada al-Sadr, the sometime cleric and full-time thug who has built his political and military machine on the idea of throwing the Americans out of Iraq.
