THE United States lent air power and political backing as the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki took on rival forces in the port city of Basra. But US support for this assault is a dangerous venture. President Bush risks repeating the sort of missteps that have haunted America's occupation of Iraq for the past five years. Bush and his advisers may be wrong in thinking their Iraqi clients can achieve the aims of the present operation, even with help from American and British air power. Since the main target of the attacks has been the Mahdi Army of the nationalist Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, there is a danger that the Iraqi government's attacks will provoke Sadr to call off the crucial cease-fire he had renewed just last month. That cease-fire has been a key factor in reducing violence in Iraq, along with Sunni tribal sheikhs joining with American forces to fight Al-Qaeda and the so-called surge of American combat troops. As of Thursday, Sadr had called only for sit-ins and “civil actions” to protest the offensive against his loyalists. He may have his own self-interested reasons for avoiding a major armed confrontation at this time with US-backed Iraqi government forces. He is said to be studying in the Iranian theological center of Qom to make himself worthy of becoming an ayatollah; his lieutenants in Basra, Baghdad, Hilla, and Diwaniya have been consolidating political gains and reaping the benefits of patronage and payoffs. But if Sadr is pushed beyond a certain limit, he could unleash counterattacks that would plunge Iraq back into the maelstrom of a many-sided internecine civil war. An irony Bush may or may not comprehend is that he has put himself in the position of backing rivals of Sadr - Maliki's Dawa party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq - that are intimately entwined with the Iranian regime. They would benefit enormously by taking over completely the lucrative port and oil pipelines of Basra and crushing the Mahdi Army before next October's provincial elections. In short, Bush may be pursuing goals he would be wiser not to pursue. The picture he paints of events in Iraq suggests either that he is confused about the players and issues in Iraqi politics or that he fails to understand the impact of his policies. When Bush talks of defeating the enemy in Iraq, he obscures a crucial reality: that at least three major power struggles are going on in Iraq, and America serves primarily as paymaster and muscle-bound enforcer for one side or the other. The sooner a US president forges a political and regional resolution of those conflicts, the better. __
