Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric who has been preaching hatred and violence against Americans since Saddam fell, may reap what he's been sowing. His fanatical devotion to creating a theocracy in Iraq -- though he really doesn't have a very large following -- will hopefully come to an end at last, leaving the Iraqis better off than they would have been if we'd cut and run the way most Liberals have been demanding we do.

That's not going to happen. All of America's detractors, at home and abroad, really ought to have figured that out by now.

It's possible that closing his hate-spewing newspaper Hawza and arresting his aide Mustafa al-Yacoubi (accused of knifing al-Sadr's rival Abdel-Majid al-Khoei to death) were specifically done to drive al-Sadr into action now. It's critically important to remove these disruptive elements from Iraq while we still hold overall power and have the freedom to act, not to mention that we have fresh soldiers on hand from the ongoing troop rotation. Large military operations should be completed before the heat of the Iraqi summer sets in if possible, and when we have the freedom to set the timetable we should do so. We've got to clean out this extremist rat's nest and the one in Fallujah before we turn power over to the Iraqi people at the end of June. Carving out a place in the Middle East will be difficult enough for a fledgling democracy to do without this sort of internal strife erupting. Even the other main religious leaders in Iraq have asked al-Sadr to halt the violence, which he has refused to do. Neutralising this threat to Iraq's future won't be easy, and will give the media more ammunition with which to attack President Bush, but it must be done. (Watch the pious hand-wringing at ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN over the possibility of a widespread "Shi'a uprising" and "civil war".) 

The fact that an Iraqi judge, backed by the Governing Council, issued the arrest warrant for al-Sadr sends two important messages, though the American media isn't recieving, as usual. First, no one in the new Iraq should be above the law -- not even powerful clerics. Second, a plurality of the Iraqi people (49%) want a democracy, not a theocracy (21%). Certainly they don't want a government imposed by a gang of fanatical thugs controlled by a man who declared himself the "striking arm" of Hamas and quotes the leader of Hezbollah. That alone puts al-Sadr squarely in the terrorists' camp... and on the wrong side of US policy toward terrorists and their supporters.

Was al-Sadr actually behind the waves of terrorist violence the media has reported so gleefully of late? We may never find out for certain. It's good policy, either way, to turn the governance of Iraq over to its people as free of terrorism and violent thugs as possible. Arresting Muqtada al-Sadr, like toppling Saddam Hussein, would ultimately serve the Iraqi people and give them a better, cleaner new start in the world. Removing a self-proclaimed terrorist who incites violence against Americans and is trying to institute an Iranian-style theocracy can't hurt us any, either.

Removing al-Sadr from power is a win-win solution for everyone except those who want to see America fail, in fact.