When Nouri al-Maliki’s Iraqi Army runs for the rear against Moqtada al-Sadr’s Jaish al-Mahdi, U.S. armor rides to Maliki’s rescue. We’re now in the thick of an intra-Shiite power struggle. Happy Friday! I’ll outsource commentary to my Iraq-vet friend Abu Muquwama, who says what needs to be said:

If Abu Muqawama was leading one of those U.S. units into Sadr City past a bunch of Iraqi Army soldiers hanging out on the outskirts, he would not be happy. He would be asking himself a) why is he the one establishing the authority of the Iraqi state and not the Iraqi Army and b) why is he duking it out with a militia with broad popular support so that another Iran-backed political party can win a bigger share of the vote in the fall?

Now Iraqi Army units are calling for U.S. and UK military units to lend direct support in Basra as well.

In Lebanon, in September 1983, the U.S. lent direct support to what it assumed was a national institution, the Lebanese Army, in the battle at Souk el-Gharb. By doing so, it became, in the eyes of the rest of the Lebanese population, just another militia. The U.S. history in Iraq is more complicated, obviously, but what’s happening now is the U.S. is throwing our lot in with ISCI in the upcoming elections. And all Abu Muqawama is saying is, there better be a whole lot of quid pro quo going on as well.

Lots of smart counterinsurgents have been pushing an understanding of Iraq that argues that the U.S. is just the biggest militia/tribe of them all. To put it differently, we’re not even an occupying force — occupiers tend to, you know, control stuff – but rather yet another faction. It has some plausibility. But we might consider that we’re not even the most powerful militia in Iraq.