Has Anyone Noticed?

As far as I can tell, hardly anyone has noticed that re-deploying American troops to deal with the chaos of Baghdad represents a major shift in US policy. Even as a debate was growing about whether Iraq was slipping into civil war, for months American policy maintained that our forces were battling the "insurgency," although that term has never been defined and those engaged in it remain shadowy. (How can you defeat your enemy when you can't even name him?)

In sending new forces into into Baghdad, however, we have plunked American troops square in the middle of a vicious religions and cultural maelstrom. No longer can we pretend that they are fighting Saddam loyalists or al Qaeda militants (although some of those are undoubtedly trying to make hay from the chaos in the capital). Now we will be protecting Sunnites from Shi'ites and vice versa. Our main enemy may well be the Mahdi Army, the grandiloquently-named militia of the Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who is likely to replace the late Zarkawi as America's enemy No. 1 in Iraq.

True, US forces battled al-Sadr's people a couple of years ago, but that was seen as a diversion from their main mission. Now, suppressing al-Sadr and other sectarian forces is fast becoming our main preoccupation. As al-Sadr and many other Shi'ites are seen to be allied to Iran, this may be seen as a second front in the war with Iran--the first being in southern Lebanon.

Are you frightened?