nigegilb,
That's not exactly my point. The likes of Sadr have filled a power vacuum and are most certainly not happy to be sidelined by the occupation force. The occupying armies likewise are not wanted.
You have a choice then. Either work with and co-opt to a certain degree the likes of Sadr, or battle against them. The later in my mind if hopeless as we are not only foreign, but have less less legitimacy through our cultural otherness (how many of us are Shia?), not to mention our history of two invasions. Inclusion of enemies has shown time and time again that, through the ballot box, hard arses moderate their stance over time.
Iraq is a classic case. In absence of a state or the environment for civil society, the most basic forms of social cohesion outside of the family will be all that is left. This will could be clan or tribe structures, or in the case of Iraq sectarian or ethnic affiliations. It is no surprise that Islamicism became the basic building block of civil society after the war as this was all there could be. A heavy handed decision to stamp that out and install our own form of society will not be well received.
The more we dig in our heals the more likely it is that a harder edged Islamic ideology will come to the fore in Southern Iraq. The tragedy is all this could have been avoided without the invasion, or with a real plan for the post invasion. Now the situation is as it is, you can't just turf out a bloody but popular leader; Sadr being seen as the lesser of two evils in the choice between an occupying army, or just another autocrat....at least a Shia one at that.