A Jour­nal edi­to­r­ial picks up on Gina Chon’s non-scoop front-page story yes­ter­day to crow that “Moq­tada packs it in.” Well, as I pointed out yes­ter­day, there was lit­tle in that story that was new, as Moq­tada al-Sadr seemed to be more clar­i­fy­ing ear­lier instruc­tions to his peo­ple than issu­ing new ones. He will still main­tain secret cells to attack U.S. troops, for instance.

And does the Jour­nal really want a kinder, gen­tler al-Sadr? Para­dox­i­cally, keep­ing him an angry, vio­lent out­sider will go a lot fur­ther toward advanc­ing the Jour­nal’s goals in Iraq than hav­ing him as a peace­ful polit­i­cal player. Because if he’s on the out­side, his unruly Mahdi Army will con­tinue to act like thugs, caus­ing Iraqis to resent them and cling to the Maliki gov­ern­ment (which the neo-cons at the Jour­nal like.)

Hav­ing him inside the process, while decreas­ing the vio­lence, gives him a chance to win at Maliki’s own game of pol­i­tics, how­ever. And if al-Sadr wins, does the Jour­nal think an Iraq dom­i­nated by Shi’ite nation­al­ists will be very friendly to U.S. inter­ests? Per­haps it does, but I cer­tainly don’t.

Like most Jour­nal edi­to­ri­als, this is a grunt from the rep­til­ian cor­tex, in line with the tri­umphal­ist bul­ly­ing so com­mon to that page.