Ever since we were children, Sadr, I knew that someday we would be great nemeses. Even when we were students, rooming together at that New Hampshire prep school, I knew that we were destined to wage an epic battle of wills. You never cleaned your side of the room. You would purposefully dishevel your tie right before class. You would always organize night raiding parties on the eating hall to, as you would say, "Liberate the delicious hot pockets and pizza bagels from the clutches of the imperialist Westerners and wicked Zionists, for the glory of Islam."

After boarding school, our paths split: I studied political science, focusing on the foundation and preservation of democracy in the Middle East; you decided to go into the clergy, focusing on armed resistance. I picked up a pen, with which to write a great manifesto for a New Republic of Iraq. You picked up  an AK-74u to spread the teachings of John McLane.

And now your Mahdi Army runs rampant through my streets. And you think that Iraq will be yours now? That the United States and British Army will just go away? I mean, I may be just a puppet in this wild and wooly game of international intrigue, but I'm not an idiot puppet. I know where this is going. You just keep up this shoot 'em up game and you're going to really piss off some people who maybe you shouldn't piss off. And then somebody makes a call to Mossad. And then one day I have to read in the paper that you were involved in a "boating accident."

Moqtada, please stop all this nonsense before it goes too far and I lose my nemesis! For as long as I have known you, you have been like the Joker to my Batman! Like the Two-Face to my Batman! Like the Riddler to my Batman. I like Batman very much.

Don't you see that without your crazy, revolutionary antics to occasionally get my panties all in a المشكلة, I have no reason to wake up each morning. Without your swarthy, pudgy, mangily-bearded menacing punim showing up all over my television and newspapers each day, I will forget what my purpose is. I will shuffle aimlessly around the parliament building, mumbling nonsense and not making any serious progress with the government. If you were here right now, Moqtada, I'm sure you would joke "Well how would that be any different from now?" 

Well I will tell you how: the tears.

Moqtada, please come to your senses. I need you. Not just for your gratuitous violent antics that continue to ensure my celebrity and relevance, but for all those other things that I am just too afraid to say.

Moqtada, you complete me.

(Photo credit: Associated Press)