UPDATE: Maliki: militias must play nice with other Iraqis or else.
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| Half empty or half full? Whatever, just don't drink it. |
Come on, what did you expect?
It's the case of we can't win. We shouldn't have preemptively invaded and bombed
Iraq, but we did so we're stuck. It wasn't my idea. But now that we're stuck
and Bush and Rummy have blown it, we owe the Iraqi people something. But it
was up to the Iraqi legislators who were elected to make the move, but they
weren't. Meanwhile, the Iraqis got ticked at their legislators, because the
Iraqi people are suffering while the big shots live in the Green Zone protected
by the Americans. The Shiites needed to get it done and pick someone else the
Kurds and Sunni (and the U.S.) liked. Good luck, but now it finally happened.
Ibrahim Jaafari steps down, after 4 months of insanity where Bush did nothing
because he's so weak nobody is listening, Sistani wouldn't even open his mail,
while refusing to pick the guy himself. That wouldn't be democratic.
Bush deserves
this mess, but the Iraqis don't. They've got it anyway and so do the rest of
us. It's survival time. Bush should get that, right?
Now, Jaafari 's replaced by al-Maliki. Maliki is part of the Islamic Dawa Party
who was targeted by Saddam. Iran
and Syria harbored him, gave him sanctuary, whatever you want to call it, when he fled Iraq. Post Saddam, he helped with the debaathification program. Oh, and he's Jaafari's man.
Juan Cole has the goods and then some. Here's just a bit. There's lots more.
Here are some documents from the Open Source Center of the USG on al-Maliki,
beginning in 2002. Note that in 2004 he was a major spokesman for Islamic
law being implemented in Iraq and expressed reservations about the Interim
Constitution on those grounds. Likewise, he is obviously fairly anti-Israeli,
wondering if Israeli troops were operating in Iraq disguised as US soldiers,
and worried that Israelis might be able to own property in Iraq.He is also a hardliner on debaathification and I don't think the Sunni Arabs
are going to like him better than Jaafari.Maliki played a major role in mediating between the US and Muqtada al-Sadr
during the fighting of spring, 2004 (which killed Cindy Sheehan's son among
many others).The item dated December 17, 2002 is particularly ironic, since al-Maliki
was warning that US policies might produce a civil war after the overthrow
of the Baath government. And, he said, ruling an Iraq full of widows, orphans
and heavy debt would be no fun. He might get to try.
Frankly, I know everyone is going to say the glass is half full on this one,
cynics crying it's all bad. Well it isn't Belgium. It's the Middle East, where our neocon nut job of a president and his pals decided to go a regime changin'. But even in hell you don't walk away when you find some water, even if it's only a drop.
This is welcome news. Not necessarily “good news,” because there
really isn't any real good news in Iraq. But it's a necessary step so we can
pull back from the cities eventually. Besides, it's time our troops get some
use out of the many square miles of long-term bases we have in Iraq. Get it?
It's also better news for the Iraqis than having no government, whatever the
government in Iraq looks like. It's necessary for anything to move forward,
however we define “moving forward.” However, not so much for the women.
Sorry, ladies, you're screwed. Catch you next time.
Now for the tough work. Yeah, like that's not begun already?
There is still one rancid boil that has to be lanced:
the Interior Ministry. This is the place that's filled with the death squads
that are seeking out Sunnis on a scale that rivals genocide, if you ask me.
One step at a time. It's still ugly, but one more piece of George W. Bush's
disaster brings us closer to pulling back to the bases. Hey, we have to get
some use out of them. After all, we paid for them.
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